Beginner's Extract IPA adapted from J. Palmer

[JayEff]

So, tomorrow is brew day and I forgot to buy hop bags. Only now that I read up on dry hopping do I begin to wonder: I am correct in thinking that (disintegrated) hop pellets going into the fermenter is only an issue if you want to harvest the yeast after the batch is done, right? Or should I try my darndest to strain them out?

On the topic of straining, I was planning to add the steeping grains in a bag - but again, I forgot to buy any. They are pre-milled and there's some flour-looking stuff in the plastic bag they came in. I suppose a little bit of dissolved starch isn't a big deal so long as I strain the husks and larger bits out, right?

All I really have on hand is a mesh strainer, not exceptionally fine. Will this be fine, or are there makeshift alternatives (I've read of old t-shirts as a filter or bag)? Or should I just order some more gear and wait for that after all?

 

[IslandLizard]

So, tomorrow is brew day and I forgot to buy hop bags. Only now that I read up on dry hopping do I begin to wonder: I am correct in thinking that (disintegrated) hop pellets going into the fermenter is only an issue if you want to harvest the yeast after the batch is done, right? Or should I try my darndest to strain them out?

On the topic of straining, I was planning to add the steeping grains in a bag - but again, I forgot to buy any. They are pre-milled and there's some flour-looking stuff in the plastic bag they came in. I suppose a little bit of dissolved starch isn't a big deal so long as I strain the husks and larger bits out, right?

All I really have on hand is a mesh strainer, not exceptionally fine. Will this be fine, or are there makeshift alternatives (I've read of old t-shirts as a filter or bag)? Or should I just order some more gear and wait for that after all?

Steep the grains in a smaller pot, with say 2 quarts of hot water (~160F) for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Then drain through your sieve or colander into another pot. Most grain will stay behind, some bits and dust will go through. Don't disturb the grain heap inside the colander. Now pour the collected runnings slowly over the grain in the colander placed over the first pot. The grain is the filter bed holding the small bits and dust back. Whatever makes it through is OK. Add the runnings to your boil kettle.

Now sparge by putting the grain back into the pot, add some warm water. Temp is insignificant, but no hotter than 168F. Stir and drain again, the same way.

You can let the hops swim freely in the kettle, after chilling, cover and let sit for 30 minutes or so. Siphon the clear wort from the top into your clean and sanitized fermentor, leaving the trub behind in your kettle. Tilt the kettle somewhat toward the end (stick a thick rolled up towel under the far end) to get more wort out. Alternatively, you could pour the clear wort from the top into your fermentor. When the trub starts to come through, stop pouring.

If you're frugal, there are ways to reclaim most of those 2-4 quarts of wort trapped in the trub too, under the paradigm "No wort left behind!"

Dry hopping isn't until later, so maybe you can score or make some bags by then. Yes, if you want to reclaim clean yeast it's better not to add loose hops to your beer.

Good luck. You're ready to brew!

 

[IslandLizard]

(sorry for the double post, this seemed cleaner then editing the already long previous post)

Alright I revisited the hop schedule yet again and I'm proposing this idea:
Batch size: 12l = 3.2 gal
Boil size: 7l = 1.85 gal
Total DME: 2kg = 4.4 lbs
OG 1.060, FG 1.014, ABV: 6%

200g Caramunich at 160F for 30 minutes. (= 7 oz)
1 kg Extra Light DME at the start of the boil
1 kg Extra Light DME at flameout
Boil a total of 15 minutes, since it's extract it should be fine with a short boil.
Hops:
15 g Simcoe Pellet 12.7 Boil 15 min 30.16 (= .5 oz)
30 g Manda B Pellet 9.2 Boil 5 min 11.33 (= 1 oz)
30 g Manda B Pellet 9.2 Boil 0 min --- (= 1 oz)

Total IBUs are 41.5, which afaik is on the low end for an IPA, but since my friend likes it low on bitterness, I want to start at the lower end of the spectrum and work my way up to my taste - unless you guys say this won't come out well.

The low boil time would also let the hop flavor come through more strongly, which I hear is nice for an IPA.

Before I change my initial post, what do you guys think about all this? Have I done my research or am I missing something important? Thank you so much for your valuable advice so far!

Try to do a hop stand. It's the modern way of brewing IPAs to keep more flavor and hop aroma in the wort and thus in your beer.

Here's the way to do it. When the boil is done, turn off the flame, but don't add your 0 minute hops yet. First chill to 170F, then stop chilling. Now add your "0 minute" hops, and let them steep for 20-30 minutes with the lid on. Stir every 5 minutes. Make sure your stirring spoon is sanitized. Then chill down to pitching temps.

 

[JayEff]

Thank you very much for your input!

Steep the grains in a smaller pot, with say 2 quarts of hot water (~160F) for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Then drain through your sieve or colander into another pot. Most grain will stay behind, some bits and dust will go through. Don't disturb the grain heap inside the colander. Now pour the collected runnings slowly over the grain in the colander placed over the first pot. The grain is the filter bed holding the small bits and dust back. Whatever makes it through is OK. Add the runnings to your boil kettle.

Now sparge by putting the grain back into the pot, add some warm water. Temp is insignificant, but no hotter than 168F. Stir and drain again, the same way.

I'm happy to say that that's basically what I did - or planned to do. I used less grain than I had planned (150g instead of 200) leaving most of the flour behind, so when I strained the "tea" the first time, it was already pretty much clear so I just poured some more hot water over the grain to rinse out a little bit extra and called it good. I wasn't concerned with efficiency, since I decided I wanted the hops to be more prominent anyways. Last minute modifications to the recipe, not smart, I know Also might make the process less reproducible.

You can let the hops swim freely in the kettle, after chilling, cover and let sit for 30 minutes or so. Siphon the clear wort from the top into your clean and sanitized fermentor, leaving the trub behind in your kettle. Tilt the kettle somewhat toward the end (stick a thick rolled up towel under the far end) to get more wort out. Alternatively, you could pour the clear wort from the top into your fermentor. When the trub starts to come through, stop pouring.

If you're frugal, there are ways to reclaim most of those 2-4 quarts of wort trapped in the trub too, under the paradigm "No wort left behind!"

Dry hopping isn't until later, so maybe you can score or make some bags by then. Yes, if you want to reclaim clean yeast it's better not to add loose hops to your beer.

Good luck. You're ready to brew!

I ended up grabbing a tea sock I had found in a drawer, sanitized it in starsan, and strained the last runnings through that until I was left with a thick sludge in the kettle. The only thing I'm concerned with is whether or not I sanitized it well enough, I should've probably boiled it, but I hope the heat of the moment was enough

Try to do a hop stand. It's the modern way of brewing IPAs to keep more flavor and hop aroma in the wort and thus in your beer.

Here's the way to do it. When the boil is done, turn off the flame, but don't add your 0 minute hops yet. First chill to 170F, then stop chilling. Now add your "0 minute" hops, and let them steep for 20-30 minutes with the lid on. Stir every 5 minutes. Make sure your stirring spoon is sanitized. Then chill down to pitching temps.

That's also ... preeeeeetty much what I did, except I added the 0 minute hops at around 200F, knowing I'd get some more bitterness from them that way. I whirlpooled for a minute or two and after less than 10 minutes started chilling in a water bath. Took quite a long time, so I figure I steeped the hops enough, but next time I'll do it more like you described. Think my method will yield a good hop aroma and flavor?

I've got another question. About 3 hours after pitching the yeast at 21C in a relatively cold room (16C or so), I already see the liquid in the airlock (S-shaped) moving, indicating there's gas forming, and the temp is still the same. This sounds like a reaaally short lag period. I hear that a short lag period could mean bad yeast health and perhaps low cell count ...? I hope I don't have to worry. Perhaps this is due to insufficient aeration of the wort? I let the siphon drip noisily into the bucket and then used a sanitized balloon whisk to whip up some nice bubbles, 2 or 3 times.

I'm swamp cooling after all. I want to keep the temp at the low end of nottingham's temp range for the first few days. We'll see how it goes.

edit: I'm having troubles keeping it cool! Well, it's only been around 6-8 hours but it's at 65F despite the swamp cooler and a roughly 62F room. I reckon once it starts going vigorously (not a lot of airlock activity just yet, no krausen, I'm so worried about the blow off that everyone says is just going to happen for sure ... ^^" ), it'll heat up even more. I'm not sooo worried about the flavors - I bet I'll love the beer either way - but more about the fusel alcohols: I heard that notty produces those if you go above the high 60s and they're supposed to cause headaches. Anyone got any experience with that? I'm not sure I can cool it much more than this ...

edit: wow swamp coolers are efficient. now it's hanging at slightly under 60F, that should be just perfect! The water line of the swamp cooler is not even half of the wort's level, cause I don't want to cover my fermometer strip with water - it says do not submerge. half of the bucket has a wet towel stuck to it, wicking the water up. That's all that's needed. No krausen yet, we'll see what happens then.

 

[ncbrewer]

JayEff: It's interesting to me that you had a lot of heat generated during the lag phase, and it's apparently producing less heat as it gets close to active fermentation. I've experienced the same thing whenever I pitch in the 66 to 6F range. When I pitch lower (around 62 to 63F), I get much less heat generated. I've never read anything about this happening - mostly about heat during active fermentation. Now I wonder if others have had this happen.

 

[JayEff]

JayEff: It's interesting to me that you had a lot of heat generated during the lag phase, and it's apparently producing less heat as it gets close to active fermentation. I've experienced the same thing whenever I pitch in the 66 to 6F range. When I pitch lower (around 62 to 63F), I get much less heat generated. I've never read anything about this happening - mostly about heat during active fermentation. Now I wonder if others have had this happen.

That so! Interesting. I'm not sure about my data point here, though. It's entirely possible I just overestimated the heat absorption of the swamp cooler or some other factors are at play. I'll describe exactly what I did (in part, wrong):

I had a small dish of water in which I poured the dry yeast. since about half of it didn't seem to hydrate at all, I poked around at it before covering - that's apparently a mistake as I've read later.

15 min later, I was supposed to swirl it around and begin adjusting the temperature, but instead I just straight up pitched it.

The wort was probably around 70F at that point, I don't think temperature shock could've been a problem, but it was probably too warm to pitch, still. I got impatient and once I started to hydrate the yeast, I knew I shouldn't let it sit around too long, so I decided I'd just pitch rather than lose viability.

I think the temperature behavior I was seeing was the wort being cooled down slowly, not fermentation heat. Right now it's bubbling happily but nowhere near as vigorously as I thought with notty, at 60F.

I also still have little to no krausen, judging by what I can see from shining a flash light through the opaque fermenting bucket's walls. I expected blow off for the first days from what I've read about notty, but so far, nothing of that sort. Though I'm a little worried since this is not the behavior I expected, I'm also kinda happy about that

I will definitely relax and try not to worry about all this non-optimal behavior. Can't have a homebrew yet though, my first batch is still carbonating

Regarding dry hopping: It's responsible for the aroma, not so much the flavor, right? Can it be done if you don't plan to do a secondary? What about sanitizing: my hops are in their original vacuum bags, rolled up in the freezer. How does one keep hops sterile anyways? Surely, dryhopping has a chance of introducing bugs from improperly stored hops?

 

[JayEff]

I read up on dry hopping some more, apparently they stay sterile because of their chemical composition.

My plan: Wait until the gravity is stable and check the aroma and flavor. If at that point I decide want more hop character, I will pour in some hop pellets through the airlock hole, no bag. Someone suggested making a funnel out of paper. After 4 days it should be done and ready to package.

I think I will use about ... 5g of simcoe and 15g of mandarina bavaria.

Can anyone see anything wrong with that?

If I dry hop, I plan to tie my tea sock to the racking cane to avoid hop particles in the bottling bucket. Should I tie it to the outlet of the siphon, or the inlet?

The bucket has been sitting at a solid ~15C = 60F for days now, very pleased with this. Is it correct to remove the swamp cooler after a few days, or should I not do so? What effect would that have?

 

[ncbrewer]

That so! Interesting. I'm not sure about my data point here, though. It's entirely possible I just overestimated the heat absorption of the swamp cooler or some other factors are at play. I'll describe exactly what I did (in part, wrong):

I had a small dish of water in which I poured the dry yeast. since about half of it didn't seem to hydrate at all, I poked around at it before covering - that's apparently a mistake as I've read later.

15 min later, I was supposed to swirl it around and begin adjusting the temperature, but instead I just straight up pitched it.

The wort was probably around 70F at that point, I don't think temperature shock could've been a problem, but it was probably too warm to pitch, still. I got impatient and once I started to hydrate the yeast, I knew I shouldn't let it sit around too long, so I decided I'd just pitch rather than lose viability.

Something Danstar emailed me that I think is a good idea: "Our technical manager suggests that you don't go longer than 30 minutes after the start of rehydration before pitching the yeast into wort as the yeast needs nutrients. If there is a delay you could actually add more wort to the rehydration water to give the yeast something to eat while you are waiting to pitch it, so long as it isn't too hot."

I think the temperature behavior I was seeing was the wort being cooled down slowly, not fermentation heat. Right now it's bubbling happily but nowhere near as vigorously as I thought with notty, at 60F.

I guess I'm still alone in seeing the heat generated during lag phase.

I also still have little to no krausen, judging by what I can see from shining a flash light through the opaque fermenting bucket's walls. I expected blow off for the first days from what I've read about notty, but so far, nothing of that sort. Though I'm a little worried since this is not the behavior I expected, I'm also kinda happy about that

You can get a pretty good idea of kraeusen by darkening the room and setting a flashlight on the lid aiming down. The kraeusen will show up better that way.

I will definitely relax and try not to worry about all this non-optimal behavior. Can't have a homebrew yet though, my first batch is still carbonating

Regarding dry hopping: It's responsible for the aroma, not so much the flavor, right? Can it be done if you don't plan to do a secondary? What about sanitizing: my hops are in their original vacuum bags, rolled up in the freezer. How does one keep hops sterile anyways? Surely, dryhopping has a chance of introducing bugs from improperly stored hops?

I'm too paranoid to dry hop, so I can't help with this.