First brew day ever... *link* to story and pics

http://rockinkhole.blogspot.com/ has the full story, but here's the cliffsnotes:

Brew day today
Made IPA, minimash
Some difficulties arose
Fermenting as we speak

OG: 1.065 (I have doubts as to how correct this is)

Not bad for a Shoe-be! (just kidding)...yeah the britta thing probably looked good on paper. Your probably better off not filtering or getting a charcoal filter that goes on the tap. Some people filter, some dont, some use spring water, some dont. For the most part tap water is perfectly fine for brewing.

One question though about the hop-sack...What exactly was 'wrong' with it? It looks like your typical run of the mill sack to me.

Cheers!

p.s. how much extract did you use? There is a simple formula that will tell you your og. (its prety accurate with extract, there is no efficiency factor involved) its (?) lbs. liquid extract X 36/5 ex: 8 lbs x 36/5=57.6 (1.058)

Nice story. Did you put the plastic siphon tube in 200 degree wort? It's no wonder it melted. A good thing would be a spigot in the brew kettle.

Nothing was particularly wrong with the sack, it was just the flimsiest thing I've ever seen, and barely fit the specialty grains it was supposed to.

A little foresight and we should have realized that that siphon starter is meant to be used with an immersion chiller, but I rather enjoy ragging on midwest for the $120+ cost of shipping. Next time we'll just start the siphon manually unless someone has a brilliant solution?

9.3 lbs LME plus around 1/2lb of 'specialty grain' -- whatever midwest included in their octane IPA kit.

According to your calculations that's around 1.068 just from the LME, around 1.070 if I assume 60ish% soluble sugar by weight from the grain.

a good trick to get the lme out is to place the container in a hot water bath for about ten minutes, this will 'loosen' it up a bit, and make it alot easier to get out.

Bjorn Borg said:

a good trick to get the lme out is to place the container in a hot water bath for about ten minutes, this will 'loosen' it up a bit, and make it alot easier to get out.

Click to expand...

Ah, we just squeezed it out as much as possible, and then filled it with hot wort and emptied it a few times for the rest.

Also is this acceptable?

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3724/2638/1600/IMG_6697.jpg

A lot of it is still settled in the bottom.

TimmyMcOwnsYou said:

Also is this acceptable?

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3724/2638/1600/IMG_6697.jpg

Click to expand...

you mean wearing socks and flip-flops? No.

Yeah the hops and what-not will settle out. There is a good link about 'whirlpooling' somwhwere on this forum. Some people dont like having all that goopity-goo end up in the fermentor, and there are all kinds of ways of keeping the hops out (hop sacks, whirlpool, filter etc...) But its nothing to worry about really...

Bjorn Borg said:

you mean wearing socks and flip-flops? No.

Yeah the hops and what-not will settle out. There is a good link about 'whirlpooling' somwhwere on this forum. Some people dont like having all that goopity-goo end up in the fermentor, and there are all kinds of ways of keeping the hops out (hop sacks, whirlpool, filter etc...) But its nothing to worry about really...

Click to expand...

what is whirpooling if you don't me asking?

TimmyMcOwnsYou said:

what is whirpooling if you don't me asking?

Click to expand...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=7682&highlight=whirlpool