FATC1TY
Well-Known Member
So I'm just getting into HB. I'm a huge beer geek and love most all styles save for lambics/sours.
Anyways, I got all the beginner stuff recently, and had some stuff left over from maybe 10 years ago when my father was sort of into home brew. 2 huge glass carboys, and funnels, and brushes, and a boat load of bottles and caps were found in the basement. I picked up some buckets, airlocks, stoppers, hydrometers, cappers and all the other goodies from my LHBS, and decided to do a imperial IPA extract/specialty grain kit to break my home brewing virginity.
The local guy said he would have talked me out of it because of the need to cool it down quickly, but I had already bought a wort chiller as well!!
Anyways, followed the directions... sort of.. Steeped grains like I was suppose to, but decided to do just about a full boil, minus 1 gallon roughly, so around 4 gallon boil.
Did it outside on my propane burner, and everything went well. I dropped back around a 1/4 oz of the bittering hops due to reading that a fuller boil, will yield higher IBU's here, so that was nice to know. Said it should be around 65-70 IBU's which is pretty weak for a hophead like me, so it calculated out close to 90-95 for what I was doing. Perfect!
Boiled it up, kept all my temps within 5 degrees of where they should have been. Cooled the 4 gallons of wort down in around 15 minutes to roughly 82* F, and got it stirred up really well. Transferred to my bucket, and added really cold bottled spring water to bring me up to my 5 gallons total, as well as dropping my temp to 68* F, perfect for my yeast pitch. Blended it really, really well, and took a reading, got 1.082 OG, which was right in the middle of where it should have been. I was thrilled.
Pitched the yeast, stirred it up, and put it in my spare bathroom tub. It's roughly 70/72 in there, and steady. Airlock is bubbling away this morning, so hope all was well.
I'm a fiend for sanitizing everything, and have read "How to Brew" up and down. Glad I took the jump to steeping grain and a full boil extract for my first time. I think after a few more of these, I'll go fill grain once I get a gist of what equipment I need to invest in!
Thanks for all the help on these forums guys.
Anyways, I got all the beginner stuff recently, and had some stuff left over from maybe 10 years ago when my father was sort of into home brew. 2 huge glass carboys, and funnels, and brushes, and a boat load of bottles and caps were found in the basement. I picked up some buckets, airlocks, stoppers, hydrometers, cappers and all the other goodies from my LHBS, and decided to do a imperial IPA extract/specialty grain kit to break my home brewing virginity.
The local guy said he would have talked me out of it because of the need to cool it down quickly, but I had already bought a wort chiller as well!!
Anyways, followed the directions... sort of.. Steeped grains like I was suppose to, but decided to do just about a full boil, minus 1 gallon roughly, so around 4 gallon boil.
Did it outside on my propane burner, and everything went well. I dropped back around a 1/4 oz of the bittering hops due to reading that a fuller boil, will yield higher IBU's here, so that was nice to know. Said it should be around 65-70 IBU's which is pretty weak for a hophead like me, so it calculated out close to 90-95 for what I was doing. Perfect!
Boiled it up, kept all my temps within 5 degrees of where they should have been. Cooled the 4 gallons of wort down in around 15 minutes to roughly 82* F, and got it stirred up really well. Transferred to my bucket, and added really cold bottled spring water to bring me up to my 5 gallons total, as well as dropping my temp to 68* F, perfect for my yeast pitch. Blended it really, really well, and took a reading, got 1.082 OG, which was right in the middle of where it should have been. I was thrilled.
Pitched the yeast, stirred it up, and put it in my spare bathroom tub. It's roughly 70/72 in there, and steady. Airlock is bubbling away this morning, so hope all was well.
I'm a fiend for sanitizing everything, and have read "How to Brew" up and down. Glad I took the jump to steeping grain and a full boil extract for my first time. I think after a few more of these, I'll go fill grain once I get a gist of what equipment I need to invest in!
Thanks for all the help on these forums guys.