hey all. first post, which happens to be the story of my first brewing experience. i have to say thanks to the homebrewtalk forums for providing tons of helpful info (and creating tons more questions).
last night i brewed a yellow dog pale ale kit. i did a 3.5 gallon boil in a 20 qt. pot. i thought i'd be able to get 4 gallons into the pot, but the water level was only about an inch from the top (which made me question the accuracy of the pot size). anyway, i got the wort to a boil pretty easily and didn't encounter any boil over, even though i was prepared with a spray bottle of cold water. there was not much foam for most of the boil. hop additions at 50 and 58 minutes seemed to go well.
i got the deluxe brewing kit from homebrewery.com, so it came with a wort chiller. since my sink faucet isn't threaded, i had to fashion a connection with duct tape to get the chiller hooked up. that worked just fine, and i had the wort down to 70 in about 10-12 minutes.
racking to the primary went ok, but i think i sucked quite a bit of sediment into the fermenter. i don't think that will be a problem. i'll probably end up racking to a secondary though just to try to get rid of some of the gunk. i added about 1.75 gallons of distilled water to the carboy to get it up to 5 gallons, then took the hydrometer reading, which was around 1.033 (adjusted for temperature).
i had an 11th hour debate about rehydrating the yeast, but i just decided to follow the provided instructions, which directed to just dump it into the wort. it sat on top for a while until i moved the carboy to its cool, dark resting place, at which point it got mixed in a little.
now, about 12 hours later, i'm not seeing a lot of "action" in the fermenter, but there are a bunch of pea-sized "islands" of foam floating on top of the wort. so hopefully the fermentation is starting up.
i think i'm going to let it stay in the fermenter (whether primary or secondary i don't know) for 3 weeks, then bottle. and i'll spend the majority of this week debating whether to wait and see how this batch does before brewing another. right now, i'm leaning towards not waiting.
thanks for reading my wordy first post. and thoughts, advice and/or encouragement is greatly appreciated!
last night i brewed a yellow dog pale ale kit. i did a 3.5 gallon boil in a 20 qt. pot. i thought i'd be able to get 4 gallons into the pot, but the water level was only about an inch from the top (which made me question the accuracy of the pot size). anyway, i got the wort to a boil pretty easily and didn't encounter any boil over, even though i was prepared with a spray bottle of cold water. there was not much foam for most of the boil. hop additions at 50 and 58 minutes seemed to go well.
i got the deluxe brewing kit from homebrewery.com, so it came with a wort chiller. since my sink faucet isn't threaded, i had to fashion a connection with duct tape to get the chiller hooked up. that worked just fine, and i had the wort down to 70 in about 10-12 minutes.
racking to the primary went ok, but i think i sucked quite a bit of sediment into the fermenter. i don't think that will be a problem. i'll probably end up racking to a secondary though just to try to get rid of some of the gunk. i added about 1.75 gallons of distilled water to the carboy to get it up to 5 gallons, then took the hydrometer reading, which was around 1.033 (adjusted for temperature).
i had an 11th hour debate about rehydrating the yeast, but i just decided to follow the provided instructions, which directed to just dump it into the wort. it sat on top for a while until i moved the carboy to its cool, dark resting place, at which point it got mixed in a little.
now, about 12 hours later, i'm not seeing a lot of "action" in the fermenter, but there are a bunch of pea-sized "islands" of foam floating on top of the wort. so hopefully the fermentation is starting up.
i think i'm going to let it stay in the fermenter (whether primary or secondary i don't know) for 3 weeks, then bottle. and i'll spend the majority of this week debating whether to wait and see how this batch does before brewing another. right now, i'm leaning towards not waiting.
thanks for reading my wordy first post. and thoughts, advice and/or encouragement is greatly appreciated!