NOVA Brewer
Well-Known Member
Howdy, all. I've been lurking for a while, and been thinking about this hobby for the past 6 months or so. After buying a new house, though, I felt bad dropping the cash for the "initial buy-in."
Enter my brother-in-law who got me a starter homebrewing kit for Christmas.
It's a Cooper's intro kit, with a big plastic fermenter that is also used for bottling. Came with 3.3lbs of pre-hopped malt extract labelled "lager," some sugar, plastic PET bottles, and drop-in pellets for carbonating the bottles. I ran down to my local homebrew supply store, bought a glass carboy to ferment in (will use the Cooper's plastic as a bottling bucket), some Light DME, and other odds and ends.
Boiled the liquid extract with about 2.5 pounds of the light DME for 60 minutes in about 2 gallons of water. While the was going, I sanitized every other piece of equipment - beer thief, hydrometer, fermenter, funnel, etc.
Following Papazian's guidance, I put 3 gallons of cold water in the carboy, then added the wort. Moving it down to the basement, I prepared to run a cold "bath" in my laundry sink to cool down the fermenter to 70 - 75 degrees. I put the cork and airlock in to keep the proto-beer isolated from bacteria.
I then promptly forgot about it, and went to bed.
The next morning, sure enough, the wort was 72 degrees. Shrugging off my absent-mindedness, I pitched the yeast and headed off to work. This was at 6:30am.
I came home at 4:30pm, and there were no signs of fermentation. The wort was now 67 degrees down in the cool basement. I lugged it up to the closet in the master bedroom, which was 72 degrees, gave the carboy a few gentle shakes, and let it be. In two hours, there was active fermentation with bubbles out of the airlock every 4 - 5 seconds.
The next morning, it was bubbling away, once every second, with a nice foamy kreusen. I could get a strong whiff of alcohol coming out of the airlock, too.
It's six days later, and there's still a bubble every now and then. I plan on bottling next week, after 14 days.
So, whaddaya think, folks? Will it be palatable?
Enter my brother-in-law who got me a starter homebrewing kit for Christmas.
It's a Cooper's intro kit, with a big plastic fermenter that is also used for bottling. Came with 3.3lbs of pre-hopped malt extract labelled "lager," some sugar, plastic PET bottles, and drop-in pellets for carbonating the bottles. I ran down to my local homebrew supply store, bought a glass carboy to ferment in (will use the Cooper's plastic as a bottling bucket), some Light DME, and other odds and ends.
Boiled the liquid extract with about 2.5 pounds of the light DME for 60 minutes in about 2 gallons of water. While the was going, I sanitized every other piece of equipment - beer thief, hydrometer, fermenter, funnel, etc.
Following Papazian's guidance, I put 3 gallons of cold water in the carboy, then added the wort. Moving it down to the basement, I prepared to run a cold "bath" in my laundry sink to cool down the fermenter to 70 - 75 degrees. I put the cork and airlock in to keep the proto-beer isolated from bacteria.
I then promptly forgot about it, and went to bed.
The next morning, sure enough, the wort was 72 degrees. Shrugging off my absent-mindedness, I pitched the yeast and headed off to work. This was at 6:30am.
I came home at 4:30pm, and there were no signs of fermentation. The wort was now 67 degrees down in the cool basement. I lugged it up to the closet in the master bedroom, which was 72 degrees, gave the carboy a few gentle shakes, and let it be. In two hours, there was active fermentation with bubbles out of the airlock every 4 - 5 seconds.
The next morning, it was bubbling away, once every second, with a nice foamy kreusen. I could get a strong whiff of alcohol coming out of the airlock, too.
It's six days later, and there's still a bubble every now and then. I plan on bottling next week, after 14 days.
So, whaddaya think, folks? Will it be palatable?