Doing a lot of firsts tonight!

[edco76]

I got a new 10g pot for Christmas!

Also got a flask!

So today I bought a new propane burner.

Right now I am starting on:

*First full boil (extract)
*First outside brew
*First propane brew
*First time using a yeast starter.



Any advice or thing I need to do differently/adjust?

I am "boiling in" my new pot now. It's aluminium but really thick.

Got a Bayou Classic burner. The water has been going about 1/2 hour. Not boiling yet but seams on the brink.

I did a 2l water/200g DME starter last night with a packet of S-04. I seem to have a nice little cake in the bottom now.

Doing a Moo-Hoo Clone

 

[IslandLizard]

Awesome!

Hints:
Don't boil all the extract. Only 1/3 or 1/2 and add the remainder at flameout. Stir well until dissolved. Keeps the wort/beer fresher tasting that way.

Watch out for scorching the extract. Propane can deliver a lot of heat and make the extract stick to the bottom and scorch.

How are you going to chill?

The yeast:
We usually cold crash the yeast overnight in the fridge for it to settle. Some yeast does that quickly. Then before you start brewing, pour off most of the clear starter beer and while you're brewing, let the slurry (in the flask, covered with a sanitized foil cap) sit at room temps to warm up to your wort temp, oxygenate/aerate and pitch.

It is not really necessary to make starters with dry yeast, 11.5 grams has usually plenty of cells for 5 gallons, when re-hydrated, unless it's very a high gravity ale. But a starter assures an even better yeast count and that the yeast is viable. You could keep some of the slurry behind (say 20-50 ml) and make another starter from that.

Read up about storing yeast in the fridge. Here's my method.
When pouring off the starter beer, I pour it into a well-sanitized beaker. Then to store the held back yeast from the starter flask, I pour some of the starter beer in, swirl, and pour the thin slurry into a well-sanitized small mason jar (1/2 pint is great). Then top up to the rim or a bit below with more starter beer. Cap and refrigerate. Do not freeze! That will make your next starter. You can do so indefinitely if you keep utter sanitation standards.

 

[ruger988]

There wasn't really any need to do a starter with a dry yeast, plenty of cells for a 5gal batch in one of those packets. Good practice though I guess.

 

[edco76]

There wasn't really any need to do a starter with a dry yeast, plenty of cells for a 5gal batch in one of those packets. Good practice though I guess.

Practice is fun!

Also, Brewsmith showed me coming up short with 1 pack. I think I was like 60 billion short.

Its a high gravity brew. I don't know how brewsmith accounts for lactose but my OG should be about 1.07

 

[ZebulonBrewer]

I'm in almost the same boat. I just got my first burner, and will brew outside for the first time soon, in (hopefully) a new 49 qr Jarhill Kettle. I've made a few starters but hey, as you've seen, they're easy.

Cheers to milestones!

 

[Kampenken]

Practice is fun!

Also, Brewsmith showed me coming up short with 1 pack. I think I was like 60 billion short.

Its a high gravity brew. I don't know how brewsmith accounts for lactose but my OG should be about 1.07

I agree with the above on no need for a starter with dry yeast, but maybe you couldn't get another packet? and as you noted, practice is fun!

I use Brewer's Friend for calculators and all their target pitch rates can move substantially based on the "brewer type" you choose. Based on your comments I'm guessing though it was a lower brewer type- e.g. in BF, with a 1.070 and dry packet, at a "Pro Brewer 1.0" which makes sense for this OG, the calc is for 323B cells, so you'd be more than 60B light, but with your starter size, large!, you're actually over target! I see a 1.5L w/154g of DME for a starter would be sufficient. All that being said, you should still be fine, so enjoy that brew! Did you use a stir plate? (if not, easy dyi on here you can copy)

+1 on boiling in the pot!

Enjoy the outside brew day! I brewed here (Montco county, north of Philly) yesterday in sunny 56' weather, was great, and am brewing tomorrow here with friends to teach the AG process but high will be a bit chillier- 43!

 

[edco76]

I don't have a stir plate yet so I did the Taylor Swift method and shook it off!

My daughter helped, I told her to shake it every time she walked by. Of course she accompanied the shaking with a chorus of that song.

 

[IslandLizard]

Practice is fun!

Also, Brewsmith showed me coming up short with 1 pack. I think I was like 60 billion short.

Its a high gravity brew. I don't know how brewsmith accounts for lactose but my OG should be about 1.07

Lactose is unfermentable for sacch. so you won't include it in your gravity calculations for yeast needed. Unless you added a boatload of it, you're still dealing with a pretty HG brew anyway. 1.087-1.097 without the lactose perhaps? And with extract... Be glad you used a lot of yeast.

Now control those ferm temps. Lower and steady is best.

 

[edco76]

Lactose is unfermentable for sacch. so you won't include it in your gravity calculations for yeast needed. Unless you added a boatload of it, you're still dealing with a pretty HG brew anyway. 1.087-1.097 without the lactose perhaps? And with extract... Be glad you used a lot of yeast.

Now control those ferm temps. Lower and steady is best.

Right now I have a swamp cooler in a closet lol.

It works pretty well though. I keep the thermostat @ 68 in my house and with an water bath and wet T-shirt I can keep the fermenter at 64-68.

 

[IslandLizard]

Alright!
Next time, drop some frozen water bottles in that tub to bring it down to 62-64. Only 2, twice a day will probably get it there. That water jacket is a really good heat sink. I now use a large cooler instead of a tote.

 

[IslandLizard]

Practice is fun!

Also, Brewsmith showed me coming up short with 1 pack. I think I was like 60 billion short.

Its a high gravity brew. I don't know how brewsmith accounts for lactose but my OG should be about 1.07

Correction:
I totally misread your OG and my reply (copied below) was based on my mistaken 1.107!

1.070 is not that high of a gravity for a properly re-hydrated S-04 to come up short in cell count. I'd say don't use the yeast calculator in BS unless you know all its parameters and how it calculates cell count.

As noted already, Mr.Malty or Brewer's Friend (my preference site for most calcs) will give you more realistic results. Most of us home brewers use them.

Lactose is unfermentable for sacch. so you won't include it in your gravity calculations for yeast needed. Unless you added a boatload of it, you're still dealing with a pretty HG brew anyway. 1.087-1.097 without the lactose perhaps? And with extract... Be glad you used a lot of yeast.

Now control those ferm temps. Lower and steady is best.

See my note above regarding the misread OG. So with 5-10 points of Lactose your fermentables are around 1.065-1.060. That's pretty standard for home brew. One sachet of S-04 should be plenty, re-hydrated of course.

So how did it go?

 

[edco76]

Alright!
Next time, drop some frozen water bottles in that tub to bring it down to 62-64. Only 2, twice a day will probably get it there. That water jacket is a really good heat sink. I now use a large cooler instead of a tote.

I have to take injections which are shipped to me in ice packs, so I have a huge stockpile of them. If it starts slipping too high, I drop on in. I always drop one in the first day or so because that seems to be when most of the heat is produced. After that the water seems to do pretty well by itself.

I'll have to get a chamber of some sort this spring though because I'm in Alabama.

 

[edco76]

Correction:
I totally misread your OG and my reply (copied below) was based on my mistaken 1.107!

1.070 is not that high of a gravity for a properly re-hydrated S-04 to come up short in cell count. I'd say don't use the yeast calculator in BS unless you know all its parameters and how it calculates cell count.

As noted already, Mr.Malty or Brewer's Friend (my preference site for most calcs) will give you more realistic results. Most of us home brewers use them.



See my note above regarding the misread OG. So with 5-10 points of Lactose your fermentables are around 1.065-1.060. That's pretty standard for home brew. One sachet of S-04 should be plenty, re-hydrated of course.

So how did it go?

It actually turned into a bit of an experiment lol


I botched my "starter". I somehow managed to use lactose instead of DME lol, they looked the same and.....hell, I dunno.



Didnt realize it until I looked for my lactose

So, I didnt know if the yeast were still viable but what I DID know was that they hadn't propagated.

I dumped them anyway (because I needed the lactose) and also added a dry pack I had on hand.

So I have somewhere between 1-2 packs of dry yeast in there

Its fermenting though! I have activity

 

[edco76]

Also, my OG was 1.082

I had a huge steep which may have extracted some fermentables and since I didnt actually use a starter I added 7lb of DME instead of 6.5

 

[IslandLizard]

Oh, that was you with the lactose/DME mix up. I usually don't drink until I start heating up mash water.

You've got plenty of yeast in there.

Steeping doesn't extract much if any fermentables, unless you "steep" sugar. But mashing can from some malts, like Munich, Vienna, Biscuit, etc. Look into partial mashing. You'd need a 2 gallon pot and a large strainer.