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Beerdude

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Greetings,
Its my first time brewing and I have a stock pot I got from a friend that is labeled 4, 8 and 12 on it. I assume those mean quarts, so there are about 4 more quarts from the top of the pot.

I purchased a 5 gallon brewing kit, with all ingredients.
If I do not have a 20 qt pot, should I plan to measure out from the kit the proper amount of the ingredients, or should I just buy enough for the 3 gallon pot?

The other option for me would be to buy another pot or to return the kit, and get the ingredients myself.
I have a carboy that would fit 5 gallons.

Thanks
 
Hi Dude. Its common for brewers using an extract kit to do "partial boils", which means they only boil 2.5 -3 gallons and then top-off with enough water to get to five gallons in their fermenter. Does that make sense? Or do you need more details?
 
New brewer here as well, what is the disadvantage to doing a partial boil vs a full 5gal boil and topping the fermenter off with water? Seems like a good way to bring the wort back to fermenting temperature. my brew kit + beer kit should be on the way soon and I was planning on doing a partial boil
 
You've hit on one advantage of partial boils - the other is that most of us already have a big enough stock pot to do it in and our stoves will bring 3 gallons of water to a boil promptly, but not 5 gallons.

The disadvantages are reduced hop utilization (it extracts less of the hoppy goodness) and an increased risk of carmelizing your wort (or worse, burning it).

If a brewer is worried about hop utilization, its easy enough to add a few extra hops to the boil. As for carmelization, a brewer can make sure he takes the pot off the heat before adding the malt extract and stir like crazy. There is also a technique called late extract addition, which some brewers use.

I wouldn't worry about any of it for now. My advice to most new brewers would be to use the pots you've got on the stove you've got and make some good beer using a partial boil method.

Cheers!:mug:
 
Pappers,
Thank you for your advice. Turns out the kit says to do a 2.5 gal partial boil in the instructions.

Also, after the one hour PARTIAL boil, should I pour it into the plastic tub fermenter and then top it off with cold bottled water, or should I cool the pot in the sink first? Also, should I worry about aeration at this point, since i am moving the pot around, but will be pouring water (adding oxygen)?


Should I next:

Ferment the wort in the plastic tub, then "bottle condition" it in the carboy , with boiling water and priming sugar and putting it into the carboy?

Also, can I just leave the hydrometer in the carboy?

Thanks again
 
I'm still perfecting the method, but I freeze enough filtered water to make up the difference (2 gallons for a 3 gallon partial boil) and pour the hot wort on top of the ice in my bottling bucket. Then once the wort cools down to a good temp I use the spigot in the bottling bucket to transfer into my fermenting bucket. From what I've read aeration positively affects your wort before adding yeast. I've heard conflicting views about aeration after the yeast has started fermenting.

I'm still a n00b as well though, so hopefully someone more experienced than I can weigh in on the situation.
 
dfc said:
I've heard conflicting views about aeration after the yeast has started fermenting.
Click to expand...

Don't be confused: oxygen after fermentation has begun is a very... bad... thing.

The yeast need oxygen in order to reproduce, so unless you expect the yeast in your foil pack or your starter to do all of the work themselves, without any help at all, then you need to oxidize your wort. This is usually done with an aquarium pump, vigorous and prolonged bucket-shaking, or pouring hot wort from a height (like off a ladder) -- the last of which I do not personally recommend.

HOWEVER, you do NOT want the yeast to have any oxygen after they've started to ferment. Fermentation in the absence of oxygen is why there is alcohol -- it's a waste product. If the yeast get their grubby li'l mitts on extra O2 then they could promptly start to eat the alcohol they just made, or do other stuff you don't want them to do.

So, no ambiguity: once the yeast have started to make alcohol, oxygen is a VERY... BAD... THING. :)

The thing that is up for debate is "hot side aeration", which argues that there may be some small chemical changes if hot wort gets too much oxygen. For the vast majority of homebrewers, just don't worry about it.

So I hope that clarified things for ya!
 
You should be fine doing 3 gallon boils, although some recipes will be better if you do 4 gallon or full boils...

Other than that, you just have to watch out for boilovers more closely...
 
Beerdude said:
Pappers,
Thank you for your advice. Turns out the kit says to do a 2.5 gal partial boil in the instructions.

Also, after the one hour PARTIAL boil, should I pour it into the plastic tub fermenter and then top it off with cold bottled water, or should I cool the pot in the sink first? Also, should I worry about aeration at this point, since i am moving the pot around, but will be pouring water (adding oxygen)?


Should I next:

Ferment the wort in the plastic tub, then "bottle condition" it in the carboy , with boiling water and priming sugar and putting it into the carboy?

Also, can I just leave the hydrometer in the carboy?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

Hi Dude. You might find a series of YouTube videos from the Homebrewers Association helpful. They are thorough, clear, and show you what to do. You can find them at http://www.youtube.com/user/BrewersAssociation If you start with video #1 and work on up, you'll gain a great understanding of the process. Much better than trying to follow the instructions that come with most kits.

Cheers! :mug:
 
In one of the videos from that youtube link, it shows when he pours the water in his fermenter to top the wort off and bring it to fermenting temperatures. he mentions that that big jug of water has been pre-boiled to keep that water sanitized. Is it necessary to pre-boil that much water? I was under the assumption you could fill that water with the drinking water from the kitchen (typically located next to the sink or coming out of the refrigerator)
 
Tap water can be of various levels of quality from one place to another. I expect that in most developed urban areas your tap water will be ok but it can be an additional risk factor.
 
various levels of quality in terms of bacteria levels or do you mean taste? Risk factors as in off-tastes or infection? the water i would use tastes perfectly fine but i assumed he boiled all of his water to prevent infection which i didn't know was at risk by using the drinking water from the drinking water spout (next to the sink or on the refrigerator door). if its a risk of infection, seems like you'd have to boil those huge 5gallon waterjugs from arrowhead too?
 
Beerdude said:
<snip>
Should I next:

Ferment the wort in the plastic tub, then "bottle condition" it in the carboy , with boiling water and priming sugar and putting it into the carboy?
<snip>
Click to expand...

What you'd do is ferment your batch in the plastic tub, for a minimum of 14 days (longer is better), then rack your batch to your bottling bucket, onto your boiled and cooled priming solution, then directly into your bottles, where you'd let it sit for another 2 weeks minimum at room temperature. This carbonates and bottle conditions your beer.

I'm sure others can elaborate on this.

Best of luck on your first batch! :)
 
briefly: do whatever the recipe says - 2.5, 3 gallon boil, whatever. dump it in the fermenter. add cold water to bring it up to 5 gallons ( not ice ). when at 80 degrees or less, dump yeast in. lather, rinse, repeat. as far as boiling the water you add in, i don't, but i live in the city with the cleanest water in the US, according to the CDC. i would pre-boil, then cool it in a freezer for a while otherwise
 
Any water that you are reasonably sure is reasonably free of bacteria, wild yeast or spores will do. There are a few caveats:

1) Distilled and reverse osmosis water don't have enough minerals in them, so if you use those, you need to add minerals (gypsum usually, I believe).

2) Water normally has oxygen dissolved in it (which is how fish breathe, natch). Boiled water does not have much oxygen in it... so that's why aeration is so important for full boils or partial boils with pre-boiled water. Bottled water or sink water should have some oxygen in it, so aeration is still necessary but not quite so life-and-death as it is for full boils and pre-boiled water.

3) Boiling water sometimes disposes of chlorine compounds added to city water. Sometimes people add K-meta (potassium metabisulfite) to get rid of compounds as well, but I don't know much about all that. There are a ton of threads about chlorine and chloramines on this site, so search around if you want to add unboiled tap water to your wort for your beer.

When in doubt, the safest route is probably to either pre-boil, or to use drinking/spring water purchased from the store.
 
Justibone said:
Don't be confused: oxygen after fermentation has begun is a very... bad... thing.

The yeast need oxygen in order to reproduce, so unless you expect the yeast in your foil pack or your starter to do all of the work themselves, without any help at all, then you need to oxidize your wort. This is usually done with an aquarium pump, vigorous and prolonged bucket-shaking, or pouring hot wort from a height (like off a ladder) -- the last of which I do not personally recommend.

HOWEVER, you do NOT want the yeast to have any oxygen after they've started to ferment. Fermentation in the absence of oxygen is why there is alcohol -- it's a waste product. If the yeast get their grubby li'l mitts on extra O2 then they could promptly start to eat the alcohol they just made, or do other stuff you don't want them to do.

So, no ambiguity: once the yeast have started to make alcohol, oxygen is a VERY... BAD... THING. :)

The thing that is up for debate is "hot side aeration", which argues that there may be some small chemical changes if hot wort gets too much oxygen. For the vast majority of homebrewers, just don't worry about it.

So I hope that clarified things for ya!
Click to expand...

Perfect. Thanks a bunch.
 
I have never boiled more water to top off my fermenter, but I do use cool filtered water and after 27 batches have never had a problem. A while back I did a post on this subject It's All About The Water and judging from the responses from fellow brewers, some of them even go as far as constructing their water to their own specs, they do take water seriously.

Screwy Brewer
 

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