First Real Brew!

[mikebowman]

So my roommate and I have made 2 festabrew kits in the past, basically just premade wort where you add yeast, nothing too fancy. today we did our first extract + steeped grains batch, i believe thats called partial mash? we just steeped the grains, then added the extract, brought it to a boil, added hops, etc. An oatmeal stout. apart from one boilover, i think everything went really well!

It boiled over after we added the extract but before we put in the hops, so to compensate for the lost wort we added less top-up water to the fermenter. we had the hydrometer in the bucket as we topped up, and stopped adding water when the reading was 1.046, what the recipe said to aim for. was this the right think to do? we've probably got about 4.5 gallons at the moment, were aiming for 23 liters.

anyways, i'm sure it'll be fine!

 

[KFBass]

Congrats. Feels good doesn't it? My first "real" brew will be this saturday. My grandpa is going to show me the ropes, so to speak.

Which festa brews did you do? I bottled a Brown ale a few days ago. When I sampled at bottling it tasted really good. I'd love to hear your reviews of them. I may do another couple, since they are so easy to deal with.

 

[bosox]

Congratulations! I'm almost at the same stage as you. Be sure to update us on how it goes, I for one would definitely be interested in the process of making a first real brew.

 

[slowbie]

So my roommate and I have made 2 festabrew kits in the past, basically just premade wort where you add yeast, nothing too fancy. today we did our first extract + steeped grains batch, i believe thats called partial mash? we just steeped the grains, then added the extract, brought it to a boil, added hops, etc. An oatmeal stout. apart from one boilover, i think everything went really well!

It boiled over after we added the extract but before we put in the hops, so to compensate for the lost wort we added less top-up water to the fermenter. we had the hydrometer in the bucket as we topped up, and stopped adding water when the reading was 1.046, what the recipe said to aim for. was this the right think to do? we've probably got about 4.5 gallons at the moment, were aiming for 23 liters.

anyways, i'm sure it'll be fine!

Just to clarify, it's usually only considered a partial mash when you use base grains and when you are getting fermentables from your grains. Extract with steeping grains is just referred to as extract with steeping grains (complicated, I know) . That being said, congratulations and I hope it turns out really well. My first two batches were extract with steeping grains and they were great.

By the way, if you want to do partial mash, check out DeathBrewer's Easy Partial Mash Brewing thread at the top of the Beginner's forum. I started doing that after those first two batches and it made my ingredients a little cheaper (I think I saved $8 on my last batch) and it didn't require any extra equipment.

 

[mikebowman]

@KFBass: funnily enough, we bottled the brown ale on friday! the sample i had tasted good. We've also done the cream ale, which turned out really nice.

and thanks, slowbie, thats what I kinda thought, but I've never been clear on the distinction between the terms

 

[KFBass]

@KFBass: funnily enough, we bottled the brown ale on friday! the sample i had tasted good. We've also done the cream ale, which turned out really nice.

Nice. Keep me posted on how yours turns out. How long did you ferment it? I think i went 6 days, with a nice amount of blow off haha. Then racked to secondary for another week, maybe 8 days I'll have to double check.

The cream ale was the one I was going to try next. Good to hear it worked well for you!

 

[mikebowman]

we fermented it a really long time... a week in primary, then 3ish weeks in secondary, just because we were both away for reading week and didn't get around to bottling it before we went