First brew in years underway

I'm 30 minutes into the first boil I've done in a few years. Decided to do an APA extract kit to start.
Forgot how vigorously extract foams when it boils...

Good luck with this and keep us posted on your process.

Gonefishing said:

I'm 30 minutes into the first boil I've done in a few years. Decided to do an APA extract kit to start.
Forgot how vigorously extract foams when it boils...

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If you should decide to go all grain you will look back and see how little the extract foams. :rockin:

Or partial mash,for that matter. Some foam like crazy, others, not so much. But the worst offender was plain Bavarian wheat DME. Geez, that stuff foams like a mad dog for a longer time.

Hoping to get home tonight to a bubbling airlock.
This one threaten to boil over the entire time I boiled last night. I thought that was pretty impressive for 2 gallons boiling in a 7 gallon pot. I did used to do all-grain, I only remember the foaming for part of the boil, not all of it.

You usually get the foamy hot break for a couple minutes right before it boils. Some will foam up with every hop addition. Others, not much if any. The watermelon hefe I did wanted to foam like crazy if I so much as looked at it wrong...

Wow I actually read the title as 'First brew in your underwear'.

Gonefishing said:

Hoping to get home tonight to a bubbling airlock.
This one threaten to boil over the entire time I boiled last night. I thought that was pretty impressive for 2 gallons boiling in a 7 gallon pot. I did used to do all-grain, I only remember the foaming for part of the boil, not all of it.

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Maybe turn down your heat so you get a nice rolling boil. If my heat is too high is when I can have boil overs later in the boil.

The wheat I just did seemed to foam the most, but only lasted a minute or so.

brewcat said:

Maybe turn down your heat so you get a nice rolling boil. If my heat is too high is when I can have boil overs later in the boil.

The wheat I just did seemed to foam the most, but only lasted a minute or so.

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My gas burner is very hard to adjust to a small flame. I tried repeatedly to make the flame smaller and smaller. For an AG boil I'm sure it would be fine, but this extract recipe had me boiling just 1-1/2 gallons and keeping that from foaming too much was almost impossible.

Frilock said:

Wow I actually read the title as 'First brew in your underwear'.

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Can't it be both?

Looks like it's going to be beer. The bubbling airlock I hoped for happened pretty quickly, and then yesterday is was almost a steady stream of Co2, today it's pretty slow but still going.

That's usually initial fermentation finishing up. Once the rapid bubbling slows or stops, it'll then slowly, uneventfully creep down to a stable FG. It'll still be cloudy at that point, so I give it another 3-7 days to clean up any by-products of fermentation & settle out clear or slightly misty. This happens at the same time.

Tapped the keg tonight and discovered why forgetting to put pellet hops in a bag can be a problem...enough hop pellet fragments are in the keg to clog the outlet tube...3 times...until I finally hooked the gas up to the outlet tube and blew it clear. Of course, using that method put some pieces back in suspension so some ends up in the glass, making it a "chunky" beer. Letting it settle again, hoping that by tomorrow night it will be possible to pour a drinkable beer. I'd try gelatin, but this keg has a really small tube and I'm afraid of a real clog happening.