First Post, Second Brew

Okay okay, so a week and a half ago I gathered my supplies and I took on the hobby of brewing. I had been reading up on the subject for weeks. My first batch is an extract w/ specialty grains kit Oktoberfest that I bought from my LHBS. I moved it to a secondary two days ago so I could brew another batch today.

Today's brew is another extract and specialty grain, a Chocolate Stout Recipe I found on here. I ordered my ingredients from an online HBS. So far I can say. The specialty grains seemed fresher, the hops were definitely better, and I'm using safale s-04 yeast, which I currently have proofing in the closet, and it is showing 5x as much activity prior to pitching than the muntons yeast in the kit.

I'm glad I brewed from a kit the first time, for ease of choosing a recipe and measuring. However, thanks to this site, and lots of reading on my behalf, I'll be purchasing fresh ingredients and harvesting my own yeast from now on.

My name's Mike and I'm a mechanic, and now I brew beer. Cheers!

Congrats Mike!

You are definitely on the right path to beervana!

Keep on brewing!

Many more fun and exciting discoveries await.

Welcome to the obsession! It's awesome brewing beer. It's the best hobby in the world, but it does lead to some significant problems. Like, becoming a beer geek, obesessing over recipes, thinking about beer during sex, and weight gain.

The good part is that you make lots of friends who come over and drink your beer. Wait. Maybe that's not a good part?

Anyway, welcome to the forum.

Well, an update!

I got the wort chilled to 82 degrees after chilling in an ice bath for 45 minutes or so. Then I used a sanitized tupperware container (Shaking vigorously) to aerate a gallon, filtered, pre-boiled water and added that to the fermenter. I also aerated approximately half the wort using this method. Ended up with 4 gallons of wort and a gallon of water in the fermenter. OG reading was 1.073.

I pitched the rehydrated s-04, which was already munching on some wort i made up quickly and added to the container to proof it 2 hours previously. I woke up 7 hours later to some airlock activity.

I plan to let this sit in the primary for at least three weeks

s-04 is a good yeast; 1 of my standards. don't know that i go with it for a chocolate stout... welcome to the obsession. you have been assimilated

YooperGrandma said:

Welcome to the obsession! It's awesome brewing beer. It's the best hobby in the world, but it does lead to some significant problems. Like, becoming a beer geek, obesessing over recipes, thinking about beer during sex, and weight gain.

The good part is that you make lots of friends who come over and drink your beer. Wait. Maybe that's not a good part?

Anyway, welcome to the forum.

Click to expand...

A good old fashione overshare from Yooper

northernlad said:

A good old fashione overshare from Yooper

Click to expand...

What do you mean? Didn't YOU gain weight when you started brewing?

Good to hear you getting that second batch going so quickly. The mistake I made that many new people do is not having a "pipeline" in the works. This was the toughest lesson I learned when it came to homebrew. Brewing a batch with only a few bottles left is sad.

Yeah, I'm trying to build up a supply of homebrews so my at home beer drinking will be self sustaining lol.