First brew in the bucket! Lessons learned and Questions

So I just put my first brew in the bucket today!!! It's a DFH 60 min. clone. Overall it was a very good experience and things went pretty smoothly. It took about 3.5 hours from start to being done cleaning up. I believe I can knock off at least a half hour of that time if not more from just general inefficiencies.

The Good:

• I'm pretty confident in the overall process / sanitation and I'm hoping for some good beer (it smelled GREAT!)
• I hit my target OG on the nose!
• Picking up some micros for the process, I stumbled upon Founders Centennial IPA which is delicious!
• The "squirrel cage" / 5 gallon paint mixer worked great for aeration I believe
• The 5 gallon paint strainer worked great to filter out the hop sludge going into the fermenter
• I couldn't be happier that I bought a brew kettle with a spigot on it

The Bad / Lessons Learned:

• During the start of my boil, very large bubbles were coming up the center breaking the surface and splashing. Not sure what it was, but I turned down the flame a bit and stirred and it settled to a good rolling boil
• I have a 10 gal. pot and was steeping 1 pound of grains in 1 gallon of water. The 1 gallon was barely enough to cover grains in the steeping bag. More water though would break the "1 gallon / pound of grain" rule for steeping.
• The "geyser boil" caused a little boil over
• Not having all my water handy and pre-measured caused A LOT of trips in and out of the house wasting a LOT of time
• I could have saved significant time by getting the water up to steeping temp and steeping first. I could have done most of the things was doing during the steep process itself.
• Same goes for after the steep and getting the rest of the water in the kettle and heating up. Lots of unnecessary wasted time there.
• My IC took almost 20 min to bring my brew down to 70. That's much longer than I expected.

Questions:

• Anyone have the "geyser" boil that talked about above?
• Will having the lid on the pot while I run the IC cause any DMS gasses to get trapped?

Thanks!,
Mike

mmonacel said:

So I just put my first brew in the bucket today!!! It's a DFH 60 min. clone. Overall it was a very good experience and things went pretty smoothly. It took about 3.5 hours from start to being done cleaning up. I believe I can knock off at least a half hour of that time if not more from just general inefficiencies.

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3.5 hours is pretty good. I wouldn't count on being able to cut much off of it. Something always causes you a delay for some reason. Expect the unexpected.

Sounds like it went pretty well!

mmonacel said:

• I have a 10 gal. pot and was steeping 1 pound of grains in 1 gallon of water. The 1 gallon was barely enough to cover grains in the steeping bag. More water though would break the "1 gallon / pound of grain" rule for steeping.

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you could always steep the grain in a much smaller pot and put it in the big one later. In fact, you could steep your grain while the rest of the wort is boiling. That might same some time.

mmonacel said:

• My IC took almost 20 min to bring my brew down to 70. That's much longer than I expected.

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For a full 5 gallon batch, 20 minute chilling is about par as far as my experience goes.

mmonacel said:

Questions:

• Anyone have the "geyser" boil that talked about above?
• Will having the lid on the pot while I run the IC cause any DMS gasses to get trapped?

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I am not quite sure what you mean by the geyser boil. I'm not pictureing what happened properly.

As for the DMS, you'll be fine, but I'd leave the lid off next time. I just traps heat in anway.

Not sure what you mean with the "geyser boil" but I have more bubbling in the middle which I presume is due to having the element smaller than my brew pot and obviously in the middle during my boil. Does that sound about right?

Pommy said:

Not sure what you mean with the "geyser boil" but I have more bubbling in the middle which I presume is due to having the element smaller than my brew pot and obviously in the middle during my boil. Does that sound about right?

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By "geyser boil" I mean that it's bubbling in the middle but very aggressively to the point where a rounded tower about 3-4 inches high comes up out of the water consistently creating a lot of turbulence in the pot and causing some to splash over the side. Turning down the heat helped, but I was wondering if this happens to others. I had 6.5 gal in a 10 gal pot so there was a decent amount of head space to work with.

Walker said:

you could always steep the grain in a much smaller pot and put it in the big one later. In fact, you could steep your grain while the rest of the wort is boiling. That might same some time.

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Good point - I think that's what I'm going to do. Start the steep and then a few min later put the heat on the rest of the water in the kettle. By the time the steep is done, I should be close to boiling. Adding the steeped water will stop the boil, but be quick to resume. That should cut a good 20 min. off my time.

Walker said:

As for the DMS, you'll be fine, but I'd leave the lid off next time. I just traps heat in anway.

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Good to know. I've seen people with it covered presumably to avoid infection. I'm guessing it's not that common though and should help quicken the process. Thanks.

* Anyone have the "geyser" boil that talked about above?

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The sugar solution (wort) is very heavy and when you stir it, it has a lot of momentum. I find when I stir, it sucks all the boil bubbles to the middle and you can get a very large geyser. This will be exacerbated if your heating element is concentrated in the middle of the pot. My turkey fryer has a diffusion plate that keeps the flame off the very center of the pot, which helps a lot.

* Will having the lid on the pot while I run the IC cause any DMS gasses to get trapped?

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DMS is only released when the wort is boiling. As soon as it is below boiling, DMS is no longer off gased. But it is generated still, until the wort is cooled. This is one reason rapid cooling is important. I would cover the wort when it cools, who knows what could drift in on the breeze.

When I read "geyser boil" I could relate. I had that happen my first boil. Now after a few I turn my heat down right after I have a nice boil going - enough to maintain the boil - but not high enough to replicate "old faithful."

All-in-all, it sounds like you had a very successful brew day. Congrats :rockin:

Boil overs, geysers, whatever you want to call them can all be avoided. Pick up some Fermcap-S the next time you buy some ingredients or brewing stuff, it's the BOMB!

Marsdude said:

All-in-all, it sounds like you had a very successful brew day. Congrats :rockin:

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Yup - and she's bubbling away now like a champ. Can't wait! I believe I'm going to do some Apfelwein in the meantime.

Marsdude said:

When I read "geyser boil" I could relate. I had that happen my first boil. Now after a few I turn my heat down right after I have a nice boil going - enough to maintain the boil - but not high enough to replicate "old faithful."

All-in-all, it sounds like you had a very successful brew day. Congrats :rockin:

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Sounds like a good problem to have, with my stove-top set up I have to carefully calculate just how much wort I can get up to a good rolling boil.

Congrats on getting it going, now just try and be patient

My IC took almost 20 min to bring my brew down to 70. That's much longer than I expected.

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No worries man, 20 minutes is not bad for a cooling time. My first batch with no IC took like 45 minutes and about 4 ice baths.