- Joined
- May 3, 2013
- Messages
- 102
- Reaction score
- 24
Well, let me start out by saying, I thought I had it down.... Until I started. I was a nervous wreck, with the timer going and getting hop additions ready, trying to sanitize everything, trying to remember everything. But HOPEFULLY, I'll have something to drink here in a few weeks!! I did an extract kit with steeped grains from my LBH (DeFalco's in Houston) and those guys are awesome!!
First off, my weldless ball valve from HomeBrewStuff seemed to have issues right off the bat. I noticed a leak immediately after I added the first two gallons of strike water. It was pretty difficult to control. So I played around with the washers and the gaskets they sent, and I finally got it close enough to start. Then, once I had the steeped grains done, and I was adding my LME, it went a little haywire. Somehow, the ball valve gasket got pushed up all the way on the 90 degree elbow. Now my boiling wort began leaking out. I took the boil kettle off the fire and over the sink, I sanitized my hands and tilted the kettle until I could reach the elbow and undo it to see what was going on. Once I figured it out, I sanitized all the pieces again, and re-installed the ball valve assembly. I was really worried it was gonna cause an issue, but I continued.
So I began the boil and added my hop additions on time. Once it was all boiled and I was ready to transfer through my plate chiller, more problems arose. I had cold water flowing through my chiller, and as I opened up the ball valve, I got very little flow of wort coming through. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but I couldn't get any flow to come out of the ball valve and go through the chiller. I was able to get about 1 gallon worth of the wort through the chiller, and the chiller was working fine. But then the flow would go to absolutely nothing. So I decided to just pour the rest of the wort into the primary slowly, knowing that I had to add water to bring it to 5 gallons anyway. I didn't have much choice at that time. So what I found was my strainer (stainless steel braided line from HomeBrewStuff) was completely covered in hops from the hop pellets. It was so covered that I couldn't get any flow through it. Very frustrated. I wonder if everyone has that issue with that type of strainer. Maybe I need the false bottom for my boil kettle?
So once I topped off the primary with the cold water, the wort was at 70 degrees. I went ahead and poured in the Wyeast pack, closed it up and put on the airlock. My O.G. was at 1.045, the directions said I should be 1.049, so it was a little low. But I left it and hoped for the best. We went out of town for Thanksgiving, so I wasn't able to keep an eye on anything. I sure hoped I didn't come home to some uncontrollable science project all over the floor, LOL... So when I got back home, I was just happy to see that the airlock was still in place, happily bubbling away, and no overflow or explosions, LOL...
Today, I will transfer to the secondary, a 5-gallon carboy, and let the batch finish up. I will check the S.G. and see how that has gone. I really hope there isn't any infection in the batch, but even if there is, at least I have gained some experience. I have another kit that I want to do today or tomorrow, but I really need to figure out how to get the wort to gravity feed through the chiller before I do that. Should I use a different type of strainer? No strainer? Anyhow, I just wanted to document my first batch, I get a lot of information from this site, so thank you to everyone. Hopefully I will have a drinkable beer in a couple more weeks.
First off, my weldless ball valve from HomeBrewStuff seemed to have issues right off the bat. I noticed a leak immediately after I added the first two gallons of strike water. It was pretty difficult to control. So I played around with the washers and the gaskets they sent, and I finally got it close enough to start. Then, once I had the steeped grains done, and I was adding my LME, it went a little haywire. Somehow, the ball valve gasket got pushed up all the way on the 90 degree elbow. Now my boiling wort began leaking out. I took the boil kettle off the fire and over the sink, I sanitized my hands and tilted the kettle until I could reach the elbow and undo it to see what was going on. Once I figured it out, I sanitized all the pieces again, and re-installed the ball valve assembly. I was really worried it was gonna cause an issue, but I continued.
So I began the boil and added my hop additions on time. Once it was all boiled and I was ready to transfer through my plate chiller, more problems arose. I had cold water flowing through my chiller, and as I opened up the ball valve, I got very little flow of wort coming through. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but I couldn't get any flow to come out of the ball valve and go through the chiller. I was able to get about 1 gallon worth of the wort through the chiller, and the chiller was working fine. But then the flow would go to absolutely nothing. So I decided to just pour the rest of the wort into the primary slowly, knowing that I had to add water to bring it to 5 gallons anyway. I didn't have much choice at that time. So what I found was my strainer (stainless steel braided line from HomeBrewStuff) was completely covered in hops from the hop pellets. It was so covered that I couldn't get any flow through it. Very frustrated. I wonder if everyone has that issue with that type of strainer. Maybe I need the false bottom for my boil kettle?
So once I topped off the primary with the cold water, the wort was at 70 degrees. I went ahead and poured in the Wyeast pack, closed it up and put on the airlock. My O.G. was at 1.045, the directions said I should be 1.049, so it was a little low. But I left it and hoped for the best. We went out of town for Thanksgiving, so I wasn't able to keep an eye on anything. I sure hoped I didn't come home to some uncontrollable science project all over the floor, LOL... So when I got back home, I was just happy to see that the airlock was still in place, happily bubbling away, and no overflow or explosions, LOL...
Today, I will transfer to the secondary, a 5-gallon carboy, and let the batch finish up. I will check the S.G. and see how that has gone. I really hope there isn't any infection in the batch, but even if there is, at least I have gained some experience. I have another kit that I want to do today or tomorrow, but I really need to figure out how to get the wort to gravity feed through the chiller before I do that. Should I use a different type of strainer? No strainer? Anyhow, I just wanted to document my first batch, I get a lot of information from this site, so thank you to everyone. Hopefully I will have a drinkable beer in a couple more weeks.