Couple questions about my first brew.

[shanetemple]

Yesterday, me and two buddies brewed our first batch. We bought an ingredient kit so we could kind of figure out what went into it. It was brewers best IPA. What I want to know is first of all, I don't want to rush it, but what is the possibility of the ale being ready to bottle by monday, the 24th.(10 days fermenting) so that it will be ready for the super bowl?

Also, today the foam was coming up and out through the bubbler style airlock, I have two fermenters, so I stirred it up and split the wort between the two, will this cause me problems? and how do I avoid this in the future?

Thanks you

Shane Temple

 

[JeepDiver]

I could have been ready by super bown, but may have been a little young. As far as splitting the batch after fermentation started, there is a good chance you oxidzed the beer bad. It may be ok, but as a rule you don't want to move the beer once fermintation has started. you could have put a blow off on and would have been fine, and probably would have been fine just leaving it as it was.

 

[chezzesteak]

blow off tube..make sure you keep everything clean and sant.

you are pushing it for the super bowl. you need at least 1 1.5 weeks in bottles. the more the better

 

[shanetemple]

Thank you, hopefully it is still okay, Im a little confused though, as I am new to this and I tried to do as much research as I could before I just got too excited(lol), but what is a blow off?

 

[shanetemple]

Oh I see, well I can always pick up some 60 minute dogfish for the game. Will it be better to rebrew on the chance that I have oxidized the wort?

 

[Bacon]

Splitting it was a bad call, but just let it ride now that it's already happened and see how it turns out.

A blow off tube is a line of sanitized plastic tubing you attach where you would normally have your airlock that runs from your fermenter into a bucket/big bottle of water mixed with sanitizer. It allows the krausen to be pushed out of the fermenter without any fun stuff like what you experienced, or having the top blow off or something.

 

[RM-MN]

From my point of view, you can have good beer or you can have your beer for the superbowl but not both. It really takes more time than that to make good beer.

 

[troub]

Yep, time. It is your beer's best friend. I got a little panicked this weekend because I tasted my 1st beer after a week in the bottle. It had a terrible taste to it. A very strong weird flavor on the back end. I suspected chloramines in my water giving me a funny taste (because the beer currently in my fermenter has a similar taste), but after freaking out and asking for a bunch of advice I thought it through a bit more and came to the conclusion that the flavor (kind of like licking a bad-tasting envelope adhesive, or a bunch of stamps) is caused by phenols from fermentation that haven't had time to be re-absorbed by the yeast and settle out. It just needs more time. Further, I'm convinced that people who have the experience that "homebrew always has a specific weird flavor" or the like have only had homebrew made by people following kit instructions, which always rushes the timeline. If the yeast isn't finished cleaning up those flavors, and you put it in the fridge, they'll never finish and you'll be sort of "locking in" that off-flavor as long as it's in the fridge. Give it plenty of time! You might have homebrew ready by Mardi Gras, instead

 

[Bacon]

+1 to troub insofaras the kit instructions should not be taken as the word of law. Usually they're wrong, sometimes dead wrong. Read on here what to do, and follow that. Much better advice. (specifially Revy has been so nice to us n00bs, so i reccomend his threads on anything, though keep in mind brewing is an art and is as individual as the artist so use them as a guideline rather than a set of rules)

 

[logan3825]

The most important thing I have learned is that you really need to plan in advance if you want beer for a certain occasion. We brewed a Super Bowl beer(Belgian Dubbel) but we started it in September. I started working on a Opening Day beer in November figuring 6 weeks a beer gave me time to try a couple different styles and a couple times to dial things in. I know you can go grain to glass pretty quickly but I am not that experienced yet and I bottle so I am sort of stuck with a 2-3 week minimum after fermentation is finished.

 

[Bacon]

I guess the only plus side is I hear IPA's are best drank young, though I'm far from an authority as my only attempt at an IPA got oxidized as hell and now I use it to cook because it is literally undrinkable.