Well after reading countless posts and expanding my knowledge of brewing i took on my first brew last night. i ordered an IPA from brewers best, as well as a bunch of equipment last week. overall the brew went well but i did plenty of mistakes along the way. here they are.
1) i used a GIGANTIC pot. it was a pot used for crawfish boils. because the pot was so large, it only filled up about 5" when i put in the 2.5 gallons per the instructions. i was brewing this in my garage with a burner attached to a propane tank.
2) i forgot to add he SECOND bag of bittering hops into the mix until about 15 minutes into the boil. whoops!!
3) with about 10 minutes left my propane tank ran out of gas FML!!!!! i would of brewed this inside to begin with but because the pot is so tall it wouldn't fit on top of my stove because of the overhead microwave. i then figured out that i could pull the stove out about a foot and use 2 burners to get everything going again.
4) since its winter outside i decided to just use mother nature to get my wort down to temperature(i was shooting for about 70) i was using a digital thermometer to measure the temperature. because i kept getting hot spots i KEPT on mixing the wort around. i didnt even realize that i was introducing a bunch of oxygen until i was carrying the pot back in.
5) while removing the hop backs i squeezed the wort out of them WITH MY BARE HANDS. S#$% another mistake. lol.
6) i then poured the wort into my fermenting bucket. the wort only filled to about the 2 gallon line. i had boiled a lot of the water away, probably because of the high surface area of the wort from my huge pot, and also because i was brewing in my garage in winter and the air is super dry. so my beer probably wont be as hoppy as i had hoped.
7) i then topped it off to 5 gallons with my spray hose from my sink. which managed to aerate the water very well IMO. added the yeast and about 10 hours later she's already bubbling.
well see how the beer ends up but overall i learned a lot and had a great time!! in the future i was wondering. how should i have added the hop pellets? the instructions didn't say anything about added them to a bag. should i have squeezed the wort out of them? are the bags re-usable? when chilling the wort should i stir it around? should i only use boiled water in the future when topping off?
thanks for reading!!!
1) i used a GIGANTIC pot. it was a pot used for crawfish boils. because the pot was so large, it only filled up about 5" when i put in the 2.5 gallons per the instructions. i was brewing this in my garage with a burner attached to a propane tank.
2) i forgot to add he SECOND bag of bittering hops into the mix until about 15 minutes into the boil. whoops!!
3) with about 10 minutes left my propane tank ran out of gas FML!!!!! i would of brewed this inside to begin with but because the pot is so tall it wouldn't fit on top of my stove because of the overhead microwave. i then figured out that i could pull the stove out about a foot and use 2 burners to get everything going again.
4) since its winter outside i decided to just use mother nature to get my wort down to temperature(i was shooting for about 70) i was using a digital thermometer to measure the temperature. because i kept getting hot spots i KEPT on mixing the wort around. i didnt even realize that i was introducing a bunch of oxygen until i was carrying the pot back in.
5) while removing the hop backs i squeezed the wort out of them WITH MY BARE HANDS. S#$% another mistake. lol.
6) i then poured the wort into my fermenting bucket. the wort only filled to about the 2 gallon line. i had boiled a lot of the water away, probably because of the high surface area of the wort from my huge pot, and also because i was brewing in my garage in winter and the air is super dry. so my beer probably wont be as hoppy as i had hoped.
7) i then topped it off to 5 gallons with my spray hose from my sink. which managed to aerate the water very well IMO. added the yeast and about 10 hours later she's already bubbling.
well see how the beer ends up but overall i learned a lot and had a great time!! in the future i was wondering. how should i have added the hop pellets? the instructions didn't say anything about added them to a bag. should i have squeezed the wort out of them? are the bags re-usable? when chilling the wort should i stir it around? should i only use boiled water in the future when topping off?
thanks for reading!!!
