oldskooldawgz
Active Member
On Saturday, 2/4/12, I brewed my first batch of beer. I followed ed wort's haus pale ale. But I did half a batch biab on my stove top starting with about 3.5 gallons of water. I didn't take pictures because I was too focused here was the recipe I used.
4# 2-row pale
1# Vienna
0.25# Carmel 10L
.5 oz cascade 60 min
.25 oz cascade 30 min
.125 oz cascade 15 min
.125 oz cascade 5 min
I mashed at around 152 like the recipe said it fell in and out for like 80 min because of the the temperature sway.
Then I mashed out at 170
Took an inaccurate hydrometer sample due to heat and was about 1.048 adjusted
And proceeded to boil adding my hops at the correct intervals. I did not quite lose the amount of water I expected totally and ended with an estimate of around 2.8-3 gallons of wort which doesn't bother me much especially because my initial water measurement was probably half a gallon off due to keeping mash temp.
Cooling was a pia because my pot did not quite fit in the sink high enough so it took like 90+ min to cool.
Afterwards I took a sg reading corrected for heat and got 1.052 which surprised me at how close I was to his on my first brew and it being an all grain.
After cooling I siphoned my beer though my grain bag which was sanitized into my sanitized bucket. Then I pitched my yeast (safale us-05) at around 74 degrees (I ran out of ice and ambient temp was 74 so...) I saw slight activity after an hour or so and by the morning it was bubbling.
So today 2 days later the bubbling had stopped worried I began reading about taking hydrometer readings and how to retrieve the beer. So I cleaned and sanitized the hell out of my coffee mug and drew a sample.
My sg ended up being 1.018 after 2 days. So that killed my curiosity about my fermentation. I was worried.
Anyways the sample smells amazing and is green. I also know people are not going to agree with my taking a sample but I was concerned and was very careful to sanitize everything that came in contact with the beer (coffee mug) and I was curious about the process as I am in a bucket.
Here is a pick of my recent sample its really pale and cloudy(due to biab and needing more primary time?)
4# 2-row pale
1# Vienna
0.25# Carmel 10L
.5 oz cascade 60 min
.25 oz cascade 30 min
.125 oz cascade 15 min
.125 oz cascade 5 min
I mashed at around 152 like the recipe said it fell in and out for like 80 min because of the the temperature sway.
Then I mashed out at 170
Took an inaccurate hydrometer sample due to heat and was about 1.048 adjusted
And proceeded to boil adding my hops at the correct intervals. I did not quite lose the amount of water I expected totally and ended with an estimate of around 2.8-3 gallons of wort which doesn't bother me much especially because my initial water measurement was probably half a gallon off due to keeping mash temp.
Cooling was a pia because my pot did not quite fit in the sink high enough so it took like 90+ min to cool.
Afterwards I took a sg reading corrected for heat and got 1.052 which surprised me at how close I was to his on my first brew and it being an all grain.
After cooling I siphoned my beer though my grain bag which was sanitized into my sanitized bucket. Then I pitched my yeast (safale us-05) at around 74 degrees (I ran out of ice and ambient temp was 74 so...) I saw slight activity after an hour or so and by the morning it was bubbling.
So today 2 days later the bubbling had stopped worried I began reading about taking hydrometer readings and how to retrieve the beer. So I cleaned and sanitized the hell out of my coffee mug and drew a sample.
My sg ended up being 1.018 after 2 days. So that killed my curiosity about my fermentation. I was worried.
Anyways the sample smells amazing and is green. I also know people are not going to agree with my taking a sample but I was concerned and was very careful to sanitize everything that came in contact with the beer (coffee mug) and I was curious about the process as I am in a bucket.
Here is a pick of my recent sample its really pale and cloudy(due to biab and needing more primary time?)
. So I took another hydrometer reading and its down to 1.012 or 1.011. Anyways now I have tasted pre boil(really sweet) post boil(really bitter but still really sweet) soon after the heavy fermentation ends (yeasty) and 2 days after that(today) and I can taste the bitterness of the hops coming out again and again is tasting more and more like I would expect it and hope it would taste. Here is a picture of it today.
