First attempt, how'd I do?

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JAG410

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Ignore the post count, I'll become more active now that I've gone through the homebrew process :) Many thanks to everyone for helping me through their past posts, without even knowing it! I spent the past 2 weeks reading as much as I could.

Anyways, here's my first brew. Supposedly it's a hoppy american ale.
Hoppy Ale Recipe
Since I'm doing a 3ga batch, Jeffrey at Brewer's Connection scaled down the recipe for me (hops stayed the same). Also my lower liquid volume allowed me to do a full boil.

Here's the water with brew saltz added:
hb314-01.JPG


Steeping the grains:
hb314-02.JPG


Mixing the DME:
hb314-03.JPG



(continued)
 
Adding the hops (gee where'd I learn that trick hehe):
hb314-04.JPG


Taking a reading after ice bath:
hb314-06.JPG


Fermentation Chamber:
hb314-07.JPG


The turkey fryer was purchased at Target for $15 a couple weeks ago, and the wine fridge was $40 from craigslist. The burner did well but flamed out a couple times during the grain steeping. The boil was perfect without threat of boilover. The Vinotemp will allow me to ferment in my garage at controlled temps.

So my questions are:

1) What the hell did I just make? :) Whatever it is, do you think the OG is too high?

2) There's a lot of (what appears to be) cold break in the fermenter, is that ok?

Thanks!
 
does your airlock go down into the wort or is that an optical illusion. If it is you should be getting a nice flow of fermenting wort into that bottle soon.
 
You only need that tube to transfer CO2 and krausen -- sticking it in your beer won't hurt it, but you'll lose more beer. Looks like you're more advanced than a lot of us already! :mug:
 
Cold break is OK. It will cause you to have more trub at the bottom though.

If that blow off tube in IN the beer, then pull it out a bit. The pressure from the co2 will cause beer to start coming out the tube and then siphon like action will occur.
 
OG 1.065? That's a pretty big beer. Your first brew, and you already have nicer equipment than I do. Go big or go home, I suppose. :rockin:

If the previous 3 posts weren't enough to convince you, yank that tube out a bit. No need to lose good beer to blowoff.
 
Is that a five gallon carboy? If so, that looks like it is more than a three gallon batch. Or did you top it off a bit to bring down the OG a bit? If you left it at 1.065 you are going to have to be patient with it before you drink it... Thats REALLY hard to do on your first brew...
 
Yeah it's a 3ga carboy, and the blowoff tube is now about 2.5" above the surface of the beer (it's bubbly nicely now!). I made some adjustments after I took the picture, I was just too excited to document my efforts :) I boiled 3 gallons and topped off with half a gallon to get to the shoulder of the carboy.

OG is 1.060. According to the recipe, FG should be 1.014, which would give me a ABV of 6.2% (did I do that math right?). But we'll see what happens when it's all said and done.

I was planning on leaving it in the primary for 3 weeks before bottling. I still haven't decided if I should secondary or dry hop this batch, any thoughts? Or should I save those techniques until I get more experience?
 
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