TheDom
Well-Known Member
Just started my first brew last night, after staying up 'till 2AM playing with it! SWMBO deserves kudos for not making me sleep on the couch.
Starting from the beginning:
The Recipe:
Very slight alteration from a Sam Adams Boston Ale clone found on HBT:
3.3lb Muntons light LME
3.3lb Muntons amber LME
1oz Fuggles 4.5% (60min)
0.5oz East Kent Goldings 4.5% (60min)
0.25oz EK Goldings 4.5% (20min)
1.5oz EK Goldings 4.5% (5min)
0.75oz EK Goldings dry hop in secondary
Nottingham Ale dry yeast
(Estimated) OG: 1.052
Calculated IBU: 30.04
Started by printing out the crash course from www.howtobrew.com as a checklist/guide for the night at around 7:00pm. I took a while sanitizing everything, triple-checking procedures, etc.
...and then the trouble started. A few days ago I tried bringing 3gal of water to a boil on the stove.....after 1.5hrs, just a bubble or two. Since I've got me a nice new grill with a 12k BTU side burner on it, I just assumed it'd be able to keep 3gal of water at a respectable rolling boil, and do so in a reasonable amount of time...
1.5hrs later I've got a good rolling boil. I cut the burner, add the LME and stir to fend off any scorched sugar, and re-light the burner maybe 5min later.
Then a horrible wind picks up, and boiling outside on the grill starts working even less well... I jerry-rig up a mess of aluminum foil to sorta-insulate the burner/pot, and end up even turning on the main part of the grill, just to provide some extra heat to the pot to get it back to a boil.
...30mins to 1hr later (a few Sam Octoberfest's deep at this point), a wussy boil resumes, follow-through with my hop schedule. Besides the boil being unimpressive, everything goes off without a hitch, and I bring it in to the sink to cool in the ice-bath.
So after about an hour or two of screwing around with the ice bath, those wort chillers are looking less like a convenience and more like a necessity...
Once I got to this point, it was all good. Yeast rehydrated and proofed just fine, and my fine Son of a Fermentation Chiller (AKA big styrofoam POS according to SWMBO : ) ) works perfectly, keeping everything at a cool 68 degrees.
As of now, it's been sitting in the primary for about 22hrs, bubbling away nicely, with a faint hop aroma filling the Ferm. Chiller when I change the ice.
As of now, I'm planning on racking to my 5gal secondary carboy at roughly the 1wk point, and after 2wks in the secondary, it's bottling time!
Lessons learned:
1) preparation/planning ahead of time is essential
2) I need a turkey fryer
3) I need a wort chiller
4) HBT Rocks! :rockin: Seriously, without some of the lessons picked up here, I would have been up all night screwing with this one.
Now all I need to learn is a little bit of patience.
Thanks for all the info fellas!
Starting from the beginning:
The Recipe:
Very slight alteration from a Sam Adams Boston Ale clone found on HBT:
3.3lb Muntons light LME
3.3lb Muntons amber LME
1oz Fuggles 4.5% (60min)
0.5oz East Kent Goldings 4.5% (60min)
0.25oz EK Goldings 4.5% (20min)
1.5oz EK Goldings 4.5% (5min)
0.75oz EK Goldings dry hop in secondary
Nottingham Ale dry yeast
(Estimated) OG: 1.052
Calculated IBU: 30.04
Started by printing out the crash course from www.howtobrew.com as a checklist/guide for the night at around 7:00pm. I took a while sanitizing everything, triple-checking procedures, etc.
...and then the trouble started. A few days ago I tried bringing 3gal of water to a boil on the stove.....after 1.5hrs, just a bubble or two. Since I've got me a nice new grill with a 12k BTU side burner on it, I just assumed it'd be able to keep 3gal of water at a respectable rolling boil, and do so in a reasonable amount of time...
1.5hrs later I've got a good rolling boil. I cut the burner, add the LME and stir to fend off any scorched sugar, and re-light the burner maybe 5min later.
Then a horrible wind picks up, and boiling outside on the grill starts working even less well... I jerry-rig up a mess of aluminum foil to sorta-insulate the burner/pot, and end up even turning on the main part of the grill, just to provide some extra heat to the pot to get it back to a boil.
...30mins to 1hr later (a few Sam Octoberfest's deep at this point), a wussy boil resumes, follow-through with my hop schedule. Besides the boil being unimpressive, everything goes off without a hitch, and I bring it in to the sink to cool in the ice-bath.
So after about an hour or two of screwing around with the ice bath, those wort chillers are looking less like a convenience and more like a necessity...
Once I got to this point, it was all good. Yeast rehydrated and proofed just fine, and my fine Son of a Fermentation Chiller (AKA big styrofoam POS according to SWMBO : ) ) works perfectly, keeping everything at a cool 68 degrees.
As of now, it's been sitting in the primary for about 22hrs, bubbling away nicely, with a faint hop aroma filling the Ferm. Chiller when I change the ice.
As of now, I'm planning on racking to my 5gal secondary carboy at roughly the 1wk point, and after 2wks in the secondary, it's bottling time!
Lessons learned:
1) preparation/planning ahead of time is essential
2) I need a turkey fryer
3) I need a wort chiller
4) HBT Rocks! :rockin: Seriously, without some of the lessons picked up here, I would have been up all night screwing with this one.
Now all I need to learn is a little bit of patience.
Thanks for all the info fellas!
