first brew day done, questions about techniques

[nthammer]

Did my first brew last tuesday the 19th, irish red ale, was a lot of fun, except waiting for the wort to chill (ugh).

couple questions i have for future methods

1. I used tea balls to hold the hops in the boil, I bought two thinking it would be enough for the 1oz cascade and 1oz Fuggle, it wasn't. at about 55-60 minutes i cleaned out the teaballs of the cascade and added the Fuggle for the remaining two minutes. I'm wondering how this could be done differently, besides buying more teaballs, or if it would be better to just drop the hops right into the wort, but then I don't know the best way to strain the wort. any help on what strainer to buy would be great, or if i should just go with more teaballs. My kettle has a spigot though it needs modification, maybe I can make good use of that?

2. I read a lot about using a secondary, can i just siphon the beer from my fermenter into my bottling bucket and let it sit for a few days or a week and then bottle it directly from there?

I took a hydrometer reading after cooling the wort, it was 1.050, which tells me my approx. final ABV will be 6.5% maybe more because of temperature adjustment. I had an 11 hour shift of work just a few hours later, I think I missed all the fermentation, when I came home there were no bubbles in the airlock yet my room REEKED of beer, the next day still no bubbles, but i took a hydrometer reading and it was 1.020, I shook the fermenter and it bubbles for a little bit then stopped. I think the seal may be bad on the bucket.

anyhow, any advice on bottling a clear beer with as little sediment as possible would be great, as well as the next step in brewing, I already bought a wort chiller and am going to get a glass carboy w/ accessories and possibly modify the spigot on my kettle for draining/filtering into my fermenting bucket. I'm also looking into the yeast starter idea.

 

[seriousbeef]

1. Throw them hops in loose!
2. Just strain your wort out with a colander, if any loose hop leftovers go into the ferm they will settle out to the bottom - not a big deal.

 

[Upthewazzu]

1. You can clean out the sack you used for your steeping grains, or a muslin bag, or a turkey stuffing bag. No need to weigh is down, they're sink once they get wet enough.

2. Many difference opinions out there. Some say leave in primary and then rack to bottling bucket once fermentation is COMPLETELY done (this may be 2 or 3 weeks). Others say once fermentation is done, rack to secondary for clarity and to get it off the yeast cake. You can do either, really. But I wouldn't leave it in the bottling bucket as my secondary.

Best advice for any newcomer: PATIENCE is truly a virtue.

 

[nthammer]

Thanks for the fast replies! I guess I didn't think about them settling anyways, good advice!
& I forgot one..
3. After I steeped the grains in the muslin bag (temp was prime 154 F range), i put them in a colander over the kettle. I had boiled a teakettles worth of water a few minutes before, so the water was still pretty hot, and i ran it over the grains, I guess this is the same thing as sparging in an AG method. Do I need to worry about the VOLUME or the TEMP of the water I sparge with in this case? My final volume came out to a bit over 5 gallons in the fermenter, which seems good as I'm sure I will lose volume when racking

I don't know what my OG (is OG done before yeast is pitched but after boiling?) reading was SUPPOSED to be but I think 1.050 is a good number.

And yeah, this whole concept of 'patience' is new to me, will be difficult haha.

 

[RM-MN]

1. Throw the hops in loose and forget about them. When the boil is done, dump the whole works into the fermenter. When the ferment slows down the hops sink to the bottom only to be covered by the yeast as it goes dormant. When it is time for bottling, just rack above the yeast (which you want to do anyway) and your hops stay in the fermenter until you clean it out.

2. Don't use the bottling bucket as a secondary. The purpose of a secondary is to let more yeast settle out and when you go to bottle your beer you will stir up all the yeast that settled, sort of a waste of time. The other problem is your bottling bucket is too large and the beer will have a large surface area which is likely to lead to infection. If you simply leave the beer in the fermenter longer it will clear there as well as it would in secondary. Worried about off flavors from leaving the beer? Forget it, doesn't happen in homebrew quantities.

3 Leave your beer in the primary longer than you would expect. 2 weeks is the shortest I ever leave my beers and the longest has been 9 weeks with the usual about 3 weeks. My beers clear up quickly in the bottles with little yeast layer in the bottom. Don't bottle without checking the final gravity. Sometimes a ferment will stick and you don't want to bottle only to have it start fermenting again. Cleaning up spilled beer mixed with glass shards from exploding bottles isn't fun.

 

[Epiphanic]

1. Not sure how you could do it differently with the teaballs (outside of buying more). But like Seriousbeef mentioned, you can throw them in loose. Any gunk that does get into the fermenter will settle to the bottom anyway.

2. Personally, I only use a secondary if I'm going to do something additional to it (adding fruit, dry hopping, etc.) I don't move to a secondary for clarity purposes because I find that my beers clear just fine by letting them sit in the primary. That said, other's do use a secondary to clear. Like most things in this hobby, it's a matter of preference. Don't use the bottling bucket as your secondary though.

In regards to sediment, that is inevitable if you're bottle conditioning. But given enough time, a nice, tight layer of sediment will be at the bottom of your bottle leaving you with a beautiful glass of clear beer.

Upthewazzu said it best. Patience is a virtue.

 

[JLem]

Throw the hops in loose. Strain, or don't (not sure it really matters)

Skip the secondary unless you have a good reason to use it. Leave the beer in primary for 10-21 days (or more), check the gravity a few days apart to ensure that it is stable (and sufficiently low), rack to the bottling bucket with priming sugar, and bottle.

ABV depends on the difference between OG and FG. ABV = (OG - FG) x 131. So for your beer ABV = 3.93%.