First All Grain and Also my First Brew!

[spike101188]

So I attempted my first brew yesterday. I am trying to make a Guinness clone and followed the directions from John Palmer. All and all it went pretty smooth. I had a low temperature in my tun initially but I added some hot water and brought it up to temperature. When I was done boiling and cooling, just before I aerated and pitched the yeast, I checked my OG and it was 1.059 and my recipe called for 1.060. I think this is a good thing, yes? I also made the recipe 4.5 gallons because I have a 5 gallon carboy and didn't want to much blow off, and I came to ~4.5 gallons. Here are pictures of the fermentation after 12 hours. Holy krausen! Now I know the painter's tape isn't really necessary but it made me feel safer about not having my stopper pop out.

 

[Dick562]

Any tips for a guy in the same boat, im getting things for my first AG. Did you learn anything that could help me?

 

[spike101188]

Have you read John Palmer's book "How to Brew"? It is where I got almost all of my information for brewing. Here are a few things I would recommend though:
1. Make sure you preheat your mash tun. I didn't and ended up scrambling to add hot water without oxidizing the mash.
2. Everything seems like it takes forever, but it is supposed to. Don't get impatient and lauter to quickly. I really wanted to speed up the lautering process but didn't and ended up with great OG.
3. Be organized. If you have a small kitchen like mine, make sure everything that doesn't have to do with brewing is put away, and don't try brewing when it make overlap with dinner, ie don't say you will cook steak for dinner and then start brewing 2 hours before. SWMBO will not be happy.
4. If your tap water sucks (mine does) make sure you buy enough water to mash and sparge with.
5. During the 1.5-2 hour boil, the wort will shrink quite a bit, so calculate before hand how much wort you will need for the required boil length. There are calculators for this.
6. Be sure you buy enough ice for the cooling of the wort. I bought two bags and it wasn't quite enough, so I go just past the cold break and then had trouble lowering the temperature with just cold water.
7. Always make a starter. I was thinking about not making one but it was very rewarding to wake up and see a krausen.
8. Read up as much as you can before you start the AG. I put atleast 10 hours into reading and studying how to brew AG before I even had my grains.
9. If you are ordering an online recipe, make sure you also order some DME. I didn't and was forced to use Malta Goya for my starter wort. It worked, but I am not sure what kind of flavor the residual in my yeast slurry will impart on the beer.
10. Patience.

 

[rjwhite41]

Congrats on your first AG brew! Dick I would say just dive right in. Expect 8 hours to brew and chill, so it will be a longer day than you are used to. Have your sparge water ready to go ahead of time. And keep a fair amount of boiling water available for temperature adjustments if you are doing an infusion mash. Don't check your temperature very often. First time maybe every 15 minutes just to see how well your mash tun holds temperature and then as little as possible after that (it loses heat every time you open it). If writing your own recipes I would highly recommend "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels and for the basics you can't go wrong with "How to Brew." Good luck and I doubt you will ever turn back to extract brewing after you have done AG.

 

[Skaggz]

Sorry to go off topic, but that is a very interesting carboy. Never seen one with the long neck on it like that. Plastic or glass? And, is there a bung on the side near the bottom? What is that thing that looks like a stopper with a galvanized screw sticking out of it?

 

[spike101188]

It is a Pyrex carboy intended for mixing large quantities of acid or base in a chemical stock room. I am an undergraduate at UCSB and managed to land a job in the stock room in the chemistry department. My boss said we had one of these carboys sitting in the solvent shed, turns out there were three! I am "borrowing" them. Two of the three carboys had the glass drain broken off, that is the black bung with a screw sticking out of it you mentioned. The third still has the "faucet" type drain.

 

[spike101188]

So I opened it up today to change the blow off to an airlock and man did it smell good. Only ~18 more days before I can bottle. The countdown continues.

 

[spike101188]

Bottled my beer last night and took a FG reading. The recipe called for a FG of 1.017 and I hit 1.012, a little low. Also, the ABV I calculated with temperature corrections is 6.4 and the recipe called for 5.63. I am not sure what caused the low FG, probably low mash temp. Oh well, it smells great and I can't wait for it to bottle condition so I can try it.

 

[rjwhite41]

So how did the sample taste?

 

[spike101188]

It has the right stout after taste but the beginning is very green/a little fruity. Well atleast what I would expect is a green taste. It's a little dry as far as I can tell. I guess I will just sample a bottle every week and see how it is doing.

 

[Captain_Bigelow]

4. If your tap water sucks (mine does) make sure you buy enough water to mash and sparge with.

I am in SoCal like you and also have bad tasting water. I picked up one of these filters about a year ago and use water straight from the outdoor hose faucet. It works great and water tastes really good. I figured it has already paid for itself, as I was spending about $7 a batch on bottled water. Also it was a pain carrying all of those heavy water bottles to/from the car each time I brewed.

http://morebeer.com/view_product/16762//Water_Filter_Kit_-_10_inch

 

[spike101188]

Thanks for the heads up. I am going to look into something like that for a kitchen sink though as I am in an apartment without an available hose.