bugleboy93
Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2007
- Messages
- 19
- Reaction score
- 1
Yesterday evening was my first brew day! Amber Ale, all extract , partial boil, from a recipie in "How to Brew". One boil over right at the beginning because I turned the heat off to add the DME and syrup and wanted it up to boiling so I idiotically put the lid on. Now I see why one would want to boil outside. Otherwise it went off well and is fermenting away.
Questions from my first experience:
1) With a partial boil (2 gallons for a 5 gal batch) when cooling the wort, what temp. should you cool it to? The book says pitching temp is 65 to 77F, but since I am adding it to 3 gallons of other water, how can you gauge it? I cooled mine to 80F, and poured it into two other pre-boiled gallons that were at about 60F. I topped off with water from the tap (I'm on a well, that's another Q below). After pouring the wort back and forth from the fermenter to the pot to aerate it, it was so foamy (and great smelling!) that I did not want to shove my grimy fist into the foam with my thermometer to get the temp. I put it in a room at 70F and it was fermenting this morning (eleven hours later).
2) Is well water good/bad to use? Can critters in well water cause an infection and is this common?
3) Are the prevalence of bad bugs worse outside rather than inside, in other words, where is it best to boil the wort?
That's all for now. Thanks all in advance.
Tony
Questions from my first experience:
1) With a partial boil (2 gallons for a 5 gal batch) when cooling the wort, what temp. should you cool it to? The book says pitching temp is 65 to 77F, but since I am adding it to 3 gallons of other water, how can you gauge it? I cooled mine to 80F, and poured it into two other pre-boiled gallons that were at about 60F. I topped off with water from the tap (I'm on a well, that's another Q below). After pouring the wort back and forth from the fermenter to the pot to aerate it, it was so foamy (and great smelling!) that I did not want to shove my grimy fist into the foam with my thermometer to get the temp. I put it in a room at 70F and it was fermenting this morning (eleven hours later).
2) Is well water good/bad to use? Can critters in well water cause an infection and is this common?
3) Are the prevalence of bad bugs worse outside rather than inside, in other words, where is it best to boil the wort?
That's all for now. Thanks all in advance.
Tony