Forewarning... I am BRAND NEW to brewing. I thought I was well read on the subject until I went to the HBS. I thought I was buying an ingredient kit (hops, yeast, etc.). What I inadvertently bought was a Muntons Old Ale Kit. The instructions for this kit say to pour the contents of the can into the fermenter, then add 1 can worth of boiling water, then 4 additional cans of cold water... stir well, then add the yeast... and cover. For starters, I thought these kits made 5 gallons of brew. Turns out this only makes about 1.7 gallons. A little disappointment there!!
Anyway, my instructional booklet said to boil the hops, etc. This kit evidently does all that work for you, to the point you are ready to throw your mix into the fermenter. For further confusion, it says, when transferring to bottles, to NOT ADD PRIMING SUGAR, as fermentation will continue gently which will condition the beer. This really confuses me because, so far, EVERYTHING I have read says you have to add priming sugar to 'create' the alcohol and carbonation. ??
I actually have two questions:
1) I bought a pound package of Spray Malt Extract. I put this in, along with the 5 cans of water, into the fermenter. Did I do that at the right time?? I forgot to ask the owner of the HBS when to add that.
2) Living in Texas, I am having trouble getting the wort temp down to between 65 - 70 degrees. I think it has been sitting at about 80 degrees for 23 hours now. I have just placed the fermenter in a very large plastic pale and filled the pale to the one gallon mark with water, then continued to the 2 gallon mark with ice. It is cooling down now, but, do you think the beer is ruined since it has been sitting at 80 degrees for so long?
The air lock is not showing any action; but, I (unwillingly) pulled the top off the fermenter and there was a lot of 'junk' on the top of the wort; so, I'm assuming I just need to be patient with the air lock 'show'.
I know it is against all that is good to repeat questions in these forums... I hope I have not done that (couldn't find any of these types of questions in the search function). I appreciate any help... and look forward to spending a LOT of time on this forum!
Anyway, my instructional booklet said to boil the hops, etc. This kit evidently does all that work for you, to the point you are ready to throw your mix into the fermenter. For further confusion, it says, when transferring to bottles, to NOT ADD PRIMING SUGAR, as fermentation will continue gently which will condition the beer. This really confuses me because, so far, EVERYTHING I have read says you have to add priming sugar to 'create' the alcohol and carbonation. ??
I actually have two questions:
1) I bought a pound package of Spray Malt Extract. I put this in, along with the 5 cans of water, into the fermenter. Did I do that at the right time?? I forgot to ask the owner of the HBS when to add that.
2) Living in Texas, I am having trouble getting the wort temp down to between 65 - 70 degrees. I think it has been sitting at about 80 degrees for 23 hours now. I have just placed the fermenter in a very large plastic pale and filled the pale to the one gallon mark with water, then continued to the 2 gallon mark with ice. It is cooling down now, but, do you think the beer is ruined since it has been sitting at 80 degrees for so long?
The air lock is not showing any action; but, I (unwillingly) pulled the top off the fermenter and there was a lot of 'junk' on the top of the wort; so, I'm assuming I just need to be patient with the air lock 'show'.
I know it is against all that is good to repeat questions in these forums... I hope I have not done that (couldn't find any of these types of questions in the search function). I appreciate any help... and look forward to spending a LOT of time on this forum!