First Batch - Advice would be great

[blade_420]

Hi everyone. I'm Ben I've just took the plunge and bought my first homebrew kit and had some stuff donated to me. I'm looking to make a really hoppy wheat beer and have cobbled together this using beer smith....

Coopers Wheat Beer Kit 1.7kg
Coopers Wheat Malt Extract 1.5kg
7g Citra hops @ 60 mins
14g Citra hops @ 20 mins
14g Sorachi Ace @ 20 mins
14g Sorachi Ace @ 5 mins
Wyeast 1010 American Wheat Ale Yeast

Going to do a partial boil on my stove and top it up with water I'll rob from the brewery (Oh yeah I work at a pub with a 5 barrel brewing system).

According to Brewsmith I should end up with a SG of 1.053 and a FG of 1.012 which should make it about 5.5%-ish with any luck.

Any tips or advice or blatant school boy errors?

Cheers

 

[TTB-J]

Sounds like you're good to go! Good luck!

 

[Robms88]

School boy errors, to me, are burning the liquid extract to the bottom of the stove pot, not sanitising properly, and being too eager and impatient to taste your brew and getting disappointing first opinions. Thankfully, I read a lot before I started and did not have this happen (apart from being to eager, lol).

Working at brewery, you should have not problems.

 

[fozzman]

I would be very interested in kowing how this batch turns out for you. Coppers Wheat was my first batch as well. I used one can of their hopped wheat and one can of their unhopped light malt extract. Boiled the water, removed from heat, added the extract and poured into the primary. One week in the primary, two weeks in the secondary, added 3 oz of raspberry extract at bottling, and three weeks conditioning in bottles. Two weeks later, I only have 5 bottles left as it was a big hit. Tried a bottle at 1 week and 2 weeks and the third week was the charm. Good luck.

 

[blade_420]

Cheers for the input guys. Unfortunately I don't work in the brewery (yet lol) I work in the bar attached. Does mean I've got access to 2 brewers tho, think Chris is already getting sick of questions. When I told him I was ordering my first kit he said "why on earth would u wanna go and do something silly like that?!" lol.

I've wanted to start home brewing for about a year but done nothing but read books, forums, study YouTube and watch to much brewing tv. Trying to learn as much as I can. I think I know what I'm doing with it all.

The one confusion I do have is about primary and secondary fermenting. My understanding was after I've made my wort, dumped it into my fermenter and pitched some yeast I've just got to wait for a couple of weeks till the yeasts done its magic then bottle it? Do I have to transfer it to a secondary or can I just bottle from my first fermentor?

Also would people use Irish moss or something like that in this? I wanna make sure it's a nice cloudy wheat beer but obviously dont want lots of big clumps of sediment running through it.

Just had my hops and yeast turn up, desperate for the rest now. I wanna get brewing!!!!

 

[Mellow52]

Watch your steeping temperature, critical.

 

[fozzman]

Primary vs. Secondary, one of the most common questions here. Most people are saying that there is no need to transfer to a secondary unless you are adding fruits or dry hopping. If you haven't already, check out BrewingNetwork.com and the Brew Strong podcasts. Search for podcasts about fermentation. Oxygen can pass through plastic but not glass. So I prefer to let everything settle out in glass. I didn't use irish moss and my batch came out great. Nice and cloudy with no floaties. I do think the secondary helped with that. The beer did turn out a bit darker than I thought it would, but I think that may be due to my use of all LME. Anyway the color isn't really an issue to me. Still a great tasting brew.

 

[kapbrew13]

I normally primary 3 weeks at a steady temp and then either bottle or keg. Only secondary if dry hopping to get more hoppy aroma or for longer fermentation or adding extra things.

 

[bkl63]

And above all… Relax Don't Worry, Have a Home(or in your case, just a) Brew!

 

[blade_420]

Don't worry I've got some homebrew kindly donated by a customer to drink on brew day. Got a Honey, Lemon and Ginger ale, choc orange stout and a crab apple wheat, I will forever love that man lol. Was really hoping I could brew today but alas nothing else has turned up.

Was at work this morning chatting to a guy that's been homebrewing nearly 10 years. He's never heard of Sorachi Ace hops so we had to crack the bag open so he could have a smell. Even got a half of one of the lesser hopped beers on the bar and threw and handfull in to see what happened. The smell was beautiful but didn't effect the taste much, well till I burped lol. Nothing but creamy lemony spice, think I'm gunna like these hops lol.

Thanks for clearing up the fermentation thing. I've been listening to the sunday session from the brewing network but will go search out brew strong.

One last thought I've been having, what about throwing in some coriander seed and orange peel as well? I know they're both traditional ingredients of wheat beer, and the orange should compliment the citra hops well. Part of me just wants to taste the hops tho....

 

[blade_420]

Ok so it's brew day. Currently waiting on a boil but I put in to much water before the extracts. I've taken some out so I reduce the chance of a boil over but I need to know if I should ditch it and chance a lower abv (got some dme I could add) or add it to the fermentor at the end?

HELP!!!!