Belgian Honey Wheat

I've never kegged before, so I wouldn't be the best source of advice, but I have looked into it. That little keg will hold about a gallon, I think, so you would need several of them.

Generally most people use Cornelius kegs (also called "Corny Kegs") which hold about 5 gallons. There is a lot involved in kegging (plumbing and whatnot), but the advantage is you can do forced carbonation which eliminates the need for priming. Most Corny Keg kits start around $150-$200 dollars, though, so it's not exactly cost effective up front and you need to find a place that will fill your CO2 tank. You would also need a "kegerator" (a modified refrigerator) to keep the kegs at the proper temperature. That's mostly why I haven't done it yet. That and I like making beer more than drinking it so I would end up with a drive-through's worth in my basement.

lol, i enjoy making it more then drinking also however, that might change if i find a that special recipe.

I am a draft beer guy, i pass on bottles and cans at my local pub for a draft any day. something about the way glass and cans make the beer taste, not so much glass as cans. its all experimenting as of right now.

I talked to a local brew store this evening and he invited me to a brew club one day of the month. should learn some more

How did you transfer your recipe from brewsmith to the form? i have a recipe i would like to share. worked on it with the owner wanted to get some comments.

I just type my recipes out; the format is just the way I keep it in my head, more or less. Mostly you just need the stuff on the Design and Mash tabs (OG, FG, grains, hop/mash schedules, etc.). I'd be interested to see your recipe.

Ok here goes...

i bought the grain yesterday, only cost about 25$ so its not to shabby of a cost. The sweeteners are a little expensive but what the heck, i figured i would give t a try.

I took your advise on the 2 vials of the yeast and also added some roast flavor. I think that was a great idea and will give it a good touch.

now i have about 15 lbs of grain and only a 5gallon mash tun... lol now i got to get a larger mash tun.


Chocolate Baltic Porter

GRAIN
8lbs 2oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter
2lbs 12.2 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
2lbs 7.5oz Oats, Flaked
8.8oz Chocolate Malt
4.5oz Roasted Barley
4.5oz Black Barley
4.4oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 120L

Sweeteners
9.8 oz Candi Sugar
4.9 oz Milk Sugar
?? Coco Nibbs

YEAST
2 Vials of English ale White labs #WLP002

HOPS
.35oz Amarillo Gold
.35oz Simcoe
.35oz Amarillo Gold

NOTES
Cold Press Coffee into secondary

Looks like a really good breakfast stout! The only change I would suggest is to add the coffee at bottling instead of in the secondary if you want the flavor crisp and pronounced. In secondary it tends to get muted and stale, like day old coffee if you've ever had it.

I've done 14 lbs of grain in my 10 gallon Igloo beverage cooler without any issues (an Imperial IPA I have conditioning right now). I also made my own false bottom for it, which you can see here (the 10-gallon version is the set towards the bottom of the OP). I use this cooler and this pan, though the cooler was much cheaper when I purchased it from Amazon.

Some sporting goods places and discount stores like Big Lots usually have the coolers a lot cheaper as well, so it's just a matter of bargain hunting. I really like my mash tun, though and have had zero issues with stuck sparges, even when I did a wheat stout and forgot to throw in rice hulls to help with lautering.

The recipe looks great and it should make for a tasty brew.

Well, attempted my brew today... had one disaster after another... I hit my mash temp right on the nose but my pre boil gravity was supposed to be around 1.065 and i only got up to 1.042. I am not sure why this is; I think I may have something set wrong in my beersmith.

Even after not hitting my numbers, i decided to keep pushing forward and give the brew a whirl anyways... I got through my 60min boil and added my newly DIY wort chiller to the boil kettle and started cooling down the wort. After about 15 min i noticed my pot was filling up...LOL. Yea my hose clamp was leaking tap water into the brew kettle. LOL this is what i get for trying to save a few bucks...LOL

So, what have i learned? not to be cheap and go buy a manufactured wort chiller...lol and the second thing i learned today was to keep to recipes made by others lol. I need to figure out why I didn’t hit my pre boil numbers...

Today’s cost: $75-$80.00
Lessons learned: Doh!

The two main reasons pre-boil gravity would be that low is either poor efficiency (by either poor conversion or the sparge water not rinsing the grains well; i.e. you're getting channeling for some reason) or you used too much sparge water, though if you went by BerrSmith's recommendations I find the latter unlikely. Were you close to your estimated pre-boil volume? If so then you are having some conversion issues.

It could also be tht your equipment profile is off in BeerSmith, but with a 20 point deficit it's difficult to believe that is the case.

That sucks about the equipment failure after all that hard work. I had an issue with that only once with my DIY immersion chiller, but fortunately I was standing right there and was able to tighten the hose clamp before it ruined my batch. Now I'm in the habit if tightening all of the clamps before using the chiller and have not had an issue since. I'm sure yours is fine, just be sure to tighten the clamps down if that was where the leak was coming from.

In the future you could have put the batch back in the brew kettle and boiled it back down to 5 gallons. You may have had some off flavors, especially if it was being supplied through a garden hose, but it would have sterilized any foreign bodies.

Yea, it sucks but I am sure everyone has these screw ups in the beginning.

Beersmith said 19.8ish quarts of water at 168 for 45 min. I felt 45min was odd so i left it mash for 60 min. The recipe then stated to batch sparge with around 4 gallons for 15min which brought me up to around 6gallons.

I think I may have screwed up my Beersmith calculations. I need to set back to defaults lol.

I changed my equipment profile to my new 10g mash tun. Entered the weight of the cooler to 9lbs and adjusted for dead space at .5 gallon. I set the temp of the mash tun at 165 degrees only because I pour some boiling water into my tun to warm it up before I mash. After I stir in all my grains I take a temp reading to make sure 152-156 on the nose.

Before I started the brew I felt like there was something wrong with the way beer smith was telling me to mash with...

Normally I think we are to mash between 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per lbs of grain... If so...

Pre boil volume 6.5g
Post boil volume 5.5g

15.5lbs of grain x 1.5 = 23.250 quarts (5.81g) of mash water....pending I have a 6.5 gallon pre boil volume this leaves .69 gallons of water to sparge with... Something right here sounds incorrect.

The recipe had me sparge with 4 gallons of water at 165degrees

After all this mess.... I tasted my pre boil wort... Yea, was not my cup of tea... Lol I may look for a different recipe. Maybe a clone of yuengling or something...

Ideas for an Irish stout?