First time follies

[shauni_g]

It's been almost a week now since I conducted my first brew day and I have finally got some time to post my experience to the forum. So for those of you interested in a bit of a laugh here goes.

Type: New Albion Pale Ale Clone (American Pale Ale)
Batch size: 1 Gallon
Grain bill: 2lb 2-row malt
Hops: 4g Cascade @ 60, 30 and 15 minutes
Yeast: US05 Safale (2g)
Target OG: 1.055
Target FG: 1.011
Pre-boil gravity: 1.059? (see below)
Actual OG: 1.043

I had a number of problems throughout the brew day, hopefully none of which will completely ruin the beer, all of which were educational and I believe can be easily fixed next brew day. The first problem started when the bag I was using to mash the grains in turned out not to be big enough to hold all the grain. This wasn't such a big deal as I had a suspicion this would be the case so I just dumped the bag into the mash tun (a 2 gallon cooler) and conducted the mash as though it wasn't being done in a bag I stirred the grain and took a temperature reading every 20 minutes and sadly after starting out with a respectable 66c temp for the initial mash it seemed to drop a little too rapidly: 64c @ 20 minutes, 61c @ 40 minutes and 58c at the end of the hour

Due to the unscheduled change in mashing method I had to change my sparge method as well: I had originally intended just to tea-bag sparge but ended up having to use a slotted spoon to pull the grains out and put them into a strainer above the boil pot and then ladled my sparge water over the grains. My slotted spoon wasn't really big enough for this task so it took a goodly while to get all the grains out. It also turned out that my strainer wasn't large enough either so I had to sparge about 2/3 of the grains first with about 2/3 of the sparge water and then dump some of the grains to make room for the last 1/3 of grain and finish sparging these with the final 1/3 of the sparge water. Needless to say I was not expecting a great pre-boil gravity reading!

Continuing the mayhem, I had problems working the hydrometer (there's only two pieces to it, including the test tube, how hard could it be? ) and got a rather surprising pre-boil gravity reading of 1.044 @ 58c which worked out to 1.059. Given the rather unorthodox sparging that took place and that the target OG was 1.055 I was a little skeptical. I believe the problem was mainly because the amount of wort in the test tube when I took the reading wasn't enough to allow the hydrometer to float :smack:

Unperturbed I continued onto the boil and this part, at least, went well. Got the wort up to the hot break and then boiled for an hour with the specified hop additions. At the end of the hour I chilled the pot in an ice bath in the kitchen sink. Then the next problem occurred: I didn't have enough ice to keep the water cold for the full chilling. I ended up putting the wort in the fermenter after about 30 minutes of chilling, with the last 15 minutes or so of chilling just in water that was as cold as I could get from the tap. I also added some stirring of the wort (with a sanitized spoon of course) to try and help get the temp down. Sadly it was still at 26c when I put it in the fermenter and I missed my target OG by a long way with a reading of 1.043, although I at least was able to work the hydrometer properly this time

Finally I pitched the yeast straight into the fermenter and gave it a good shake, put the airlock (which I filled with sanitizer) and bung in and let it get to work. On the plus side fermentation seems to be progressing well: bubbling commenced after about 12 - 15 hours, I had a healthy looking krauzen after a day or two and, despite temps being on the high side they have remained relatively stable the whole week, between 24c and 22c.

My plan now is to leave the beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks and then take a FG reading and bottle.

My main notes/questions that need answering for next time include:

1) Get a bigger grain bag
2) Get more ice - out of interest what do people who don't have a chiller tend to do to make sure they have enough ice to chill their wort properly? I have three ice trays and two 300ml water bottles I froze ahead of time but still ran out. There's only so much room in my freezer!
3) Try and find a way to keep the mash temp higher for the full hour - perhaps if I only stir once at 30 minutes? But then would I lose out by not getting as much sugar from the grains?

Anyhow despite all the problems it was an enjoyable experience and, like I said initially, there wasn't anything that didn't seem relatively easy to fix for next time.

Of course I would love to hear any comments or suggestions.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

[Cyclman]

You made beer, I am sure your first will taste great, it usually does!

learning is the most important thing with early batches.

Build an immersion chiller, cheap and easy to do, and chilling without one is a major hassle.

BTW, I love Vancouver, esp. the Alibi Room.

 

[rlmiller10]

If you didn't preheat your cooler with some boiling or hot water. That should help with the temp drop.

Paint strainer bags from home depot are cheap and make great BIAB bags, especially if you are not mashing in a kettle and adding heat where you might melt one.

Not often I would disagree with Cyclman but I would not waste my time on a chiller for one gallon batches. Ice bath will be just as fast or faster. I would wait until you move up to larger batched with associated larger brew kettle so you can size your chiller to the larger kettle. This was learned form experience as I had to reform mine when I switched kettles and ended up with kinks.

Look into some way to get your fermentation temps lower next time. This is probably the most important thing you can do it improve your beer quality. With 1 gallon batches it is easy to just sit it in a tub of water and add a little ice and keep the temps closer to 18 or 19c. Or even sit it in water and put a fan on it might keep it that low. If not do a search on swamp cooler for various ways to keep your water temps down.

Have you been to the Tap and Barrel? Best craft brew selection I could find in Vancouver.

 

[shauni_g]

Thanks guys. I did actually preheat my cooler but maybe next time I will leave the preheating water in a little longer. Plus the cooler has this annoying venting "port" that doesn't stay down half the time, so I might tape that down next time as well.

I have read mention of swamp coolers on here and will definitely do further research into how to put one together.

Alibi Room and Tap and Barrel are both excellent craft brew pubs. There are also quite a good range of excellent craft breweries with tasting rooms that are open in Vancouver now - it is a great city for great beer!

 

[worlddivides]

2) Get more ice - out of interest what do people who don't have a chiller tend to do to make sure they have enough ice to chill their wort properly? I have three ice trays and two 300ml water bottles I froze ahead of time but still ran out. There's only so much room in my freezer

I have an immersion chiller now, but before I had one, I would go to a nearby store and buy a HUGE bag of ice. It was around $1.50 or so, I think. As soon as I got home, I would make an ice bath around the pot of boiling hot wort.

It doesn't work anywhere near as good as an immersion chiller, but I think it's the best option you have if you don't want to use chillers.

Then again, if you're only doing 1 gallon batches, a bunch of ice might be enough to get the temperature down fast enough.

 

[rodwha]

I stop up my sink and fill it with cold tap water. This will bring it down a bit. Drain and repeat, and then I use water jugs of tap water that I chill in the fridge, and that's when I use my ice. I get down to 70*F or under in about 30-35 mins with a 5-6 gal batch.