Louz
Well-Known Member
I brewed for the second time yesterday. Dead Ringer IPA from northern brewer. I feel like I did a much better job than my first time overall. But I made some mistakes and have a few questions and notes.
1. First time using a bayou burner for my boil. Massive improvement over stove top. Much hotter, much faster... can reach a boil very quickly
2. I used a sink ice bath to chill. 16lb bag and some water dropped the temp below 100 fairly quickly. How much stirring is too much stirring during the chill? Seems like stirring helps the temp drop quicker, but it churns all the junk up off the bottom... junk that might be better left in the kettle... which brings me to my next issue
3. I'm sure this idea was a mistake.. I thought it would be a good idea to use a sanitized kitchen wire strainer to strain the beer as I transfered it from the kettle to the fermenter. I'm guessing that is a dumb thing to do. It clogged almost immediatley. I looked at it for a second and decided I probably need all that junk in the fermenter. I put said junk back in the mix and proceeded with the transfer. There was a fair amount of sludge left in the bottom of the kettle, but a lot of junk made it into the fermenter.
Is straining ever a good idea?
4. I used a sanitized air stone with an aquarium pump to aerate. Worked pretty good. Much better than rocking the bucket back and forth like my first attempt. I had thick frothy foam in no time.
5. Used a hydrometer for the first time. Measured my OG at 1061. The target was 1064. Not too bad for a rookie.
6. Pitched dry at 72 degrees. US-50
7. Used the bath tub/swamp cooler trick to keep the temps stable. I will hopefully upgrade to an old freezer/inkbird when space allows. I used a blowoff hose and a mason jar with sanitizer instead of an airlock. Water temp was 66.5 degrees last night, at 65.8 this morning with some nice bubble action every 3 seconds.
Any feedback for a rook would be much appreciated. Cheers
1. First time using a bayou burner for my boil. Massive improvement over stove top. Much hotter, much faster... can reach a boil very quickly
2. I used a sink ice bath to chill. 16lb bag and some water dropped the temp below 100 fairly quickly. How much stirring is too much stirring during the chill? Seems like stirring helps the temp drop quicker, but it churns all the junk up off the bottom... junk that might be better left in the kettle... which brings me to my next issue
3. I'm sure this idea was a mistake.. I thought it would be a good idea to use a sanitized kitchen wire strainer to strain the beer as I transfered it from the kettle to the fermenter. I'm guessing that is a dumb thing to do. It clogged almost immediatley. I looked at it for a second and decided I probably need all that junk in the fermenter. I put said junk back in the mix and proceeded with the transfer. There was a fair amount of sludge left in the bottom of the kettle, but a lot of junk made it into the fermenter.
Is straining ever a good idea?
4. I used a sanitized air stone with an aquarium pump to aerate. Worked pretty good. Much better than rocking the bucket back and forth like my first attempt. I had thick frothy foam in no time.
5. Used a hydrometer for the first time. Measured my OG at 1061. The target was 1064. Not too bad for a rookie.
6. Pitched dry at 72 degrees. US-50
7. Used the bath tub/swamp cooler trick to keep the temps stable. I will hopefully upgrade to an old freezer/inkbird when space allows. I used a blowoff hose and a mason jar with sanitizer instead of an airlock. Water temp was 66.5 degrees last night, at 65.8 this morning with some nice bubble action every 3 seconds.
Any feedback for a rook would be much appreciated. Cheers