First brewday ever

I gone and done it. I successfully made it through my first ever brewday. I visited my Brother in Oregon to do some snowboarding the first week of March. He has been homebrewing for a couple of years now. He has a 2 tap kegerator, and after pulling pints from that for 2 weeks, I was hooked. As soon as I got home I started researching, and buying gear. Pretty much every question I had was answered via this forum. Thanks to all that contribute.

So yesterday was my first attempt, and it pretty much went off without a hitch. I made the BCB haus pale ale. Here's how it went.

I had a very small boil over when I turned my back for a second, no worries, it only foamed down the side of my pot, and I was in the garage. I mashed at 151, which cooled to ~149 by the end, which was a little below the target of 152, should be fine, right? I also undercalculated my (batch) sparge volumes a bit, and only ran off ~5 gallons pre boil. My post boil gravity was 1.062, so I added a gallon to my fermentor, bringing the volume back up to 5 gallons, and the gravity to 1.050. I accidentally bought S-04 rather than the recommended S-05, but it's happily bubbling away, so I'm not worried.

Overall, I'd say the day was a great success. The homemade equipment performed as expected, and I think I will have some beer in the end. SWMBO snapped a few pics, which I'll post as soon as I pull them from the cam. I can't wait to brew my next batch. Thanks again to everyone here for the wealth of info and advice. Cheers!

As far as mash temps go you should always try to nail them, but ultimately the fact that you ended with a 1.050 OG after the water addition is a good sign.

I sparge into one of the "ale pail" buckets. Because it's graduated on the side I know exactly how much I'm getting from my sparging. It's ok to sparge 2 or 3 times if you have to. Even a 2nd or 3rd sparge still extracts sugar and won't hurt your OG as much as fresh water after the boil. Do you know what the recommended OG was?

As far as the yeast goes from what I understand you could use many varieties of yeast if you wanted, they're going to do the same job. However different strains impart different flavors into your beer. The recipe probably recommends one specific yeast because it balances well with the other flavors. So my guess is your beer will probably turn out great, just with a slightly different flavor profile than one brewed with S-05. No worries though.

Congrats on a successful brew!

The recipe called for an OG of 1.050, so after the water addition I was right on. I have a notched wooden dipstick that I made for my kettle so I could measure the runoff volume. Really I should have done another sparge, but I didn't think about it until after I dumped my grains.

I was right to concentrate on target OG rather than target volume, correct? They happened to coincide this time around fortunately.

Now I have a couple of weeks to get that keezer build finished.

Here's the pics. Sorry if they're linked and not inline. Looks like it's a restriction placed on noobs like me.

Checking strike water temp.


Adding grains.


Stirring mash.



Just added the immersion chiller.


Wort.


A shot of my DIY chiller.


Aerated, pitched, covered, with blowoff in place.


1 down, many many more to go. I'm definitely hooked on this hobby.

I checked the gravity after 7 days: 1.012 and tasted the hydrometer jar sample, pretty rough. Tested again at 10 days: 1.012, drank the jar, delicious! I can't believe how much the taste improved in a few days, now I'm really excited to tap this beer. I racked to secondary carboy and will let it sit for another couple of weeks. I'm planning to brew an orange wheat beer in a couple of weeks. I have 5 empty kegs and I'm very anxious to get the pipeline going. I think I'll make a batch of Ed's apfelwine too, but I need more carboys.

Very Cool, makes me want to do all grain soon and i think that I'll have a home brew now!

Congrats!!! You are now an addict.... Of great homebrew and the process of making it!

Recommend letting the next batch ride for 3 weeks, then keg or bottle. Yeast are really awesome little crittters, they actually clean up after themselves. You tasted the difference from day 7 to day 10. Imagine the difference at day 21!!

Welcome to the hobby/addiction and hope you enjoy it for a long time to come. Remember now to brew a lot to get your pipeline started. You will run out of beer faster than you think possible, even if you don't share a single drop.