First official "Brew on Board"...

Since joining the boards as a "Christmas noob" last year, I have brewed (with great assistance from y'all) 1 coopers dark ale (pre-hopped) 2 ciders, and one ginger beer. Those brews were at a house I was staying at during a medical rotation. School has kept me from brewing much, but today with my board exams only 7 days away I took a study break and used up the can of cooper's lager that came with my awesome coopers fermenter. Today's brew was the first beer to be brewed on the boat.

In general everything went very well. I'm glad I brewed the other batches as I have now streamlined the process and MESS significantly. It now sits in the lazarette locker hopefully doing its thing.

Things I learned from this brew:
1: First time with DME. (2lbs of extra light instead of brewing sugar) Requires stirring to break up chunkies. Might use a whisk next time.
2: A full coopers fermenter (just under 6 gal) is very heavy and hard to get into a boat locker under the cockpit. Will make/use a carboy type sling to assist next time.
3: When you lift a full coopers fermenter by its handles it distorts ever so slightly causing suction on the airlock. Some starsan from the airlock got sucked into the beer.
4: Cooper's kits + starsan really are stupidly easy.
5: Starsan makes the best bilge cleaner EVER!:rockin:

Questions about this brew:
1: How important is it to break up all the little DME chunkes?
2: OG 1.042 at 24deg C. What's my FG supposed to be?

Another great thing about this brew:
While clearing a space in the bottomless lazarette locker I found 11bottles of homebrew! I thought I was all out.

Thanks for everyone's help in the evolving project. I promise next batch will be "real" brewing. AHS Sierra Nevada clone and then AHS Moose Drool clone on the same yeast cake is what's planned for early November brewing.

BrewOnBoard

Haha, I know what you mean about DME. I've used it twice now, and the first time I made the mistake of just dumping the entire 5lb bag in. First off, the steam from the boil made a couple tsp worth stick to the bag like icicles. I decided to dip the bag in the boil to get them off. Then, i had one massive chunk of DME that was stuck to itself. After about 4 minutes of stirring I had it all dissolved, but still a good learning experience.

Next time I use DME, I'm going to pour it in a bowl and shake it over the wort, unless anybody else knows a better idea.

From the Coopers Brewery on using Coopers DME:

Light Dry Malt in first
Hot water in second
Pick the fermenting Tub up and swirl the contents

VOILA!! Dissolved in 20 secs...

tomheff said:

From the Coopers Brewery on using Coopers DME:

Light Dry Malt in first
Hot water in second
Pick the fermenting Tub up and swirl the contents

VOILA!! Dissolved in 20 secs...

Click to expand...

Here's a video demonstration straight from Coopers Brewery

http://shar.es/1qOoR