First 'Real' brew, need advice/help.

Hi all. I say 'real' because i've only brewed twice on my mr. beer before tonight. On friday I went to John Daum's shop in Woodland Hills, CA, and bought a startup kit + 5gallon brew pot + extra 5 gallon glass carboy. The kit came with a starter set , and i chose "London's Pride Pub Ale". It came with some special malt, and a big bag of DME, and irish moss, calcium carbonate, 3 sets of hops and priming sugar and some Westlabs yeast. In short, everything I need.

Don't want to drag this on, but basically my question isn't really a question, but validation i guess to make sure i did the right thing. The steep and sparg, went fine, as did everything else. But, on the instructions, in regards to amount of liquid, it left off at me having 3.5 gallons of liquid w/ wort/water (the last mention made of liquid said to fill up the brew pot to 3.5 gallons). The kit was for a 5 gallon batch. So when i poured it into the primary, I assumed I was to add the water to top it off to 5 gallons. Am I right, or did i miss a step somewhere, where i was supposed to end up w/ 5 gallons at the end of the wort cool? I added the water to take it from 3.5 gallons to 5 gallons from my bathtub faucet (only place inside that could fit the bucket under it). Is this ok?

Also the 'problem' is that I lost track of thought for a second and the water ran a little to long, so i actually stoppd it at about 5.25 gallons, will this excess water be a problem?

I thank you ahead of time for any help ya'll might give me.

Ya, you did it ok. Some people boil the water before adding it, but it seems that most people here don't. You can also add ice or cold water to bring down the temp faster. 5.25 shouldn't be much of a problem at all - don't worry.

ya i thought about boiling it, but i figured itd take way too long to get it cooled down. how long before the airlock starts bubbling?

probably by tomorrow - but it may take a bit longer?

You did fine. You could have boiled the water and poured it in after cooling.

With whitelabs yeast 12-72 hours for the ferment to start is nominal.

i woke up this morning and checked it...it was bubbling at about 1 bubble every second. Not blazing, but at least its going on.

Yin_Yang said:

i woke up this morning and checked it...it was bubbling at about 1 bubble every second. Not blazing, but at least its going on.

Click to expand...

That's great! Are you going to be using a secondary?

yes definitely, even the instructions suggested a 2-3 week secondary time. So i definitely will ( I would have anyway, even if it didnt say to do so). Thanks guys for all your help..

oh, one more question...i cleared out a whole closet in my guest bedroom to use as the brewing closet. It has slider doors on it,which allow some light through (not a lot, but i tested it out by shutting myself in the closet). The brew is currently in the standard white plastic primary bucket. Do i have to worry about covering it up w/ a towel to block out ANY light? or will it be just fine, and i should only worry about covering it up when its in the glass carboy?

Thanks again guys, you have been of great help to me.

For the bucket - no worries. In the glass carboy, you may as well throw a towel over it. It would probably be ok, but why chance it?

Sunlight it the big no-no. I'm assuming the light is from a window. You could always put up some cardboard or construction paper to block the rest

ill see if i can get away with blocking the window w/ cardboard w/ the wife first haha. but i dont see why not, she wants to start making wine, so shell want the same thing too...

thanks again.

so its been a little over a full day now. I checked the airlock just now, and its just slightly (by milliseconds) slower than one bubble every second. Is this a normal rate? after seeing some videos of crazily fermenting beer, that literally was bubbling over, i just want to make sure that mine is fermenting at an alright pace.

That is perfect. Most of the voilent ferments you hear and see have been pitched with excessive amounts of yeast and/or fermented at a high temperture in my opinion. This leaves less time for the yeast to produce the flavor it was designed to produce.
Again in my opinion.

I'd said 60 bubbles per minute is about as fast as you'll see it go, usually. I've had one of seven batches go faster than that so far, and that was on a very big beer.

perfect...thanks.

Yeah...I've heard all the blowoff horror stories, but the closest I got (not counting starters) was a barleywine where the krausen stopped just as it got into the airlock neck. Close call. I've used blowoff tubes when I was concerned about blowoffs (a hefe pitched onto an existing cake), but it never happened. I consider myself lucky.

Don't worry so much about how vigorous it is. Just try to keep it in the middle to lower end of that particular yeast's temperature range, and when it stops bubbling and the krausen drops, take a gravity reading.

Also remember that CO2 is likely getting out from small voids in your bucket's lid seal so it's offgassing pretty well at this point. No worries.

By the way, if you preboil your topup water you're absolutely going to need to address getting some oxygen back into solution. Do a search for oxygenation or aeration for the many posts on the topic.