First brew

[spokaniac]

My wife got me (us) a kit for Christmas. It came with the cleaning supplies, 2 5 gal carboys, a 20 qt brew kettle and the ingredients for a first batch ( a pale ale I think). It had some crystal malt for steeping, a can of lightly hopped malt extract, a bag of DME, a bag of malto dextrin, and some cascade hop pellets. I got it started Sunday night and tried to follow the instructions as close as possible, managed to cool the wort in the sink in about 20 minutes with it covered. Added the wort to about 1.5 gallons of cold water and another 3/4 gallon of water after to fill the carboy up to 5 gal. Pitched the yeast (a dry ale yeast) Attached the blowout tube and put it down in the basement to ferment. I set the carboy in the box it came in with the flaps notched for the blowout tube and set that on a pad to keep it off the concrete floor. By Monday morning it was foaming pretty vigorously coming out the blowout tube. By Tuesday night it slowed to just a burp of gas every few seconds, with no more foam coming out the tube. I peeked in at the carboy and the liquid level is down to near the shoulder. Am thinking it is about time to replace the tube with the fermentation lock.
In looking around the web I've seen comments say that sanitized water can be added to make up the volume lost and some that say not to worry about it. Seems to me that it would just water it down. Wouldn't it be better to have 45 or so good bottles than 48 diluted bottles?

 

[Brewnoob1]

Just let it ride. I wouldn't add any water after fermentation for fear of a watery beer. You'll lose mouth feel and such by adding it. You have the right thought process to just let it go.

Another Washingtonian....holla!

 

[Hopper450]

I would not add any water at all after fermentation. Quality of beer is more important than quantity of beer as you clearly already understand.

 

[DogTail]

Agreed,
Do not add water to the carboy and go ahead with swapping out the blowoff tube with a fermentation lock or bubbler with some sanitized water in it.

 

[helibrewer]

I use a full 1" vinyl tube for blow off and have about a foot of vertical before curving it over to my bucket. I sanitize it. The vertical allows some of the liquid to fall back in the carboy to prevent high loss.

The other option is to ferment in a bucket which has much more headspace and either 1) leave it in there until racking for bottling, or 2) rack into a brite tank (carboy) after fermentation is complete, leaving it in the carboy for 2-4 weeks (depending on style), then racking to bottling bucket for bottling.

Obviously option 2 requires more handling and potential contamination/oxidation issues. Just an informal guess, but I think most folks here would pick option 1 (single vessel fermentation, then bottle/keg) about 90% of the time. Exceptions being dry hopping, oaking, adding fruit/spice, etc.

 

[spokaniac]

So that amount of waste(?) is about normal with that kind of set up? Looks like about 1 1/2 to 2 quarts by the time it settled out in the overflow jar. (side note - think my cat would be ok if he tasted the overflow?) Was thinking of racking it over into the secondary carboy this weekend and giving another week or so in there before bottling, is that about right?

Was looking at stuff on all grain processes and found something about using one of those big Gott type water coolers as an extraction system. Anyone try that? How hard is it to set up?

 

[spokaniac]

or on second thought after reading through some of the posts.....

is it better to just leave it in the primary until it settles out and the gravity stabilizes, then rack it into the other carboy, add the sugar and bottle?

 

[Brewnoob1]

Unless you plan on adding fruit or oak chips for example, just leave it in the primary for 3-4 weeks and only rack to the bottling bucket when you're ready to bottle. Skip the secondary all together.

 

[Hopper450]

Cats love beer!

 

[Hopper450]

I'm kidding by the way, don't feed your cat beer. Well, unless it's a very small beer... Well actually it's probably best you just not allow your cat to have any beer.

 

[spokaniac]

He's a small cat and it's just the stuff that blew out from the initial part of fermentation so I don't think there would be much alcohol in it.

 

[Hopper450]

Seriously though, hops can be poisonous to pets, not sure about other beer byproducts, but caution would be advised I think. I'm asssuming here that you actually like your cat of course! Cheers!

 

[spokaniac]

ohhh I didn't think about the hops.

Think I'll modify that set up and use a bucket with a lid and small air holes. We do like the cat

 

[spokaniac]

I had an OG of 1.046, measured it this weekend, a week later, and have 1.013. Does that seem about right? How much lower should I expect it to drop?

 

[RM-MN]

You are probably about as low as you can expect to get. Leave it a few more days as the yeast does more than just eat sugar and it will continue to make improvements to your beer. Check with your hydrometer in about a week and if it hasn't changed you can bottle or leave it longer for more bulk aging, your choice. It seems that leaving it longer gets me beer that is ready to drink sooner since it doesn't need to spend as much time maturing in the bottle.