Further questions before first brew day (tomorrow).

[JayD]

1) Yeast pack. It seems to be dry yeast... is(n't) there something I'm supposed to do with it the day before brewing? Wet it, fridge it, or whatever?

2) The kit I bought has a glass carboy and a plastic ale pail. Please note that my question avoids the "plastic vs glass": What is the ale pail for? I have a 10gal round cooler for my MLT, and am going to (primary, single) ferment in the glass carboy. So what do I use the plastic Ale Pail for? From what I saw it did not come with a top, and there is a hole cut out for an included spigot to be placed.

3) Strike water/sparge water heating. I have only one heating vessel (a 10gal SS bayou burner). I know I heat the strike (3.5gal) water. My instructions say put the grain in said hot water, then cook for 60 minutes (144-152). In the meantime I need to be preparing the sparge water (4 gallons) to 170*. Now, is there a reasonable way to do this with just one cooking vessel? I was thinking the dry grain went in with the strike water to the MLT, where it rested while I was prepping the sparge water. But these instructions indicate otherwise. So do I really have to go and buy another 5gal stock pot? Or what is the best process here?

My instructions (pdf).

 

[SumnerH]

1. Keep it in the fridge. Pull it out at the beginning of brew day. Whether to rehydrate or not is a matter of discussion; search for "rehydrate dry yeast" to read more.

2. You'll use the bucket for bottling your beer (after fermentation and bulk conditioning). If you're fermenting in a 5 gallon carboy, you'll probably want a blowoff tube during fermentation.

3. Try to keep the grain as close to 152-153F as possible during mash. You can heat the sparge water in whatever big kitchen pot you have--heat a pot to 175F or whatever, pour into bucket, heat another pot, etc until you have the 4 gallons--or you can sparge with cold water. The latter isn't ideal but it's not a dealbreaker.

 

[SevenFields]

1. You can make a starter with dry yeast if you like, but you are better off just sprinkling it on top of the wort. You can rehydrate it with a little bit of water a few hours before you start brewing, but its not necessary.

2. The bucket with the whole in it, is for the spigot. This is your bottling bucket

3. Someone who brews allgrain will have to answer this one

 

[JayD]

Thanks.

2) Somehow i missed that that the Ale Pail was for bottling... isn't that one of the uses for the siphon? I thought I would bottle from the siphon.

3) I like the idea of heating on the stove and going that way, using a pot I have. we don't have any large pots but this is a very workable solution.

Thanks!

I'm sure tomorrow I'll get entirely confused and scurry back here w/ more questions...

 

[MRT888]

2) Somehow i missed that that the Ale Pail was for bottling... isn't that one of the uses for the siphon? I thought I would bottle from the siphon.

You can't really start and stop a siphon to bottle beers that way- you need to siphon it from your primary into a bottling bucket, and then use a spigot on the bucket to bottle (preferably with a bottling wand attached). Plus siphoning to a bottling bucket first leaves behind the yeast, trub, and other sediment from the primary.

(This assumes you arent using a secondary fermenter at all, whic isnt always necessary)

 

[JayD]

Yeah pretty much immediately after I hit enter on that post I realized a) fermenter will be full of dead yeast, and b) I have to siphon into something because I add 1 cup of honey before bottling. So it all makes sense now. Seems since I use the cooler w/ spigot as the MLT I could just use it for bottling too? But it's no big deal anyway, I'll use the Ale Pail.

(not using secondary fermenter)