My First Brew - Airlock Bubbling, woohoo!

My brother and I brewed our first batch last night, a "Brown Derby Ale" Newcastle-ish beer, and it was a blast. I didn't realize how much I learned from reading this forum the past couple weeks until I was teaching him all the steps involved. Thanks for all the help!

Unfortunately, my hydrometer was broken when shipped, so I wasn't able to get an OG. I'll just test it later when I get my new hydrometer to help decide when to rack to secondary.

Anyways, here's a video of the airlock bubbling this morning!! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FO1-ys4VE"]Shlongstar's Airlock Bubbling[/ame]

Thanks for the video- very cool to watch. Isn't it funny how fascinating homebrewers find airlocks bubbling?

It sounds like it went well for you- welcome to the obession!

Very nice

Yeah, went well for my first brew day I guess. We'll see how the beer TASTES in a few weeks!

Airlock activity is DEFINITELY exciting, especially cause I don't have a hydrometer right now

Random question (that I couldn't find an answer to while searching) - does boiling hops usually smell like herbs? My parents used to boil chinese herbal medicines when I was a kid, and it smelled somewhat similar

I used Bremling (6%) 0.9 oz for the bittering hops, which is what mainly gave that odor.

Seeing the airlock bubbling for the first time is awesome.

congrats, i saw an airlock bubbling for the first time yesterday. it was pretty cool! especially since it happened so quickly.

good luck with your first batch!! I'm in the same boat as you...trying to be patient

Nice video... that's some nice bubbling!

I hear some n00bs actually place a stool near their fermentor so they can sit there and watch it go. Not saying that's what I did myself, just about two weeks ago, no sir. I also didn't fetch a worklight to shine on it so I could watch in near disbelief the contents swirling around and churning away in there like a washing machine. Well okay, maybe I did, but only a little. I also didn't take pictures of it every day...

Haha, heck yeah Airlock's rule! In the video it's bubbling about every 2 secs, but it's now bubbling every second... crazy! I hope this thing doesn't blow!

It's alive....it's alive!

Whats with the maglite? No electricity? Brewing during a power outage? Must have natural gas stove huh? Did you stay up all night waiting?

Talloak said:

Whats with the maglite? No electricity? Brewing during a power outage? Must have natural gas stove huh? Did you stay up all night waiting?

Click to expand...

haha, the fermenter's in a closet and my light in there is really dim so the lighting was terrible when I first uploaded it to youtube. So I added the flashlight the second time around to actually see it better