My First Ever Brewday (w/A Few Pics)

I attempted to make beer for the first time ever today after probably a year of off and on reading about how to do it. I ignored basically everyone's advice and did all-grain for my first batch. It went surprisingly smoothly

The plan was for a 3-gallon batch.
My recipe:
5.5 lbs 2-row
.5 lbs Crystal 40
1 ounce Crystal 60 minutes
.5 ounce Crystal 30 minutes
.5 ounce Crystal 5 minutes
(I was planning to use Cascade, but the LHBS was out, so I just got something that sounded good)
Wyeast 1056 American Ale

And here we go...

I lost the lid to my pot a while ago, but the towel works pretty well


I made my sanitizer in my Better Bottle:


Hops in .5oz bowls:


Grainbed. I forgot to take a picture while there was actually water inside


The beginning of the hot break


Bittering hops in the boil


Icebath in my sink. I plan to use the bathtub next time, more space and much deeper


And the end of today's brew, wort in the fermenter


Overall, things went pretty well. No major mistakes were made. I didn't think to come up with a way to see how much wort I collected until the last minute. I figured out where the 2-gallon mark was while heating my strike water, but I'm not sure what any other level would be. My strike water was too hot, I am going to get a nicer digital thermometer before the next brew day. I did eventually get the temp down to 153-ish, but it started out pretty hot. My pre-boil gravity was around 1.050, which was what I was shooting for as my post-boil gravity. I thought about adding some water, but decided to just boil it and go with whatever happened. Looking back, I probably only had around 2.5-3 gallons of wort so I should have sparged more to get up to around 4 gallons. I got it up to a boil pretty easily and it boiled uncovered with no problems. Cooling was a little slower than I hoped, but I didn't actually time it. I got it down to just below 80 degrees, and poured it through a strainer and a funnel filter thing into the better bottle. I forgot to shake before adding my yeast, so I just shook it with the yeast already in. I ended up with a little over a gallon in the fermenter at an OG of ~1.070. I saw some bubbles at the middle after about 15-20 minutes, so I'm assuming thats a good sign. Wyeast is apparently in Oregon(and so am I) and my smack-pack was just over 2 weeks old. It's in my roommates bathtub because she is most likely not going to be back this weekend. I will move it to my closet after a few days when the explosion risk is gone.

I'm very happy with the way my first ever brewday went. And hopefully I will have about a gallon of 7%abv beer in a few weeks

Congratulations. I think the crystal hops may give you a nice light ale kinda thing.

One piece of advice. Get a lid for that pot! You can prob find one at a thrift shop if you need to. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything. (Honest) Odds are your beer will be OK, but.... Once you get the wort temp down the batch becomes susceptible to wild yeast and unfriendly bacteria. Anything can just drop in to your open pot. They like to hitch a ride on dust and drift around. I would also not advise covering it with a towel while you are cooling it either as there is lots of dust and lint on towels.

That said give it time to ferment out, and you will have beer. Each batch you do you learn a couple more things you can adjust or tweak in your process next session. Might as well start thinking about your next batch, because the waiting is the hardest part on your first batch or two.

Thanks for the pics! Nice work. That looks like more head space in the carboy than I'm comfortable with. Any of the more seasoned vets have an opinion on this?

Thanks!

I only used the towel while I was heating things up, I took it off once the boil started and left the pot uncovered to cool. But I didn't really think about covering it while I cool, so I will look into getting a lid. And there is a lot more headspace in the carboy than I was planning, it was supposed to be ~3gallons going in but I ended up with a little over 1. I thought about topping off with some water, but I didn't have any sanitized water to use so I am just going to leave it the way it is. I was a little bit unsure about it too, but I'm hoping that the fermentation will make a good CO2 layer pretty fast.

I checked on it this morning and this is what I saw:




It's hard to show bubbling in a picture, but I have obvious airlock activity after less than 12 hours. The other problem I have now is that I don't have a good way to take a sample out to check the SG. I think for this batch I'm just going to let it go 3-4 weeks to be sure it's done(and because I hear that's good to do anyways) then bottle it and take a sample then. I am going to brew my next batch on bottling day for this batch and just re-use the yeast cake. This first batch will just be my high gravity 1-gallon starter for my (hopefully) 3 gallon cream stout.

Nice work, bro!

I cool down in my sink using ice also. I can cool 5 gallons this way below 80F in about 25 mins. I have done 30-40 batches now and rarely use a lid, as when you are cooling in an water bath you need to be stirring to get below 150F asap to avoid DMS. What I do is get to 125F in about 2 mins, is I fill the sink with cold tap water - when when that water gets too hot, take out the pot, and repeat. I do this twice and I am usually around 125F. Then, new cold water BUT - add about 1/2 cup table salt to the cold water and stir to disolve. Yes, table salt. Then add your pot again, and dump in your ice. The salt will have your ice form a rock solid mass, and will actually cool your beer faster and last a lot longer. Often, my ice will last an hour, so I can walk away from my pot and leave it without further stirring. In the spring/summer at this stage I do actually lid, as wild yeasts are very active these times of the year, especially in the spring.

Also, do not worry about explosions. There is probably zero chance of that happening with that much headspace Also, do check out the Mr Malty yeast pitching rate calculator. (just google it) It will help you determine how much of that yeast cake you need, too much might not be the best way to go.

Anyway, unsolicited advice is not always good - you did a fine job, and whether or not what I say helps I hope you enjoy making many more batches in the future

I wouldn't be worried about the headspace, the CO2 should form a nice blanket. I also wouldn't worry about a 1 gallon starter being too big for your next beer as long as you make a 5 gallon batch next time (takes the same amount of time and effort plus you get more beer). There is the question of stressing the yeast with high OG but again I wouldn't be too concerned about that either.

I think my sink is just too small to cool in. when the sink is full the water level only comes up to the 2 gallon mark inside. But the salt/ice idea is a good one. You could maybe even freeze salt water to put in the ice bath because it would have a lower freezing/melting point and would cool slightly faster. Maybe not enough to make a difference, but it wouldnt really hurt anything.

I moved my fermenter into a plastic tub with a little bit of water in it to keep the temperature down and somewhat consistent in my closet this morning because I didn't want my roommate to come back and want to take a shower with my beer in there. When I checked the temp after work it was around 66* so it will be staying there until its done.

My airlock is still bubbling away nicely so the headspace doesn't worry me at all anymore. I don't think I can get more than 5 gallons up to a boil on my stove, so thats what I went with a smaller batch size to begin with. I just have to deal with 3 gallon batches for now, and probably jump up to 5 as soon as I move somewhere that will allow me to brew outside(3rd floor apartments don't work so well for that) or have a nicer stove inside.

Congrats on the first beer! Every brew is a learning experience, and thats half the fun! The other half is drinking the leaning experience.

If your sink is too small you can always chill it in your bath tub, that's what I used to do. Eventually, I would recommend you build yourself a wort chiller. I use an immersion wort chiller, incredibly easy to make and chills the wort much faster. As far as the 5 gallon batches go there are ways to make a small volume of high gravity wort and then top off with water to 5 gallons much like extract brewers do. You could also do a partial mash in much the same way. Not ideal, I know, but there are options until you get a better set up.

A wort chiller is one of the first things I plan to buy when I have a threaded sink/hose so I can actually use it And topping off with water wouldn't be a bad idea, I kind of wish I did it with this batch because I'm probably going to finish with less than a gallon of beer going into bottles. But it doesn't really matter because I can always(and will) make more once this finishes fermenting. And my friend that helped me brew is planning to buy a fermenter for himself and start pitching in money for ingredients so we can make more beer.

Oh, and I messed with the brewing calculator on byo.com and it looks like I got ~50-55% efficiency. Not bad for my first try, and I'm pretty sure I stopped sparging a gallon or 2 sooner than I should have because I wanted to be extra careful to not put a gallon of tannins into my beer. That will be fixed next time.