New to the forum. Have a question about brew time for 6 gallons.

Hello folks.

Hope to spend more time on this forum. I finally gave up and bought a beer kit.
The dual carboys with the airlocks and all that good stuff.

A friend helped me brew.
The recipe called for boiling three gallons and then cooling in the carboy.
Boiling another 3 gallons and brewing the hops and etc for 1 hour.

We have a 7 gallon pot though not the 5 gallon in the instructions.
Should I have brewed the 6 gallons for longer then an hour?

Hopefully I cooking the hops and malt for long enough...!:cross:

Here's what I do:

3 gallons in brewpot...
2.5 gallons in extra pot
Boil 2.5 gallons in extra pot, let boil for 3 minutes, put in freezer to cool.

Brewpot -
If you have grains, bring to 157 degrees, steep for 20 minutes, if no grains, go straight to boil.
Once boiling remove from heat, add and stir in malt extract
Return to heat and start a 60 minute rolling boil (set timer when boil starts)
Add hops per hop schedule (Bittering hops for 60 minutes, finishing hops for 15 or 5, depending on recipe)
Put brewpot in icebath and bring down to 70 degrees
Add water that has been in freezer to carboy
ONce brewpot is at 70 degrees, autosiphon to carboy
Shake and airate wort
Pitch yeast
Done!

I think the problem with most kits is they wrongly assume that the person using it can only handle a 3 gallon boil. There are a few differences between full boil and partial but it's probably nothing to worry about. I assume they added a little more hops due to the lower hop utilization of a smaller boil. In other words, you could have boiled all 6 gallons (carefully) and you would have ended up with a slightly hoppier beer. The 60 minute boil was appropriate for the hops. No problems.

Enjoy (in about 5-6 weeks)

We'll we waited a little longer to get the brew down to 75 degrees (about an hour) and then put about 3 gallons into the carboy. Pitched the yeast. Put the other 3 gallons in. Aerated it back into the orginal boiling pot and then back into the carboy.

The airlock is already bubling at about once every 4-5 mins...

Hopefully this was ok. We'll try out different ways in the future..

That we didnt remove all the malt and hops from the brew.

I hope that wont cause any major problems....

The only thing I'd caution you against is pouring back into the brewpot if you let it sit uncovered for an hour. There is a chance some beasties fell into the pot during that time, but you shouldn't worry much at this point.

If you preboil the topup water, you should get it into a sanitized/covered container and get it in the freezer while you boil your wort. That way, it will pull a ton of heat out of your wort to quickly cool it. An hour is a little long to cool to 75.

If you do go to full boils (6 gallons), cooling quickly enough will become a challenge without a chiller of some kind.

Leaving the particulates in the wort shouldn't be a problem, a lot of us do it from what I've read here. It will settle out and you can rack the beer off it when you go to a secondary vessel.

Yeah I think next time we'll pure the wort into the carboy right away and put the carboy on ice.

We did keep the pot covered while cooling but had it off sometimes to check temp.

I hope the yeast was OK as we put it in and then aerated it out which may not be good now looking back at it.

Ill be able to tell more when I get home.:rockin:

Yeah I think next time we'll pure the wort into the carboy right away and put the carboy on ice.

Click to expand...

Bad idea with glass, it breaks.

Haha, man im losing it.

Forgetting my days as a kid when I broke a glass putting hot water in it.

What a noob! Still not learning.

Ill post some pictures of my first brew sometime tonight....

Cant wait to get home!

When I was about 7, I was making iced tea, so I froze the pitcher while the water was boiling. Only took a little water to blow the bottom out of the pitcher.

OK, got home yesterday night.

Checked it out, the airlock is bubbling once every ten seconds give or take.

The foam is brownish white and bubbling (Dark Ale).

Everything appears to be going well so far!