AngryPenguin
Member
I did my first wort tonight. I used a 20 quart stainless steel stock pot on two gas burners. I gave it a rolling boil for 1 hour, no boil overs. I am attempting a wheat ale and plan on fermenting for 3 weeks then bottling and letting them condition for 3 weeks. I bought the kit at a local brew shop and was given the ingredients and instructions.
Ingredients:
EDME wheat beer malt extract-malted barley, malted wheat, hop extract, brewing yeast 4lbs.
Muntons malt extract light-EBC = 8-12 solids 80-82%, 3.3lbs
I was instructed to boil 1 gallon of water then dump in both of these containers, stirring and while not on the heat to prevent burning/sticking to the bottom.
After boiling, I cooled the mixture in about 10-12 minutes in a ice water bath in the sink. I then siphoned out all except the last little bit of wort (trub?) into the fermenter after it had reached about 112 degrees F. After siphoning, the fermentable mass was a little over 5 gallons and at about 68 degrees F.
I then dumped in my package of dry yeast that had been refrigerated as instructed and took a reading with the hydrometer, it read 1.008 at the meniscus.
Now, the thing that worries me is that the lady at the homebrew shop said to fill the airlock with vodka. But when I pushed it down into the rubber grommet on the bucket, it squirted vodka into the bucket. Is this going to kill my yeast?
I also had problems with that stupid grommet getting pushed into the bucket, luckily this didn't happen when my fermentables were in the bucket.
The water I used was particularly hard, not sure on the PPM or any of that. But I live in northern Indiana, and with all the limestone and whatnot, our water is pretty hard. The book that came with my kit said hard water is best. I have no doubts as to whether it was clean. It came from a deep well, straight out of the ground.
Now as a noob, it seems like I did all I could to do this right. I followed the instructions given to me, to the T, I didn't use chlorinated water, I didn't put my mouth on the siphon tube, I sanitized the holy crap out of everything that came into contact with my beer, I wore rubber gloves the whole time. The ingredients I can't vouch for the quality on, but I can't think of anything I did wrong yet. Also, the place I got this stuff from seemed kinda rinky dink, and I know this isn't rocket science but I didn't feel entirely sure about their instructions and was glad that I had found this forum last week.
So my question to you is, what are some of the potential problems that you as a more seasoned brew master see arising from the above process?
Sorry for the long post.
Ingredients:
EDME wheat beer malt extract-malted barley, malted wheat, hop extract, brewing yeast 4lbs.
Muntons malt extract light-EBC = 8-12 solids 80-82%, 3.3lbs
I was instructed to boil 1 gallon of water then dump in both of these containers, stirring and while not on the heat to prevent burning/sticking to the bottom.
After boiling, I cooled the mixture in about 10-12 minutes in a ice water bath in the sink. I then siphoned out all except the last little bit of wort (trub?) into the fermenter after it had reached about 112 degrees F. After siphoning, the fermentable mass was a little over 5 gallons and at about 68 degrees F.
I then dumped in my package of dry yeast that had been refrigerated as instructed and took a reading with the hydrometer, it read 1.008 at the meniscus.
Now, the thing that worries me is that the lady at the homebrew shop said to fill the airlock with vodka. But when I pushed it down into the rubber grommet on the bucket, it squirted vodka into the bucket. Is this going to kill my yeast?
I also had problems with that stupid grommet getting pushed into the bucket, luckily this didn't happen when my fermentables were in the bucket.
The water I used was particularly hard, not sure on the PPM or any of that. But I live in northern Indiana, and with all the limestone and whatnot, our water is pretty hard. The book that came with my kit said hard water is best. I have no doubts as to whether it was clean. It came from a deep well, straight out of the ground.
Now as a noob, it seems like I did all I could to do this right. I followed the instructions given to me, to the T, I didn't use chlorinated water, I didn't put my mouth on the siphon tube, I sanitized the holy crap out of everything that came into contact with my beer, I wore rubber gloves the whole time. The ingredients I can't vouch for the quality on, but I can't think of anything I did wrong yet. Also, the place I got this stuff from seemed kinda rinky dink, and I know this isn't rocket science but I didn't feel entirely sure about their instructions and was glad that I had found this forum last week.
So my question to you is, what are some of the potential problems that you as a more seasoned brew master see arising from the above process?
Sorry for the long post.