Advice fir a newbie

[ElJefeBrews]

Just got the Brooklyn brew shop home kit with the everyday IPA and about to start my very first batch. Any advice anybody can give a newbie?

 

[boydster]

Sanitizing, temperature control, and patience are probably the most important things for you to stay vigilant about at this stage. After you are done boiling, cool your wort down to the mid-60's or lower before pitching your yeast. Do whatever you can to keep your fermentation temperature in the mid-60's (beer temperature, not ambient temperature). Above all else, be patient. And relax. It's your first brew. You'll make some couple mistakes, and you will learn ways to improve your process for next time, but you will find it's pretty hard to ruin a batch as long as you don't rush, sanitize thoroughly, and maintain some semblance of temperature control.

 

[Waynep005]

Have fun. This is a hobby not a job. It is easy to get so much information on what to do that the brewing process becomes a chore. To me that ruins the whole idea of home brewing

 

[Brewnoob1]

Agree with both statements above. There is a lot of information and easily can become overwhelmed. Just follow the basic process of the brew, control temps, and most of all have patience.

Good luck!

 

[ElJefeBrews]

Thanks everyone. I figured it was about time for me to learn the process. I love everything about beer. and ordered palmers book. Looking forward to getting it going

 

[eltorrente]

Yeah just relax and have fun with it. There will be plenty of time to go crazy and analyze everything as you learn more. For now - stick to your recipe instructions, and realize that it's actually pretty easy to make good beer.

As has been said - temperature control is very important for making quality beer.

At the minimum, make a "swamp cooler" - basically a container that your fermenter sits in, and holds water. It just uses evaporative cooling to keep your temperature lower than ambient temps, and can make a big difference.

Many people get impatient and pitch their yeast when the beer is still too warm - best to wait until the temperature drops to 70 or below if you can. Mid-sixties is ideal. After a few days of fermenting, you can let the temp rise to room temperature and this will allow for a "diacetyl rest", which will help the yeast clean up the off flavors it produced early on.

 

[MorrisBrewingCo]

+1 to everything said. You will mess up because it is inevitable but what you learn from your mistakes is invaluable and never forgotten. I am an all grain brewer and have never tried any other method (learned mostly through mistakes and this forum) so I can't help with your process. Note, a lot of information is opinionated so adapt to whatever works for you. Once you have the process down though it is soothing and gratifying.

 

[sok454]

You will quickly realize if you like it or not... I was up the night before getting everything set out and double checking everything, re-wrote my directions... re-meassured/counted everything... you'd thought I was going on my first date. that was in October of 12.

Now I want to brew all the time.... and my wife wants to divorce me... coincidence???/

 

[amfukuda]

Take you time and have fun make sure you don't forget any steps and try and take notes on what your making I wish I would have done that earlier also temp control is important. My first project was a temp controlled ice box and its taken a lot of the worry out of the process

 

[munro]

1) notes

2) take it slow- too easy to obsess over every little thing
3) this is the tricky one- don't drink to heavily while brewing. You will miss steps, forget things and may even be a danger to yourself.
4) RDWHAHB and stop buying mass produce commercial beer

 

[jro238]

+1 to what has been said.

If you mess something up (and you probably will, either in this brew or the next) don't sweat it. 99% of the time you will still have tasty beer at the end of the process (and I do say this from experience :cross.

 

[ElJefeBrews]

Finished my first batch. Pretty sure I took too long and too much evaporated because when I poured into my fermenter I was probably about 2/5 of a gallon short (I'm brewing 1 gallon batches). I filled the rest with water. Would that have hurt my brew?

 

[Milan37]

Start a journal of some kind, and get in the habit of taking notes as you go through the process. I try to note the date of the brew, start/end times of the various steps, the temp loss during mash over the course of the hour, any adjustments to the recipe, various hydrometer readings, efficiency, and anything else that seems noteworthy about the day. This helps as I improve my process from one brew to the next, and when I compare the results between brews.

 

[MorrisBrewingCo]

I filled the rest with water. Would that have hurt my brew?

See what others say but I would have recommended not doing that because you now have watered down beer and possibly other undesired effects. When I first started I had a few transferring problems due to leaf hops clogging my siphon or kettle spigot. I ended up with less than the desired amount but it was still really good.

 

[eltorrente]

Finished my first batch. Pretty sure I took too long and too much evaporated because when I poured into my fermenter I was probably about 2/5 of a gallon short (I'm brewing 1 gallon batches). I filled the rest with water. Would that have hurt my brew?

No it won't hurt your brew, as long as you added "good" water and not chlorinated water from your tap.

When you boil too much, you increase your gravity - so adding water will bring it back to where it should be. If you left wort behind in your kettle because you were filtering hops or hotbreak, then you shouldn't add water, because that will dilute your beer.

Assuming you simply boiled off too much, then adding water is fine.

 

[boydster]

If you left a bunch of wort behind in the kettle and then topped off the fermenter, you watered down your batch. It sounds like this isn't the case. If you boiled off 2/5 of a gallon more than expected, dumped all of the wort from the kettle into the fermenter, and then topped it up to 1 gallon, you are fine. That would just mean the wort got a little more concentrated during the boil, and adding the extra (clean, pasteurized, non-chlorinated) water is exactly the right thing to do.

 

[boydster]

eltorrente beat me to it.

 

[MorrisBrewingCo]

When you boil too much, you increase your gravity - so adding water will bring it back to where it should be....
Assuming you simply boiled off too much, then adding water is fine.

Very interesting and makes sense. For clarification, you suggest adding while still boiling and not after the wort has been removed from a heat source?

 

[boydster]

Very interesting and makes sense. For clarification, you suggest adding while still boiling and not after the wort has been removed from a heat source?

You can add it directly to your fermenter, and if the water is refrigerated it will help in cooling your wort

 

[jro238]

When I add directly to my fermenter i just make sure the water is 'clean' (ie boiled tap water or store bought water that has been sealed). Don't want to introduce any nasties at this point.