Beginner brewing troubles and mistakes

[Darkenor]

This is probably going to come off a lot more like a blog post than a forum post, but I thought I'd post my woes here and get some feedback.

Things I wish I'd known:

1. Brewing takes for-freaking-ever. I started at 3PM today and didn't get finished until 9:30PM tonight, when you count the whole operation.
2. Sanitizing is tough. It takes a long time to do it and it's hard to store things that are sanitized in a place that will let them stay sanitized.
3. If you don't have a turkey fryer, it takes over an hour to boil the wort.
4. Cooling the wort takes like...30 pounds of ice. It's ridiculous.
5. The instructions on Brewer's Best aren't exactly right. I put in 2.2 gallons of water to bring it up to about 4.5 gallons to check the gravity and it was 1.068. And the recipe calls for 1.081 - 1.085. Ironically enough, I'd checked it when it was like...3.5 for kicks and it was like 1.088. The recipe called for approx 5 gallons, so I don't know where I screwed up.

Things I wish I'd had:

1. Turkey fryer
2. A giant bucket to sanitize everything in.
3. A wort chiller
4. A magic device to automatically show me the gravity all the time.

Well, there's my report. The brew is fermenting right now. We'll see if it comes out like complete crap or not.

 

[birvine]

Hope it all goes well!

B

 

[jollytim]

Can't help you with 1, 2, or 3 on your list... they can be found.
But maybe here is #4.

http://brewballstore.com/

 

[dantose]

heh, that's why you need beer on hand when you brew. It's like fishing but at the end you end up with more beer.

 

[lumpher]

if you're crying about it, you can always just buy beer

 

[Darkenor]

heh, that's why you need beer on hand when you brew. It's like fishing but at the end you end up with more beer.

Hah, that's awesome.

And good advice. I'm going to try that next time.

 

[ongreystreet]

Brewing does take awhile, but it will get better.

Put your sanitizer in a spray bottle. I clean and sanitize everything before brewing, sometimes the night before. When I go to brew, most things, thermometers, spoons, etc get a dunk in the sanitizer or a quick spray.

Gotta do dry runs with any new equipment, should have done a test boil prior to brew.

2.2 gallons of wort can be cooled with one 10 pound bag of ice, and tap water in under 30 minutes.

Ignore your OG, you didn't mix your wort and make-up water well enough.

Consider the Turkey fryer, but don't waste your money on a wort chiller for 2.2 gallons of wort.

 

[Darkenor]

if you're crying about it, you can always just buy beer

Why is there always a ****** like you on every forum? I was sharing the experience for other newbs so they'd know what they're in for.

 

[Darkenor]

Brewing does take awhile, but it will get better.

Put your sanitizer in a spray bottle. I clean and sanitize everything before brewing, sometimes the night before. When I go to brew, most things, thermometers, spoons, etc get a dunk in the sanitizer or a quick spray.

Gotta do dry runs with any new equipment, should have done a test boil prior to brew.

2.2 gallons of wort can be cooled with one 10 pound bag of ice, and tap water in under 30 minutes.

Ignore your OG, you didn't mix your wort and make-up water well enough.

Consider the Turkey fryer, but don't waste your money on a wort chiller for 2.2 gallons of wort.

Good advice on the spray bottle! I bet that helps a lot. And ya, a dry run would have probably been a good idea.

Hm - on the water, I stirred it pretty hard. Do you have to stir it like *really* vigorously? That didn't seem natural.

 

[ongreystreet]

Good advice on the spray bottle! I bet that helps a lot. And ya, a dry run would have probably been a good idea.

Hm - on the water, I stirred it pretty hard. Do you have to stir it like *really* vigorously? That didn't seem natural.

Before I add my yeast I like to violently shake my better bottle, minimum 2 minutes.

 

[dantose]

I actually don't bother going to great lengths to aerate unless I'm dealing with especially high gravity beer. I've never had an issue in probably upwards of 50 batches.

 

[itsme6582]

6 hours is a very long time for a extract brew. I bet you cut at least an hour off the next time. It will get quicker as you gain eperience. Using a Brewer's Best Kit, I can go from start to finish in under 3 hours. This includes reviewing my ingredients, set-up, chilling, clean-up, and put away. There is a lot of downtime during brewing. Make use of it.

Sanitizing is easy. The trick is a spray bottle and Star-San. I dump about half the spray bottle into my fermentor and splash all the walls. Then I spray everything else. I only make up more Star-San when I bottle. I use the remaining solution from my Vinator to top up my spray bottle.

On my stove, it takes me about 30 minutes to get to 150 degrees for steeping and 20 minutes to get from there to boil.

Getting an IC was the first upgrade I made. I wish I'd have gotten a 50 footer rather than a 25 footer. I've done quite a few batches where I filled up my bucket halfway with water and then dumped the hot wort right into it. Then I'd let it cool overnight and pitch in the morning. As long as you are mindful of sanitation, this should produce fine results. Search "no chill." For final beer clarity search "cold crashing."

As for the OG. I have brewed about a half dozen of these kits. They have all been dead on for the OG. You should top up to 5 gallons and assume something went wrong with your hydrometer reading. With your experience level, I would be more reliant on the kit than your hydrometer reading. It's easy to get an incorrect result. Make sure there are no air bubbles on the hydro when you're reading it.

Bottling is my least favorite part. I highly recommend a vinator. You don't need the bottle tree with it. Bottling is the most tedious job of all. Anything you can do to make this more streamlined, including not bottling at all, will make you a happier brewer.

 

[Darkenor]

6 hours is a very long time for a extract brew. I bet you cut at least an hour off the next time. It will get quicker as you gain eperience. Using a Brewer's Best Kit, I can go from start to finish in under 3 hours. This includes reviewing my ingredients, set-up, chilling, clean-up, and put away. There is a lot of downtime during brewing. Make use of it.

Sanitizing is easy. The trick is a spray bottle and Star-San. I dump about half the spray bottle into my fermentor and splash all the walls. Then I spray everything else. I only make up more Star-San when I bottle. I use the remaining solution from my Vinator to top up my spray bottle.

On my stove, it takes me about 30 minutes to get to 150 degrees for steeping and 20 minutes to get from there to boil.

Getting an IC was the first upgrade I made. I wish I'd have gotten a 50 footer rather than a 25 footer. I've done quite a few batches where I filled up my bucket halfway with water and then dumped the hot wort right into it. Then I'd let it cool overnight and pitch in the morning. As long as you are mindful of sanitation, this should produce fine results. Search "no chill." For final beer clarity search "cold crashing."

As for the OG. I have brewed about a half dozen of these kits. They have all been dead on for the OG. You should top up to 5 gallons and assume something went wrong with your hydrometer reading. With your experience level, I would be more reliant on the kit than your hydrometer reading. It's easy to get an incorrect result. Make sure there are no air bubbles on the hydro when you're reading it.

Bottling is my least favorite part. I highly recommend a vinator. You don't need the bottle tree with it. Bottling is the most tedious job of all. Anything you can do to make this more streamlined, including not bottling at all, will make you a happier brewer.

Thanks for the tip on the OG. I'm going to top it off right now. I'm really trustful of kits like that - I bet it's me that had the problem.

 

[SilentAutumn]

1. Brewing takes for-freaking-ever. I started at 3PM today and didn't get finished until 9:30PM tonight, when you count the whole operation.
2. Sanitizing is tough. It takes a long time to do it and it's hard to store things that are sanitized in a place that will let them stay sanitized.
3. If you don't have a turkey fryer, it takes over an hour to boil the wort.
4. Cooling the wort takes like...30 pounds of ice. It's ridiculous.
5. The instructions on Brewer's Best aren't exactly right. I put in 2.2 gallons of water to bring it up to about 4.5 gallons to check the gravity and it was 1.068. And the recipe calls for 1.081 - 1.085. Ironically enough, I'd checked it when it was like...3.5 for kicks and it was like 1.088. The recipe called for approx 5 gallons, so I don't know where I screwed up.

1. You'll get quicker at it.
2. I put fresh paper towel down on top of clean counter tops and put all my sanitized gear on that. Haven't had an issue yet.
3. Over an hour? That sounds like a long time. Put a lid on your pot to help keep heat in. (I do extract with steeping grains on an electric stove. Getting to 160 doesn't take long and then going to boil doesn't take much longer.)
4. When you start your boil, put a gallon of water in the freezer. By the time the boil is done, the freezer water should have a nice crust of ice on top. Add this to your primary before you pour in the wort. Make sure you're stirring the wort every other minute while it's in the ice bath. With an ice bath and near-freezing water, I can get my temp down in about 15 minutes.
5. Sounds like your wort wasn't mixed well and the sample you took was more water than wort. Make sure to stir your wort well once it's in the primary.

 

[Wakadaka]

I am pretty new too, but i thought i could offer some of my advice.

First off, brewing does take longer than you would expect. Most of the time of my brew day it seems is just waiting for my stove to heat up to a boil. It helps to organize your brew day to where you can always or usually be working on something. I typically will spend the time waiting for my stove to heat up studying, reading or just watching tv. The process can take a while, but it is a lot more fun if you aren't standing over your pot watching for it to start boiling.

I don't use a bucket for sanitizing, but i have a tray sort of thing that holds about 2 gallons as well as a spray bottle. Having something big enough to hold siphons, hydrometer tubes, and whatever you take your hydrometer samples with is a must. Also instead of taking things out of the sanitizing solution just leave them in until you need them.

Cooling shouldn't take that much ice. Right when you take the pot off the stove I think it helps to not put it in ice just cold water. I have a double sink so I fill up one side put the pot in, then go ahead and fill up the other side. As I am switching it over the third time I add ice. It also helps to stir the water in the sink, as well as the wort. I am assuming you are putting water in with the ice to help cool it? If you are just using ice it won't have as much contact area to cool it. Also adding your cool top off water in the pot can help with getting it cooler faster.

And I definately agree with your wort not being mixed enough. I did an American Wheat and after my top off water I was getting readings closer to the FG than the OG. It was my first mini mash recipe so I thought I must have horribly messed up. Gave it a few shakes, and the gravity was about .03 higher.

Hope this helps and doesn't sound like just rambling.

 

[Wakadaka]

3. Over an hour? That sounds like a long time. Put a lid on your pot to help keep heat in.


be careful doing that. I did that on my second batch, and boil overs are quite a PITA. Someone also posted recently that their beer had been tasting bad, and I believe some of the more experienced people on here came to the conclusion that it was because they were leaving the top on the pot. I don't know enough to comment on that, but if the top is on make sure you are watching near by for when it starts to boil.

 

[itsme6582]

Someone also posted recently that their beer had been tasting bad, and I believe some of the more experienced people on here came to the conclusion that it was because they were leaving the top on the pot.

The boil releases some nasties into the air. If you keep the lid on during the boil they will remain in the beer. I tried keeping the lid on once while getting up to a boil. It went very fast. Too fast. I had a big mess to clean up on the stove because I boiled over.

 

[davel57]

Not sure how you used 6 1/2 hours, but I'll throw in a couple of suggestions.

1) Get the water on the stove before you start sanitizing anything. The pot doesn't need to be sanitized, neither does the spoon or the thermometer. Sanitize while waiting for the water to get hot or the grains to steep.

2) I keep a bucket of sanitizer mixed and throw stuff in whenever I'm not using it. (Rinse first if needed).

3) Once everything is sanitized, start measuring hops, grain, extract, etc. (I measure steeping grains and get them in the pot before I sanitize.)

4) I have a little rack in the bottom of my sink so that the pot doesn't sit right on the bottom of the sink. That way it chills from the bottom and the sides. Much faster.

 

[cms]

1. Brewing takes for-freaking-ever. I started at 3PM today and didn't get finished until 9:30PM tonight, when you count the whole operation.
2. Sanitizing is tough. It takes a long time to do it and it's hard to store things that are sanitized in a place that will let them stay sanitized.
3. If you don't have a turkey fryer, it takes over an hour to boil the wort.
4. Cooling the wort takes like...30 pounds of ice. It's ridiculous.
5. The instructions on Brewer's Best aren't exactly right. I put in 2.2 gallons of water to bring it up to about 4.5 gallons to check the gravity and it was 1.068. And the recipe calls for 1.081 - 1.085. Ironically enough, I'd checked it when it was like...3.5 for kicks and it was like 1.088. The recipe called for approx 5 gallons, so I don't know where I screwed up.

Your beer will be fine. A few tips...

(1) It does take a while. My first go took twice as long as my second. You will get more efficient, even with the same equipment. The key is to get things started and work on other things (like sanitizing) after the boil begins.

(2) This also gets easier. If you have a bottling bucket, then that works great. I ferment in a bucket, so I mix my sanitizer in there and use it constantly as I brew (airlock, tubing, spoon, siphon, etc. all sits in there until the wort is cool. I typically put the airlock (the last thing that I need to be sanitary) on some paper towel and spritz it with a spray bottle of sanitizer. Some people use a wallpaper tray which seems like a great idea. My first few batches, I dumped my sanitizer down the drain at the end of brew day. Now, I top off my spray bottle and fill a jar or two with it - it's fine to reuse for a while.

(3) All stoves are different, but it does take a while. I started heating a big pot of water ahead of time and I just leave it on the stove (adding a lid to help retain heat). Then when I'm ready to begin, I adjust to get to 'steeping temp' (165) and off I go. At that stage, it usually doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes to get to the boil. After adding the extract, it takes another 10-15 minutes to get back to a boil with the additional mass. Not sure how big an affect it has, but I heat my LME in a sauce pan full of water and a kitchen towel in the pan, under the tub of LME. The towel keeps from melting the tub, the heat reduces the LME's viscosity and (I suspect) helps not cool the water as much since the LME is already maybe 120° or so. A lot has to do with your stove. Mine is a pretty typical (builder's grade) electric stove.

(4) Using the 'ice bath' method? I've never gone through that much ice. I used a 5-pound bag my first time. After that, I started harvesting ice from my ice maker a few days before and ended up with about 5-7 pounds. I always melt whatever I have in the house, but the wort is always down to 90° or so by the time I siphon. If the 'top off water' is cool or cold from the tap, you will be good (or really close) to pitch.

(5) I had this exact problem and was positive that my hydrometer was wrong since so many people were telling me that the recipe is almost never wrong. The first time I got a reading that was accurate to the recipe, I rocked the fermenting bucket with my finger over the hole for about 5 minutes. Previous to that, I was stirring like hell and it never mixed the wort with the water enough to give the right reading. I would suggest that next time, you fill to your target volume (5 gal), snap on your buckets lid and shake it like mad for 5 minutes. You will get tons of air in your wort (a good thing for getting the yeast-orgy started) and will get it all mixed better than you will ever manage with a spoon. Do this before pitching.

It's hard not to get upset and/or confused the first time though. There are so many variable and things seem to go so quickly. By the third batch, you'll be sailing through without breaking a sweat. Hang in there.

 

[cms]

Before I add my yeast I like to violently shake my better bottle, minimum 2 minutes.

+1 for that. You will never be able to accomplish as much mixing (and aeration) with a spoon.

I put the bucket on a towel, spray my hands with sanitizer, orient the bucket so my thumb can cover the airlock hole tip it and rock back and forth. The bucket will foam up and get all frothy.

 

[paradoxic]

It took me close to that amount of time on my first brew day. Since then, I've gotten it to just over two hours to brew an extract kits.

 

[SilentAutumn]

3. Over an hour? That sounds like a long time. Put a lid on your pot to help keep heat in.


be careful doing that. I did that on my second batch, and boil overs are quite a PITA. Someone also posted recently that their beer had been tasting bad, and I believe some of the more experienced people on here came to the conclusion that it was because they were leaving the top on the pot. I don't know enough to comment on that, but if the top is on make sure you are watching near by for when it starts to boil.

No, just leave a lid on to bring it to boil. Once at boil, the lid comes off. Yeah, if you try leaving hte lid on the entire time, you're just asking for trouble.

 

[BrewDocND]

Cooling shouldn't take that much ice. Right when you take the pot off the stove I think it helps to not put it in ice just cold water. I have a double sink so I fill up one side put the pot in, then go ahead and fill up the other side. As I am switching it over the third time I add ice. It also helps to stir the water in the sink, as well as the wort. I am assuming you are putting water in with the ice to help cool it? If you are just using ice it won't have as much contact area to cool it. Also adding your cool top off water in the pot can help with getting it cooler faster.

This is really good newbie advice. I just figured this out 20 batches in. A couple changes of cold water will do the same job as ice at first. After that, go to ice to get down closer to 100-120, then pour the wort into near-freezing bottled water and you should be btw 70-80. Get the fermentor into a bath tub or cooler of 60 degree water. wait a bit and pitch.

That sucks ass that your boil took an hour to start. Maybe start with less water? I know using less water lessens hop utilization and probably has some other effects I don't know about, but boiling less would of course be easier.

 

[BrewDocND]

Oh and just as some encouragement, that first brew takes forever for everyone. 6 hours sounds about right, not to mention the stress of not understanding directions, fretting over gravities, fretting over sanitation. It's a steep learning curve. Give it 3-5 batches and you'll cut that time almost in half. You'll learn all the tricks, how your stove works. I'm basically on auto-pilot with extract brews now. 3 hours from start to pitch. Bottling is an hour, maybe an hour fifteen (the first time it was probably 2+ hours).

You'll get the hang of it.

 

[ellisonsj]

As far as cooling your wort goes, when brewing with extract I have a brew pot that's got plenty of room to add ice directly to the wort as soon as it's off the stove. I always get a bag of ice from the store for this, just be careful if the bag itself is dirty. I do an ice bath too, but I put salt in it, kind of like making ice cream - this lowers the temp of the bath even more. Make sure to stir the wort itself and the ice bath. You want to move the cooler wort away from the wall of the kettle and the warmer water on the outside away from the kettle. Doing it this way the vast majority of my brews are at pitching temp by the time all of the wort is transferred.

 

[dmbRedGetta]

Something else to keep in mind that I just learned... make sure you get as much of the LME out of the can as possible. I agree with everyone else that your wort probably just wasn't mixed well enough, but you need to make sure you get all of the extract out of the can, too. I know I probably left a fair amount in the can during my first few batches because I was so concerned with stirring to make sure it didn't burn on the bottom of the pot. Of course, that was before I knew it was okay to take the pot off the heat to add it...

 

[itsme6582]

...make sure you get as much of the LME out of the can as possible

This is another good point. I use a ladle and mix some of my hot wort back into the can. After a couple of times, the can is spotless. Any extract remaining in the cans is sugar. Although, I can't imagine that missing just a bit of the extract would have a huge impact on your OG.

 

[beerloaf]

As stated earlier, it will get better and easier the more you do it. You have to get your own system down as to what helps you and makes it simpler. I went through the same thing. I finished a brew yesterday at around 3 hrs. And most of that was the cleanup afterwards.

Hints:

Spray bottle of starsan, or whatever cleaner you like.

Organize a "sanitised area" I just made a makeshift table in my garage next to where I was brewing.

If you can, invest in a turkley fryer. A friend of mine got one on Craigslist for around $25 complete. I've seen them new around here for $40-$50 as well.

I also made my own wort chiller for $36 yesterday morning. It was worth the money and made things go even quicker. And the best part was that I didn't need any ice!

Plus drinking a Belgian while making another Belgian made thing a lot smoother.

 

[ongreystreet]

A couple changes of cold water will do the same job as ice at first.

This is also great advice, and similar to using a chiller. Remember refrigeration or cooling is about removing heat, not adding "cold". Your wort releases heat to the bath water, you send it down the drain, add more cold water and do it again.

If the pot sits in the bath with no circulation, you are just releasing the heat to the bath, and then some out thru the water surface and sink walls.