My first batch was a nut brown ale. I bottled it on Monday and actually tasted it that day as well and it seemed good. Looking forward to trying one in a week or two!
First question: I've been trying to read as many posts on here as I can, and I'm still up in the air on this one. After I steep then boil the wort, can I transfer to a glass carboy, pitch the yeast and then just leave it in there for about 3 weeks or so until it's ready to bottle... then go straight from that carboy into the bottle? When I did my nut brown ale, I transferred the beer to the carboy for secondary fermentation, then transferred to a bottling bucket for bottling the beer. Seems like a lot of stressful steps that maybe I don't need to take. Is there any issue with what I described above?
Second question: For Witbier, there's a method they call: Steep-To-Convert. Not a whole lot different than plain old steeping other than determining water volume. But there is one step to this that I'm not sure about. After steeping, they tell you to let the grain bag drain back into the pot. No problems there.. but then they tell you to pour a 1/2 gallon of water through the bag to rinse everything back into the liquid wort. Here's the issue: the grain bag isn't very big and doesn't look like it'll be easy to run water through. Could I heat that 1/2 gallon of water on the stove up to 150 degrees, pour the grain bag in and quickly steep a 2nd time... then pour that back into the wort?
Hopefully that all makes sense!
First question: I've been trying to read as many posts on here as I can, and I'm still up in the air on this one. After I steep then boil the wort, can I transfer to a glass carboy, pitch the yeast and then just leave it in there for about 3 weeks or so until it's ready to bottle... then go straight from that carboy into the bottle? When I did my nut brown ale, I transferred the beer to the carboy for secondary fermentation, then transferred to a bottling bucket for bottling the beer. Seems like a lot of stressful steps that maybe I don't need to take. Is there any issue with what I described above?
Second question: For Witbier, there's a method they call: Steep-To-Convert. Not a whole lot different than plain old steeping other than determining water volume. But there is one step to this that I'm not sure about. After steeping, they tell you to let the grain bag drain back into the pot. No problems there.. but then they tell you to pour a 1/2 gallon of water through the bag to rinse everything back into the liquid wort. Here's the issue: the grain bag isn't very big and doesn't look like it'll be easy to run water through. Could I heat that 1/2 gallon of water on the stove up to 150 degrees, pour the grain bag in and quickly steep a 2nd time... then pour that back into the wort?
Hopefully that all makes sense!