First brew.... heart pounding!

[boomguy]

Its been a long time since I had brewed and wow had I forgotten what a hot break is like, to have that foam reaching for the rim of the kettle with all that wort boiling hard below the surface. I got through it though with the help of a spray bottle and my finger hovering above the temp controls... what a rush! Here is the recipe that with the help of Unionrdr that I came up with for my can of Coopers select IPA, my wife is calling it IPAcalypse because of the brewing day.
1.7 kg can of thomas coopers ipa added at flame out
2 lbs of 2 row
1/2 lb of crystal 60 , both steeped at 160° for 1 hour
1 lb of amber lme
1/2 lb of light dme , both added at begining of boil
1 tsp of irish moss add at 10 minutes
Cascade hops .5 ounce at 40,20, and 5 minutes with anouther 1 ounce dry hopped in secondary
1/2 lb of coopers brew enhancer #2 added at 1 minute
Coopers yeast rehydrated with 1 tbsp of dme, pitched at 66°

All went well until I aerated the wort, pitched the yeast and then put the lid on the primary... the guy sold me a primary with no seal, I couldn't believe it, the friggin' lid was just banging back and forth on the bucket! I quickly grabbed my glass 6 gallon carboy, sanitized it and with the help of my endearing wife managed to pour the wort into the carboy through a small funnel. I hope the yeast will be OK.
I managed to record a starting gravity of 1046.

 

[Macdonald87]

Welcome back sounds delicious.

 

[boomguy]

Color came out nice

I took a taste of the wort and it was quite malty upfront and then the cascade hops hit....

 

[unionrdr]

Thank you for siting my influences. It always feels good to see that my recipes from all my experiments gone well can help others along. The color looks virtually the same as my cascade pale ale while in process. Man,I wish I had some of that left right now!
It may well darken a lil bit to what you'll see in My Gallery. I got a good pic of it in there. It came out read through it clear. Yours should too with a little patience. Your OG is spot on with the range my Cooper's based pales. I'm curious as to how this turns out. Looks like you did a fine job on this one,just see it through with a good process.

 

[boomguy]

Well even with the emergency transfer we have fermentation! About 5 hours in the airlock started to bubble and I can see trub ( think that's the righ word) floating on the top of the beer. Curious about one thing, will the initial tastes start to merge in the carboy or will it stay very malty with a strong hops finish.... trying to decide if I should still dry hop.
thanks again

 

[unionrdr]

It'll likely still taste green out of the fermenter,hops & malt taste kinda sharp more than like what they will out of the finished bottles. And that foam on the top is krausen,or yeast foam. By the time it's settled out & ready to bottle it should taste pretty decent,but flat.

 

[boomguy]

My house is quite cool and my thermometer says 64°, it is up against the glass of the carboy, the airlock is giving a blurp every 10 to 15 seconds or so. Do you think the coopers yeast will be fine in this termperature.

 

[aiptasia]

Looks good. FYI, if your LBHS carries liquid fermcap, pick up a bottle and store it in your fridge. It's an insoluble anti-foaming agent that won't affect your beer in any way. A few drops added during your boil will eliminate boil over risk from the hot break, and it also reduces the risk of blow off issues from the krausen during fermentation. I use it religiously, especially on high gravity beers with aggressive yeast strains.

 

[boomguy]

I'll look for it next time I can get down there. Without the foam during the hot break how can you tell the conversion has happened?

 

[RM-MN]

If you are using extract you don't have to worry about conversion, that's how the extract was made. You also won't have much hot break as that happened in the process of making the extract too. Your temperature is great for the initial part of the ferment as it keeps the yeast from going crazy but you might want to bring the temperature up a bit after 4 or 5 days to encourage the yeast to keep working. If it stays too cool they like to take a nap. A tub of water to put the fermenter in and an aquarium heater will not be too expensive and can be used for many batches so the cost per batch will be really small.

 

[boomguy]

If you are using extract you don't have to worry about conversion, that's how the extract was made. You also won't have much hot break as that happened in the process of making the extract too.

So the lme and the dme have already gone through conversion, but what about the grains that I was using or because you have so much malt in the recipe you needn't worry about a hot break.
On another note I seem to have the temp stable at 64º.

 

[RM-MN]

Your 2 pounds of pale malt should have converted although I think that 160 would have been a little high. However, being a small part of the recipe, its contribution to the hot break should be pretty small. If you did an all grain where the pale malt would have been the majority of the malt, then you would have had more hot break to be concerned with.

I had missed that pale malt when I first looked at your recipe.

 

[unionrdr]

There was a time or two where I'd added a pound of lain wheat DME to the boil kettle with the steeped wort & 1 pound of reg DME & got a huge hot break. Other times not so much. So the steeping grains can add to it. Depends on how much was steeped & what you're addin to it.

 

[boomguy]

I did remove the pot from the heat when adding the lme and dme, gotta say I was so paranoid of a boil over on my wifes new induction stove top that I watched it like a hawk with spray bottle in hand. The funny thing was that at 10 the wort would not stop frothing but at 9.5 the wort would break the froth and turn to the vigorous rolling boil.

 

[boomguy]

So I came back from visiting the relatives over christmas to find the krausen had sunk to the bottom of the carboy and the airlock was down to one pop every two minutes or so. The temp had maintained a constant 66° f for the 5 days and the high tide mark of the krausen looks to be about an inch below the airlock bobber. I decided to transfer to my secondary and take a gravity reading. The gravity turned out to be 1.010 from the original of 1.048, I stuffed the carboy with an ounce of our cascade whole leaf hops and racked the beer over. Had a little sip from the sg sample and was pleased that the malt and hops have blended from their very separate original taste sample to a mellow ale upfront with a dark subtle hop finish.
Questions at the moment would be will the sg drop a bit more in the secondary and how long should I dry hop for and at what temp before cold crashing the beer and bottling?