General Questions After First Batch

[rahmdog]

Hello HBT Community, I just finished my first brew day in quite a while and with a very different set-up and procedure than I had in the past. I am cautiously optimistic about the batch but have some concerns I would like to throw out that others have probably encountered and addressed.

I brewed a Baltic Porter partial mash kit from Defalco's. http://www.defalcos.com/component/content/article/127.html

1: SG was supposed to be 16.5 Plato and I overshot to about 20. Did I over-steep the grains? The instructions said to steep for 30min starting at 160F. I did this with about a gallon of water. I then washed it four times with 160F water to bring the volume in the brew pot to 5 gal. The final volume in the fermenter was 5 gallons so I can not think of anything else that would cause this difference unless the extract was not measured properly.

2: I used a propane-burner outside for the first time and feel it did fairly well but I have some concerns about contamination in that environment. I chilled the wort with a home-made immersion chilling system (first time using this as well) but I felt uneasy about contamination from something dropping into the space between the lid and where the tubes came out. I covered the space with tinfoil but want a better way to do this next time if anyone has one.

3: Also my first time taking gravity measurements, and it was more complicated than I thought. Foam on top of the beer made it very difficult to read the device. I should probably have taken before the pour/aeration. Also, do people just toss the wort used in the reading or pour it back into the beer?

4: Again, this was my first time using an aquarium air-stone style aeration, and from what I have read, this should help with attenuation in my suddenly bigger baltic porter. What sanitation precautions are involved with this step? I soaked the tubing in sanitizing solution as well the air-stone, but felt uneasy anyway. I would like to fashion a trap of some kind where the air is first passed through a solution and then goes to the air-stone. Thoughts?

5: For the fermentation I have a plastic 7-gal bucket floating in a larger reservoir bucket to help moderate the temperature swings in my apartment. I am checking the temperature in the reservoir regularly and trying to adjust with an aquarium heater, fan and ice cubes. Has anyone ever tried something like this?

Thanks in advance to everyone!

 

[erikpete18]

Good to hear you've come back to brewing! Not sure how helpful it will be, but I can at least take a crack at your questions.

1. Assuming your grains were properly crushed, you can't really oversparge them as far as increasing the gravity, especially not to the increase that you see. Now you can oversparge grains as far as extracting tannins from them. Generally I think its assumed that with steeping grains its not as much of a problem as it is with all-grain mashes, and if you did extract some tannins I'd think you'd be hard pressed to detect them in that recipe, but just a note for the future. Since you had your brew pot volume to 5 gal and 5 gal into the fermenter, did you add back some water in the fermenter? If you did, then more than likely the water didn't get properly mixed with the wort before you took the reading, which explains the increase. Not to worry, the yeast will mix it up just fine, but generally you can't be that far off as long as your volumes and extract amounts are correct. The only other option is that you boiled down from 5 gal to about 4 gal, which would give you a rise of about that much.

2. As long as you're getting it chilled down quickly and are pitching a good amount of healthy yeast, you shouldn't have too much to worry about. There's only a short time from when the wort reaches a temp where it could get contaminated and its cool enough to transfer, so the odds are pretty low. Couple that with a large amount of yeast and any nasties shouldn't stand a chance.

3. Taking the read before aeration can help, as can just letting it sit for a bit to settle down. I definitely wouldn't add it back to the fermenter. For the small volume that you're saving yourself its a proportionally large chance of infection. I tend to use it for taste testing instead. Even though its going to taste much different after fermentation, I always figure its good to get an idea of the taste along the whole process.

4. I'll admit that I often do what you do, but feel like I should do more. I've heard of people boiling their stones separate from the hose to sterilize them before using, which is also a good way to clean them out, and might not be a bad idea. For the hose regular sanitizer should work. Do you have a filter in your hose line? Most setups that you can buy contain a sanitary filter between the stone and the pump. If you don't, I'd suggest getting one of those to take care of anything that's coming from the pump.

5. I've not gone so far as an aquarium heater, but if my fermentation chamber is full I'll use a big bucket with the occasional frozen freezer bag to keep temps under control. Are you using a temp controller with your setup, or just doing it by hand? I generally figure that for the first week of fermentation the yeast is generating a fair amount of heat so a little bit of ice to keep temps slightly below room temp (65 or so) is fine.

 

[rahmdog]

Hey thanks a lot for the reply, I did start the boil with about 5.5-6 gal because I added the extract then washed the bucket to get all the leftover out.

Big cold front rolling through right now so I am letting the ambient drop down to help fight all the heat that the yeast are producing. Have been tossing in ice as well.

I did get the wort down pretty fast about 20 min total. I recycle the water using a submersible pump in a large bucket filled with ice so I am running ice water through the copper tubing. First time with the setup so a few hiccups with logistics (realized that my pump was a three prong and my extension cord was a phony with two prong right at the end of my boil) but overall a good batch to build on.

 

[IvanBrew]

When I run that recipe through Beersmith, it estimates OG at 1.077, or about 19 Plato. I'd say the 1.068 listed in the recipe is off for some reason... Perhaps it was originally calculated as a 6 gallon volume? (that gives 1.065 in Beersmith)

In the future, you could measure pre-boil volume. If you're below, add more extract. If you're too high, add more water.

To your questions on measuring gravity: Personally, I take readings before aeration and I throw away the sample. Opinions vary on this one.

There are filters available through several of the online home brew stores and sometimes even your LHBS that work with an aquarium filter. You could certainly look into one of those.

 

[rahmdog]

Okay so one week later and my fermentation has really slowed down, only occasional bubbles for the last two days. The gravity has fallen to 1.024 (6 Plato) versus the 1.016 (4 Plato) in the recipe. I guess there is no harm in pushing bottling day off for a bit longer but I was just wondering if the change in OG makes the original FG target a less reasonable goal. My AA is only 69% according to my calculation.

Thanks again