First brew session, last minute advice

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Jcoz

Jcoz

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Ok so brew day is finally here, and I am brewing my first beer, weather permitting....I am brewing a dunkleweizen . I have all new equipment, any last minute advice?

One thing I was wondering was how I should clean the equip prior to starting, just a quick rinse or thorough clean? This is an all grain brew....

I have 2 vials of WLP300, should i take them out early to allow them to get them to room temp by pitching time?

ANY last minute advice is greatly appreciated!
 
If you've done your homework and done your reading you will be very well prepared. Not sure about the yeast but even new items need to be thoroughly cleaned.

My advise - relax, don't rush and accept that things will not go perfect.
 
Smashing said:
If you've done your homework and done your reading you will be very well prepared. Not sure about the yeast but even new items need to be thoroughly cleaned.

My advise - relax, don't rush and accept that things will not go perfect.
Click to expand...

I'll clean the equipment and sanitize before hand, I've been reading for months, and have listened to just about every brew strong podcast as well. So I should be ready.
 
Yes, take the yeast out of the fridge a few hours before pitching. I don't know your recipe, but do you need to use both vials? For a 5 gallon batch under 1.060, one is enough.

Your fermenter, spoons, airlock, siphon, and everything else that will touch the cooled wort needs to be sanitized. A no-rinse sanitizer is best.

Everything else like your mash tun, kettle, etc. just needs to be clean of any debris that would cause off-flavors.

You will be doing a 60+ min. boil which will sanitize the wort for you.
 
Mainer28 said:
Yes, take the yeast out of the fridge a few hours before pitching. I don't know your recipe, but do you need to use both vials? For a 5 gallon batch under 1.060, one is enough.

Your fermenter, spoons, airlock, siphon, and everything else that will touch the cooled wort needs to be sanitized. A no-rinse sanitizer is best.

Everything else like your mash tun, kettle, etc. just needs to be clean of any debris that would cause off-flavors.

You will be doing a 60+ min. boil which will sanitize the wort for you.
Click to expand...

Well I am following jamil's dunkel recipe from brewing classic styles which calls for 2. I would just do a starter, but I wanted to just keep my process a bit simpler today, and despite how much it's covered, I still don't feel there is a picture perfect KISS guide on how to make starters to pitch the "appropriate" amount.
 
Wow mr malty makes my last comment look obscenely uninformed. Forgot about that completely. Carry on
 
Can't go wrong with a thorough cleaning, way easier than wondering if it's a cleaning/sanitation off flavor later on. Good luck, have fun, and see you in a few hours for a did I ruin my brew thread. Don't worry paranoia is natural and your beer is probably fine, RDWHAHB.
 
Thanks guys, so far so good, Got to 170, started to infuse the mash, and temp dropped a lot faster than I thought, and of course my burner refused to fire up again.

So I missed my target temp (152) by a few degrees, 148. Boiled some water and added a few quarts at boiling to get to 152 on the money, so I'm mashing now.....

We have a big storm coming, lol, really got off to a slow start today.

Question for anyone : I have a hops sack, but I didn't think to get something to tie it up, what is normally used?

Thanks in advance....
 
Bithead said:
Stop doing research. Experience is the best teacher. Go make beer!
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Yeah well part of it was I didn't have enough money for all the necessary gear, so I studied until I did, and part was work got too hectic, quickly turned into 6-8 months of research.
 
LOL, Jcoz I just realized you live in Laurel. I live in Ellicott City. I could have helped you or at least provided moral support and homebrew.
 
Wow, it looks like i did a pretty awful job with efficiency, I pulled 7.25 gals just did a gravity reading..... 1.033.....****.
 
scoundrel said:
LOL, Jcoz I just realized you live in Laurel. I live in Ellicott City. I could have helped you or at least provided moral support and homebrew.
Click to expand...

That's crazy...right down the street basically, lol. Looks like I could have used the help too unfortunately.
 
No I was measuring the gravity at too high a temp, but at the moment the numbers don't make much sense that way either, gotta get the temp to 60 to be sure.

Now efficiency and OG look way too high
 
I'm brewing in a pretty good storm here....if this beer turns out well I dub thee "Thunderweizen", lol.
 
Jcoz said:
Wow, it looks like i did a pretty awful job with efficiency, I pulled 7.25 gals just did a gravity reading..... 1.033.....****.
Click to expand...

Was it a 5 gallon recipe? Aside from the temperature issue, if it was a 5 gallon recipe, and you still need to boil down, that would get you to 1.048. So, if you then account for temp, you're easily looking at a wort in the high 1.050s.
 
usfmikeb said:
Was it a 5 gallon recipe? Aside from the temperature issue, if it was a 5 gallon recipe, and you still need to boil down, that would get you to 1.048. So, if you then account for temp, you're easily looking at a wort in the high 1.050s.
Click to expand...

5 gallon, 7 gal pre boil.....yah I panicked for min, didn't understand where I went wrong, I think so far so good.
 
Well I don't think I really was prepared for the amount of boil loss there was.....only got 4 gallons out of 7.25. Recipe said adjust for the 90 min boil but I had no frame of reference.

Gravity ended up 1.063.
 
Water loss during the boil is dependent on several factors, such as how wide your pot is, how heavy a boil you've got going, and environmental conditions. I've seen a benchmark around here that says you'll lose 15% per hour, which seems pretty close to what I've been doing recently.

Another loss comes from the hops you add, which will also depend on whether you're using pellets or whole hops. If you're doing a brew with lots of whole hops, they'll cost you a decent amount of wort.

Your recipe was a dunkelweizen, so it shouldn't have had too many hop additions, probably no more than 2 ounces in total. That might pull off a quart. Based on the 90 minute boil time, on 7.25 gallons, the 15% guideline would have left you with 5.62 gallons (7.25 minus 7.25 x .15 x 1.5). Take a quart off of that for the hops and you're left with 5.37 gallons.

How are you measuring the wort while it's in the kettle? How are you measuring the wort in the fermenter?
 
usfmikeb said:
Water loss during the boil is dependent on several factors, such as how wide your pot is, how heavy a boil you've got going, and environmental conditions. I've seen a benchmark around here that says you'll lose 15% per hour, which seems pretty close to what I've been doing recently.

Another loss comes from the hops you add, which will also depend on whether you're using pellets or whole hops. If you're doing a brew with lots of whole hops, they'll cost you a decent amount of wort.

Your recipe was a dunkelweizen, so it shouldn't have had too many hop additions, probably no more than 2 ounces in total. That might pull off a quart. Based on the 90 minute boil time, on 7.25 gallons, the 15% guideline would have left you with 5.62 gallons (7.25 minus 7.25 x .15 x 1.5). Take a quart off of that for the hops and you're left with 5.37 gallons.

How are you measuring the wort while it's in the kettle? How are you measuring the wort in the fermenter?
Click to expand...

I had one once of whole leaf hops in there, so like you said, not too much.

My kettle is a very wide 15 gallon kettle, I measured the wort coming into the kettle by filling a container with the extracted wort as I was lautering, then emptying it into the kettle. Not an ideal solution but I'm 99% sure I started the boil with 7.25 gallons. I have a plastic fermenter with gallon markers on the side and it says I have 4 gallons now, basically right on the mark.
 
I have no way to measure what's in the kettle during the boil at this point.
 
Wow, that's a big loss. Sometimes you need a few batch to dial in your processes and find your boil off rate. If you ended up with 4 gallons @ 1.064 and were expecting 5 gallons @ 1.050 I'd have added a gallon of water (boiled briefly and cooled) to the fermenter.

Also, you might want to learn to use some of the brewing tools like Beersmith or whatever you like or learn how to do the math on paper.
 
Ok so from what I'm reading this morning, it seems like I had too aggressive a boil, maybe by alot. And I could be headed for some off flavors as a result.

Guess I need to look into exactly what a slow rolling boil looks like.

I'm thinking I should boil and cool a gallon of water and pitch today, I didn't pitch yesterday because I couldnt get down to 62F and it was really late, but it's all sealed up and has an air lock with sanitized solution, so I should be ok id think. No idea what this will end up tasting like.... I'll be having a second go next weekend, so ill keep reading and make some adjustments.
 
Bithead said:
Wow, that's a big loss. Sometimes you need a few batch to dial in your processes and find your boil off rate. If you ended up with 4 gallons @ 1.064 and were expecting 5 gallons @ 1.050 I'd have added a gallon of water (boiled briefly and cooled) to the fermenter.

Also, you might want to learn to use some of the brewing tools like Beersmith or whatever you like or learn how to do the math on paper.
Click to expand...

I have brewmaster for ipad but I'm not sure if it's full featured enough to replace a beersmith, I'll look into it today.
 
Okay, a wider pot will lead to additional boil loss, so that's good for you to know for the future. The best thing about your setup is that you're using a 15 gallon kettle. That means that you can do more sparging than most people do for a 5 gallon batch, which will allow you to increase efficiency and start with a larger amount of wort as you begin the boil.

Since you ended up at 4 gallons, now you know you need to start a 90 minute boil in your setup with at least 8.25 gallons. As another poster said, you'll learn from experience, and hopefully you'll have some fun along the way.
 
usfmikeb said:
Okay, a wider pot will lead to additional boil loss, so that's good for you to know for the future. The best thing about your setup is that you're using a 15 gallon kettle. That means that you can do more sparging than most people do for a 5 gallon batch, which will allow you to increase efficiency and start with a larger amount of wort as you begin the boil.

Since you ended up at 4 gallons, now you know you need to start a 90 minute boil in your setup with at least 8.25 gallons. As another poster said, you'll learn from experience, and hopefully you'll have some fun along the way.
Click to expand...

I definitely had some fun, good to finally just get a batch done, whatever the results. I ended up boiling and cooling another gallon, adding it, and aerating and pitching A little on the cool side, about 60F.

I feel I did ok on sanitation, but a routine will make that go much smoother.

I bought a utility pump, so hitting my pitch temp should be allot easier next time. I still got it under 80F in 40 min, so not terrible, I just couldn't get it under 70 until today.

Ambient is 64F so I think I should be ok as it warms up over the next 48 hours, we'll see.
 
Too aggressive of a boil?? I don't think there is a such thing.
 
genes said:
Too aggressive of a boil?? I don't think there is a such thing.
Click to expand...

Well If that's true I should have a pretty good beer on my hands, but I read in a byo article that too much reduction causes off flavors, so I guess well see.

Hope you are right.
 
Ok so it's now been 29 hours since I pitched, and the fermenter is up to 65F which is the same as ambient. Sat there for five min, no bubbles, but the closet smells pretty funky, so something is going on for sure. Not really sure what fermentation smells like so I can't tell you one way or the other. Hopefully it's just coming along slowly due to the colder pitch temperature.
 

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