First brew day

[newtobrew1981]

So over the years I have been brewing beer with kits that had already made wort. The kind that all you have to do is pitch the yeast. So about a year and a half ago I was online trying to figure out kegging. When I came across a video on you tube of electric brewing. Immediately my interest was peaked. I've seen people do extract kits before but nothing like that. So I began digging more into it then found a site accidentally called the "electricbrewery". The more and more research I did the more and more I was interested. So finally decided to try my hand in it. In the past year and a half I have been sourcing the parts and bringing them together. Built my control panel first. Then bought old kegs online and retrofitted them to be my pots. I built everything myself and with the help of Kals awesome site I made a brewery. Interesting note I have never brewed any kind of beer unless the wort was already made not even an extract kit. So my first brew day was yesterday. And my nerves were a little high as I never brewed before but not only that I was doing salt additions with to ro water. Now I know some of you are thinking that's brave but everything seem to go ok. The only things we're I was a bit clumsy with the procedure but that will come in time. And the only other thing is I'm not sure if I got the right amount of wort in the end I hit my gravity and my other numbers right on ( beginners luck) . So one question I have is with beer smith and brun water are the gallons expressed in us gallons. Because my wort going in to fermenter was supposed to be 5.5 gal and I only received a little over 20L. If beersmith does use us gallons then I guess I hit all my numbers. So I'll leave a couple of pics of my build don't mind the background basement is in a mess. Cheers

 

[Mothman]

Congrats on your first brew day!

I believe beersmith defaults to imperial unit? I can't remember, and I'm not at my computer. But you can, I believe, get it to use US units, or metric, as well if I recall correctly.

Keep in mind that IF your volume was slightly off, it might just be a matter of tweaking your equipment profile in Beersmith to properly reflect losses you experience in your system.

 

[kh54s10]

That is a nice setup! Congratulations on a successful brew day.

Beersmith can be set to any measurement you want. By default I believe it would be US gallons.

I agree with the statement that your differences could be what is set in your equipment profile. These need to be pretty accurate. It may take some tweaking in the equipment profile to dial things in.

 

[newtobrew1981]

I'm leaning towards the fact that it was us gallons because the fermenter I used was graduated imperial an 20l works out to 5.5 us gallons or about.

 

[newtobrew1981]

My equipment profile is fairly accurate I believe minus the efficiency because I never brewed till yesterday so there was no way to figure that out

 

[Mothman]

Sounds like your profile must be good then, as it seems you did hit your volume and you mentioned earlier you hit your gravity too.

Sounds like a giant success to me!

 

[newtobrew1981]

I hope it's drinkable lol but if not that's ok it's my first time after all