Hi all! So a few days ago I put my first 'from scratch' recipe up here which was basically a mish-mash of ingredients to use up my 2 remaining Mr Beer cans of mix. I got some great feedback on that and appreciate the help. But, a lot of my ingredients were ordered online and will not be delivered till next week so when I came into some unexpected funds on Tuesday, I decided to go shopping! On this trip I added my first carboy(6.5ga) with stopper, a carboy dryer, a huge funnel with strainer, 2 Michigan Brewing Company pint glasses, a mixed six pack of previously mentioned breweries beer, and a brewers best imperial blonde recipe kit to hold me over till the rest of my crap gets delivered. So here is how brew day went (Wednesday)
The plan was to go completely by the instructions, but my interperetation of them said that they were wrong (I know, I sound like a teenager right?). First thing I noticed was that one of my wort additions was to be a pound of corn sugar, in reference to Mr. Palmer's book this is a no no, so I nixed that and subbed a pound of sparkling amber DME. The corn sugar thing also ticked me off a little because this is supposed to be a premium kit, but maybe in hindsight it was part of the style and I should/could have let it slide.
Next was the steeping grains. The instuctions said to steep 1lb for 20 minutes in 2.5 gallons of water. Once again, from Mr. Palmer, this is too much water, so I started my 2.5 gallon boil in my brewpot and started a pot with 3/4 gallon of water to steep in, and then upped the steeping time to 30 minutes.
The final big change I made was the order of extract editions to the boil. Once my steeped grain wort was added to the main boil, the instructions said to add all of the pilsen LME 6.6lb and the corn sugar, then 40 minute boil, add the Wheat DME, then finish the boil with hop additions throughout. I have also heard that the longer you boil LME the darker it will get so what I did was added the wheat DME and the subbed amber DME, then boiled for 40 minutes, then added the pilsen LME with 20 minutes left to go. Oh yeah, I added some orange zest with 10 minutes left in the boil too.
All in all, brew day went well, my wife supplied an extra pair of hands when needed, and my kids touched relatively little of my sanitized equipment. The only major blunder was that I jammed the f'ing stopper through the top of my carboy, that was a joyous moment! I know I should just RDWHAHB, but I don't have any yet! So I did some deep breathing and cracked a Leffe Blonde instead, covered the top with sanitized foil and went online and ordered 3 universal carboy bungs!
So, I hope that I did not ruin this beer with my sub's and total disregard of authority, and I will probably not do any kits for a while, just find recipes online or make my own, but all in all, I am pretty happy. Thanks for listening and sorry for the jumbo sized post!
Cheers,
Collin
The plan was to go completely by the instructions, but my interperetation of them said that they were wrong (I know, I sound like a teenager right?). First thing I noticed was that one of my wort additions was to be a pound of corn sugar, in reference to Mr. Palmer's book this is a no no, so I nixed that and subbed a pound of sparkling amber DME. The corn sugar thing also ticked me off a little because this is supposed to be a premium kit, but maybe in hindsight it was part of the style and I should/could have let it slide.
Next was the steeping grains. The instuctions said to steep 1lb for 20 minutes in 2.5 gallons of water. Once again, from Mr. Palmer, this is too much water, so I started my 2.5 gallon boil in my brewpot and started a pot with 3/4 gallon of water to steep in, and then upped the steeping time to 30 minutes.
The final big change I made was the order of extract editions to the boil. Once my steeped grain wort was added to the main boil, the instructions said to add all of the pilsen LME 6.6lb and the corn sugar, then 40 minute boil, add the Wheat DME, then finish the boil with hop additions throughout. I have also heard that the longer you boil LME the darker it will get so what I did was added the wheat DME and the subbed amber DME, then boiled for 40 minutes, then added the pilsen LME with 20 minutes left to go. Oh yeah, I added some orange zest with 10 minutes left in the boil too.
All in all, brew day went well, my wife supplied an extra pair of hands when needed, and my kids touched relatively little of my sanitized equipment. The only major blunder was that I jammed the f'ing stopper through the top of my carboy, that was a joyous moment! I know I should just RDWHAHB, but I don't have any yet! So I did some deep breathing and cracked a Leffe Blonde instead, covered the top with sanitized foil and went online and ordered 3 universal carboy bungs!
So, I hope that I did not ruin this beer with my sub's and total disregard of authority, and I will probably not do any kits for a while, just find recipes online or make my own, but all in all, I am pretty happy. Thanks for listening and sorry for the jumbo sized post!
Cheers,
Collin
