First Brew Day - Fingers Crossed?!

Hi Everyone,

I've been using this forum and others to help guide my first brew day and thought I'd post about the outcome as I have no idea how it went or what to expect at the end

I went for an overly-used Punk IPA clone as the recipes were easy to come by and I'm very familiar with the taste. Now I think perhaps I was a tad too ambitious for my first go! Any who it went a bit like this....

- Mashed 5.2kg of Marris Otter at 68 deg celsius for 60mins. I did this in a brew-bag in a 20l pot with 14l of water.
- Sparged the grain using boiling water, topping up to 17.5l
- Boiled at 100 deg celsius for 60mins with the following hop additions:
15g Chinook at 60mins
30g Ahtanum at 15mins
15g Nelson Sauvin at 15mins
15g Simcoe at 10mins
1/2 tsp Irish Moss at 10mins
15g each of Chinook, Nelson, Simcoe at 10mins (this was meant to be at lights out, my first mistake :facepalm: )
- Cooled in ice and water to 25 deg celsius
- Sanitised and poured through a sieve into FV, yielding about 12.5l
- Topped up with 5l chilled water before pitching US-05 yeast and giving it a good shake.

So my questions are...

- My OG was 1064 which is higher than I was expecting (before adding water it was closer to 1080) - why would this be so high?
- I think I used a very fine sieve and caught ALOT of gunk, perhaps 1-2l - is that normal?
- The resulting mixture looked very grainy - again, is that normal and will it settle?
- If my FV is sitting at a slightly higher temp than is best (currently 27 deg celsius waiting to see if it drops!), will that yield bad results?

Appreciate any help and roll on the next brew day! :cheers:

Thanks,

Andy

 

The higher than expected OG is either from too little water or higher than expected efficiency. Recipes are designed with the efficiency the author has. Yours was higher, probably from good technique and better milling of the grain. With more batches you will be able to see a pattern and adjust recipes for that efficiency. There are several programs that will calculate recipes for you. I use Brewtarget.

A fine sieve will catch a lot of gunk. Normal? Maybe. I dump it all into the fermenter.

When the fermentation is over the trub will settle out. Be patient and more will settle.

27C is way to warm. Below 17 would be much better. Set your fermenter in a tub of cold water to help chill it. Add ice if needed. Keep it cool for the first 3 to 4 days, then let it warm up again. You'll get much better beer.

 

On another note, don't sparge with boiling water. If you mash out, the mash should already be 167-170F (75-76.6C) so the mash water can be the same temp. If your mash is still at mashing temp I recommend sparging with 180F water (82.2C) to make the run off flow better. Any higher and you risk getting excessive tannic acids from the grains in the boil.

Other than that, brew often and adjust to what your efficiency is. And higher alcohol is rarely a huge problem

 

Thanks RM-MN, I ran out of bottled water else I would have diluted more and my sieve in hindsight was very fine - I think it was one for dusting cakes! The temperature has dropped a bit and iI'm not sitting at about 20/21 deg celsius

 

Thanks Francus! It was boiled water in a kettle so hopefully it was about the same temp when I came to sparging

 

Thanks Doug, very in depth, maybe a bit too much for me to understand at this point! Hopefully I'll get to that point though Lets just hope the first brew is drinkable lol