Hi - Some Questinos: Kettle; IPA Recipe; Chiller

[greenfrog5]

Hello, my GF and I bottled our first batch yesterday (American Amber extract kit from LHBS), so we are total beginners. I've been reading a while on here and elsewhere, great discussions!

Our brew tasted good the two times I tested the SG (I think, I don't drink a lot of warm, flat beer), but not so good the little left after bottling. I assume this is because the priming sugar hadn't been consumed yet? Anyway, I hope it turns out ok.

We used a 10 Gal alum. kettle and made the mistake of putting it over 2 burners on a nice/antique stove and it did some damage to the enamel (easily scratched when gently scrubbing off soot/residue). I think it was the change in air-flow, though might have been due to gas+aluminum = oxidizing or reducing environment?

Anyway, we are in temporary (sublet) living situations for a while around the East Bay Area, so I'm hesitant to buy a jet burner (may be confined to apartments w/o outside space). Instead, I'm looking to get a stainless 5 or 6 Gal kettle for the time being, to do 3-gal-ish partial boils.

QUESTION 1: Is a 6 gallon kettle (12.5" diameter) reasonable to be using on any 'normal' residential (prob. gas) stove? Is it worth going up to 6 instead of 5? (looking at: This One)

Equipment Limitations:
partial-boil capabilities of a 5 or 6 Gal. kettle
currently no chiller, but I hope to fabricate one for our next brew (can probably get away with 3-gal boil + ice bath?)

QUESTION 2:
For a immersion chiller, do I need 3/8" Type L? or can the cheaper Type M be used successfully? Looks like I'll be buying up to 50', so how much should I actually use? 25'-30' until it fits the pot well?

We are thinking of doing an IPA, or hoppy Pale next. LHBS has a Pale Ale extract kit, or we are comfortable following a simple-ish non-kit recipe. The one we did had steeped grains, which was easy.

QUESTION 3: I thought some people on here could help point us to one that has a high chance of success for a beginner with our equipment? We can follow a sophisticated process, just don't want more equipment or related issues.

Thanks
Aaron

 

[262andbrew]

Welcome to home brewing, you are entering a rabbit hole you may never find your way out of .

I wont hit every question you have but a few thoughts that came to me when reading your post.

Pot purchase/Question 1...Your burner situation may be dictating the volume that you can boil, but without going overboard I would recommend getting a kettle that is big enough to do full boils. I have upgraded a couple times, but one of the best steps I made for my beer was getting a pot big enough to do do full boils plus another gallon. It is your best case for extract beer, and allows you to do BIAB, a great (and cheap) All Grain (AG) option. ... check this... http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4650 ... so in summary, yeah go to the 6 instead of the 5...32Q would be even better (just looking forward to the posts you will make in 6 months) If you stove wont boil the whole volume then boil 4 gallons in your huge ass pot and worry less about boilovers.

As for Q2 and 3 on recipes...there is no shame in buying kits until you learn some recipe creation guidelines. If they are fresh, buy them, and an extra ounce or 2 of the aroma hops to throw in at "Flame out" and one for "Dry hopping" -- those are 2 additional techniques that you will find lots of info on.

One recipe thing that helped me a lot was to put the ingredients from the kit in one of these 2 sites:
http://hopville.com
or
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html
--- there is better brew software available, but for free, these are great for playing with ingredients and seeing the effects on bitterness and color, put in the kit ingredients and then start changing them to see the variables move.

OK that is all I got.
Again, Welcome.

Peace, Love, and Yeast reproduction.