Mothman
Well-Known Member
After many, many, weeks (months?) of reading, researching, finding and buying all the gear I needed to get started, I finally got a brew done today.
Did it at a buddy's place, he did his batch first, followed by me doing mine (each of us assisting along the way for both).
I did a 3 gallon OBK English Brown Ale extract + specialty grain kit.
I feel like things went pretty darn smoothly.
I think we were pretty on top of sanitizing everything, got everything in the kettle at the right times, etc.
The stove-top boil seemed decent, not super vigorous, but a pretty strong roll. Didn't really get much of a hot break, but not sure how much is normal for an extract brew.
Post-boil Volume and OG were a little off... I should have been left with 3.25 gallons at 1.050, whereas I actually ended up with about 3.3 or 3.4 gallons, at 1.056 (at 68F). Not quite sure how the OG could be off when using extract, especially how it could be high, with a slightly-too-high volume, unless it's possible to glean a little bit of sugars off steeping the crystal 120 and brown malts... or if my hydrometer reading wasn't quite accurate. My friend looked too though and agreed it was reading 1.056.
Did a full-volume boil, no top-up water, so mixing wasn't an issue.
I'm not sure how significant a .006 difference is anyways, nor does it truly matter to me at this point. Just interesting and something I'd hope to understand a bit better going forward.
Used my buddies immersion chiller to cool the wort to 70F in about 15 minutes, then dumped from height into the primary bucket to aerate.
I hydrated the yeast (Safales s04) in about a cup and a half of boiled, cooled (about 70F) water, for about 15-20 minutes (while we were cooling the wort), stirred it up a bit, and poured into the wort, put the lid and airlock on, and sloshed the bucket around a bit more.
Enjoyed a few cold beers along the way, relaxed for a couple hours after finishing up, then strapped the bucket into one of the kids car seats in the back seat of the car and headed home. Hoping that the extra bit of jossling during the 45 minute drive home, a couple hours after pitching, isn't a problem.
Moved it into my pre-chilled Cool Brewing fermentation cooler, with a bottle of ice, and it's currently sitting at 65F (as measured with a digital probe taped to the bucket, behind insulating foam).
Even came up with a name for the inaugural brew. After the brewing was done, we (me, buddy, his GF, and nephew) were playing a couple of board games... at one point I was leading the game, and my buddy said that I was in trouble now, they were all going to target me.
No more than 5 seconds later, the chair I was sitting on suddenly disintegrated and fell apart under me, and I went ass over tea-kettle backwards onto the floor.
Much laughter, some concern over my buddies apparent Magic JuJu powers, and Broken Chair Brown Ale was born.
Did it at a buddy's place, he did his batch first, followed by me doing mine (each of us assisting along the way for both).
I did a 3 gallon OBK English Brown Ale extract + specialty grain kit.
I feel like things went pretty darn smoothly.
I think we were pretty on top of sanitizing everything, got everything in the kettle at the right times, etc.
The stove-top boil seemed decent, not super vigorous, but a pretty strong roll. Didn't really get much of a hot break, but not sure how much is normal for an extract brew.
Post-boil Volume and OG were a little off... I should have been left with 3.25 gallons at 1.050, whereas I actually ended up with about 3.3 or 3.4 gallons, at 1.056 (at 68F). Not quite sure how the OG could be off when using extract, especially how it could be high, with a slightly-too-high volume, unless it's possible to glean a little bit of sugars off steeping the crystal 120 and brown malts... or if my hydrometer reading wasn't quite accurate. My friend looked too though and agreed it was reading 1.056.
Did a full-volume boil, no top-up water, so mixing wasn't an issue.
I'm not sure how significant a .006 difference is anyways, nor does it truly matter to me at this point. Just interesting and something I'd hope to understand a bit better going forward.
Used my buddies immersion chiller to cool the wort to 70F in about 15 minutes, then dumped from height into the primary bucket to aerate.
I hydrated the yeast (Safales s04) in about a cup and a half of boiled, cooled (about 70F) water, for about 15-20 minutes (while we were cooling the wort), stirred it up a bit, and poured into the wort, put the lid and airlock on, and sloshed the bucket around a bit more.
Enjoyed a few cold beers along the way, relaxed for a couple hours after finishing up, then strapped the bucket into one of the kids car seats in the back seat of the car and headed home. Hoping that the extra bit of jossling during the 45 minute drive home, a couple hours after pitching, isn't a problem.
Moved it into my pre-chilled Cool Brewing fermentation cooler, with a bottle of ice, and it's currently sitting at 65F (as measured with a digital probe taped to the bucket, behind insulating foam).
Even came up with a name for the inaugural brew. After the brewing was done, we (me, buddy, his GF, and nephew) were playing a couple of board games... at one point I was leading the game, and my buddy said that I was in trouble now, they were all going to target me.
No more than 5 seconds later, the chair I was sitting on suddenly disintegrated and fell apart under me, and I went ass over tea-kettle backwards onto the floor.
Much laughter, some concern over my buddies apparent Magic JuJu powers, and Broken Chair Brown Ale was born.
