First batch, looking to streamline

[rjanson]

Hey all,

I made my first batch a couple of weekends ago and it's resting nicely in bottles waiting to be sampled. Everything was looking and smelling good as I bottled it, so I've got high hopes for the end result!

I thoroughly enjoyed the process and have been reading up trying to understand as much as I can. One thing I'd like to understand better if the boiling and transferring process. I fell like I probably wasted a lot of effort and water here.

Here is a rough outline of the steps I followed, being careful to be clean and sanitary along the way:
Boiled water, added malt and hops etc according to instructions.
Let the wort cool to recommended temp (no wort chiller, yet)
Poured warm wort from kettle into plastic fermenting/bottling bucket and added water to the 5 gallon mark.
Transferred from bucket to 6.5 gallon glass carboy via spigot and hose.
Capped and fermented for the recommended time.
Auto-siphon from carboy to bottling bucket with primer.
Beer filling wand into bottles.

So it seems likely that with a worth chiller I can skip the step of transferring from kettle to bucket to carboy, and go straight from kettle to carboy? Anything else I can to to streamline or improve the process?

Thanks!

 

[flars]

You could cool your wort in the kitchen/laundry sink with ice and cold water. Then you can pour directly to the carboy. Topping off with ice cold water would probably bring the wort to the low 60°F range for pitching the yeast.

Check the volume markings on your bucket and carboy by adding a measured amount of water to find the five gallon mark. Premarked buckets are often not correct.

 

[rjanson]

Check the volume markings on your bucket and carboy by adding a measured amount of water to find the five gallon mark. Premarked buckets are often not correct.

Ah, thanks for that tip. I assumed the bucket would be accurate! I planned to do this for the carboy since it has no markings, but I'll do both.

 

[C-Rider]

Poured warm wort from kettle into plastic fermenting/bottling bucket and added water to the 5 gallon mark.
Transferred from bucket to 6.5 gallon glass carboy via spigot and hose.

Why not just pour it into the glass carboy?

 

[jtratcliff]

Why not just pour it into the glass carboy?

This... If the wort is truly just "warm" and not "hot" you can go straight to the carboy. Or just ferment in the bucket

The issue is that too large of a temperature swing will cause the carboy to crack from thermal stress. If you've already cooled your wort to just "warm", you should be OK.

I, personally, do no-chill/slow chill, where I leave my wort in the kettle until close to pitching temps. Then straight into fermenter and in a swamp cooler.

Can you tell I don't have adequate temp control, yet?

 

[rjanson]

Why not just pour it into the glass carboy?

Because it was my first brew and i didn't know any better!

I had gathered that was an unnecessary step, but was looking to confirm and see if there's anything else I'm doing wrong/backwards.

Thanks!

 

[rjanson]

I've given up using a separate bottling bucket. Chill wort (I use half a 44 gallon drum instead of a sink to cool, but I'm brewing AG so I have a lot more liquid than you), dump into plastic fermenter. Two weeks later, boil the sugar and water, tip it straight into the fermenter and very gently stir. Wait 20 minutes (while you sanitize bottles, soak caps etc) for any big yeast chunks to settle and bottle away. At worst, the first half a bottle has yeast chunks in it. That gets tipped.

I was having one of those in-depth beer theory discussions with my LHBS guy (who is a champ) and it got me thinking about oxidisation. If you're very careful in adding the sugar mix, and stir very gently, I can't see why there would not still be a nice layer of CO2 on top of your beer throughout this entire process. It is heavier than air, after all. If I'm feeling particularly anal that day, I'll leave the caps sitting on the bottles before capping them until I've finished bottling, so the C02 has a change to "burp out" the remaining bottle air. If anyone wants to fund my research on this, PM me!

Plus, for me, the risk of the odd yeast chunk is better than the monotony of sterilizing (and then cleaning) a bottling bucket, and the associated infection/oxidising risks that go along with double handling things.

You really don't need a wort chiller for extract brewing - (I would argue you don't NEED one at all) you can easily get close to pitching temp by filling and draining the sink a few times. Also, freeze some containers of boiled/cooled water, too. It all saves time at the end of the brewday.

Thanks!

I guess I've been reading too many beer equipment sites that tell me if I don't have a wort chiller my beer will be a failure and I'll be a failure and lose my wife, kids and dogs, and be doomed to drinking cheap malt liquor for eternity.

As far as just using the bucket to ferment, is that better or worse or indifferent compared to a glass carboy? I mean I've already got a couple nice ones, so it's not going to add to my cost to use, right?

 

[flars]

Plastic fermentors work. Just don't use the bottling bucket.

I prefer to watch the beer ferment and clear in a glass carboy. I can also see the tip of the auto siphon, for most beers, to keep it just above the trub layer when racking to the bottling bucket.

 

[MarkZ56]

You could cool your wort in the kitchen/laundry sink with ice and cold water. Then you can pour directly to the carboy. Topping off with ice cold water would probably bring the wort to the low 60°F range for pitching the yeast.

Check the volume markings on your bucket and carboy by adding a measured amount of water to find the five gallon mark. Premarked buckets are often not correct.

I found this to be painfully true. I made 3 batches before I calibrated this. the 5 Gal line was 4.5 gal. My most recent brew (and first AG) is the first I've done with this new information in tow.

I'm new to the game too and I broke the Cardinal Rule of making beer. I didn't relax. Enjoy the process. I tried to overhaul what I did from batch 1 to batch 2 and that was a bad recipe-turns out batch 2 tasted great, but still.