Intro:
Well I've been on this site for a while and I'm trying to get more active in the forums but find that I don't have much to write about. I'm a newish brewer and am not overflowing with advice and I tend to take advice I see and try it so I don't have too many questions. So this thread is purely about my last brew day and what I did. Feel free to give your two cents on does-and-don'ts, note taking, or any other glaring errors. The most recent brew I did was this last weekend, a Scottish 70/- ale. Also if you are a precise measurer or sanitizer or really anything brewing there will likely be a moment in here where you gasp and say "he did what"
but I tend to learn the hard way most of the time, but I'm not opposed to trying new things. One last thing is that I don't site sources so things that I "know" will just be the advice that I chose to follow from no particular source. So without further disclaimers or philibustering here goes.
Brewing:
The recipe I used was found in Brewing Classic Styles, a book that is fairly well known from what I understand. The recipe in the book is as follows.
English Pale Ale LME 4.75 lbs
Munich LME 0.25 lbs
(Steeping Grains)
Crystal (40 L) 1.00 lbs
Honey Malt 0.50 lbs
Crystal (120 L) 0.25 lbs
Pale Chocolate 2.00 oz
(Hops)
Kent Goldings 5% AA 0.75 oz. at 60 min
(Yeast)
Safale US-05
OG = 1.038 Ferment at 65 F
I followed the recipe closely but read that using a partial mash and substituting a little 2 row malt for extract can replace some nutrients lost in the processing of extract. So I used 3 lbs. Light DME and 1.5 lbs. of Pale 2 Row malt. Due to my LHBS stock I replaced the pale chocolate with chocolate and my Goldings hops were 6.6 AA.
So a few days before brew day I started planning. My last two brews turned out a little more bitter than I expected so I thought it maybe my brewing techniques (probably) or my salt softened water (maybe) so I bought some RO water from Wal-Mart. When brew day was upon me I started by heating about 2 gallons of RO water, and added a half teaspoon of gypsum and calcium carb., measured with the graduations on my fermentation bucket, in the brew pot to 160 F. My LHBS combined all my grains together when the milled them and told me just to steep the 2 row along with the specialty grains for 30 minutes. I was a little skeptical because I had seen that 2 row needs to be mashed not steeped but they were already mixed in so I planned on steeping them for an hour so I would hit my OG. This brings me to the story of my grain bag or lack of one. So on brew day I didn't have a grain bag so when I went to Wal-Mart and bought cheese cloth for a grain bag. When I put the grains in the cloth I found out I had folded the cloth too many times and it was a wee bit too small to hold the 3+ lbs. of grain I had. I managed to tie the corners together but that left seams for my grain to escape. So stupidly I tried to tape the seams together knowing full well the tape would fall off. So I when the 2 gallons of water were at temperature I put in my makeshift grain bag and almost immediately I had two problems. One, the tape fell off immediately and was floating around my wort, and secondly there wasn't enough wort to cover my grain bag
. So I grabbed a pair of tongs and grabbed the tape out. Next I added another gallon from my fermenter and poured it on my grain bad. This caused my now loose grains to flow out of my bag and also lowered my temp to about 125 F. So I started the hour long steep and turned the burner back on to get back to about 160 F. Well my wort started bubbling beneath my bag that was sitting on the bottom of the pot and sifted my grain further out of the bag. So during the hour I heated as much as I dared but only stayed around 130 F.
After the steep was finished I removed the bag (which was burnt on the bottom) I had about 90% of my grain left and added about 4 more gallons as well as another half teaspoon of gypsum and calcium carb. and turned up the heat and waited for the boil. When the water was heating I added the 3 lbs. of DME and guessed on about 0.25 lbs. of DME. When the boil started I added about 3/4 of the hop pellets 1 oz. bag and didn't adjust for the higher AA. During the boil I started to sanitize my fermenter, hydrometer, strainer, and measuring cup. About 40 min left the boil I rehydrated and proofed my yeast and 20 min left I added Irish Moss.
After the boil I decided not to use my wort chiller and take advantage of the snow outside, I put it in a snow bank and packed snow around it. I accidentally got a bit of snow in the wort. There was also a very slight sprinkle almost nothing. I didn't have my pot cover sanitized so I just left it uncovered. It took about 40 min to get it down to 70 degrees. After the wort was chilled I transferred into my fermenter through the strainer. I was just under 5 gallons and at an OG of 1.048. So I added a little over a half gallon straight from the 5 gallon jug to the fermenter and it made my final OG 1.042.
Fermentation
I put the fermenter in a cooler in 65 F water and hooked up an aquarium pump to the wort for 20 min for aeration, pitched the yeast and waited (and had a homebrew). After a day in a half I still had no airlock activity so I opened the lid and took a peek. I found a good foamy krausen so I must have a leaky bucket. Its been 4 days and so far a good krausen no evidence of infection but still no airlock activity what so ever.
Conclusion
There you have it, my brew day in a not so small nutshell. Like I said some of my methods aren't by the book but I haven't been bit in the ass (yet). So feel free to speculate, criticize, and offer advice. I just had some time to kill so I figured I would just write this for other people to waste time reading and posting on.
Also a another story for a different day is the day it took me to dry my grains out
Well I've been on this site for a while and I'm trying to get more active in the forums but find that I don't have much to write about. I'm a newish brewer and am not overflowing with advice and I tend to take advice I see and try it so I don't have too many questions. So this thread is purely about my last brew day and what I did. Feel free to give your two cents on does-and-don'ts, note taking, or any other glaring errors. The most recent brew I did was this last weekend, a Scottish 70/- ale. Also if you are a precise measurer or sanitizer or really anything brewing there will likely be a moment in here where you gasp and say "he did what"
but I tend to learn the hard way most of the time, but I'm not opposed to trying new things. One last thing is that I don't site sources so things that I "know" will just be the advice that I chose to follow from no particular source. So without further disclaimers or philibustering here goes.Brewing:
The recipe I used was found in Brewing Classic Styles, a book that is fairly well known from what I understand. The recipe in the book is as follows.
English Pale Ale LME 4.75 lbs
Munich LME 0.25 lbs
(Steeping Grains)
Crystal (40 L) 1.00 lbs
Honey Malt 0.50 lbs
Crystal (120 L) 0.25 lbs
Pale Chocolate 2.00 oz
(Hops)
Kent Goldings 5% AA 0.75 oz. at 60 min
(Yeast)
Safale US-05
OG = 1.038 Ferment at 65 F
I followed the recipe closely but read that using a partial mash and substituting a little 2 row malt for extract can replace some nutrients lost in the processing of extract. So I used 3 lbs. Light DME and 1.5 lbs. of Pale 2 Row malt. Due to my LHBS stock I replaced the pale chocolate with chocolate and my Goldings hops were 6.6 AA.
So a few days before brew day I started planning. My last two brews turned out a little more bitter than I expected so I thought it maybe my brewing techniques (probably) or my salt softened water (maybe) so I bought some RO water from Wal-Mart. When brew day was upon me I started by heating about 2 gallons of RO water, and added a half teaspoon of gypsum and calcium carb., measured with the graduations on my fermentation bucket, in the brew pot to 160 F. My LHBS combined all my grains together when the milled them and told me just to steep the 2 row along with the specialty grains for 30 minutes. I was a little skeptical because I had seen that 2 row needs to be mashed not steeped but they were already mixed in so I planned on steeping them for an hour so I would hit my OG. This brings me to the story of my grain bag or lack of one. So on brew day I didn't have a grain bag so when I went to Wal-Mart and bought cheese cloth for a grain bag. When I put the grains in the cloth I found out I had folded the cloth too many times and it was a wee bit too small to hold the 3+ lbs. of grain I had. I managed to tie the corners together but that left seams for my grain to escape. So stupidly I tried to tape the seams together knowing full well the tape would fall off. So I when the 2 gallons of water were at temperature I put in my makeshift grain bag and almost immediately I had two problems. One, the tape fell off immediately and was floating around my wort, and secondly there wasn't enough wort to cover my grain bag
. So I grabbed a pair of tongs and grabbed the tape out. Next I added another gallon from my fermenter and poured it on my grain bad. This caused my now loose grains to flow out of my bag and also lowered my temp to about 125 F. So I started the hour long steep and turned the burner back on to get back to about 160 F. Well my wort started bubbling beneath my bag that was sitting on the bottom of the pot and sifted my grain further out of the bag. So during the hour I heated as much as I dared but only stayed around 130 F.After the steep was finished I removed the bag (which was burnt on the bottom) I had about 90% of my grain left and added about 4 more gallons as well as another half teaspoon of gypsum and calcium carb. and turned up the heat and waited for the boil. When the water was heating I added the 3 lbs. of DME and guessed on about 0.25 lbs. of DME. When the boil started I added about 3/4 of the hop pellets 1 oz. bag and didn't adjust for the higher AA. During the boil I started to sanitize my fermenter, hydrometer, strainer, and measuring cup. About 40 min left the boil I rehydrated and proofed my yeast and 20 min left I added Irish Moss.
After the boil I decided not to use my wort chiller and take advantage of the snow outside, I put it in a snow bank and packed snow around it. I accidentally got a bit of snow in the wort. There was also a very slight sprinkle almost nothing. I didn't have my pot cover sanitized so I just left it uncovered. It took about 40 min to get it down to 70 degrees. After the wort was chilled I transferred into my fermenter through the strainer. I was just under 5 gallons and at an OG of 1.048. So I added a little over a half gallon straight from the 5 gallon jug to the fermenter and it made my final OG 1.042.
Fermentation
I put the fermenter in a cooler in 65 F water and hooked up an aquarium pump to the wort for 20 min for aeration, pitched the yeast and waited (and had a homebrew
). After a day in a half I still had no airlock activity so I opened the lid and took a peek. I found a good foamy krausen so I must have a leaky bucket. Its been 4 days and so far a good krausen no evidence of infection but still no airlock activity what so ever.Conclusion
There you have it, my brew day in a not so small nutshell. Like I said some of my methods aren't by the book but I haven't been bit in the ass (yet). So feel free to speculate, criticize, and offer advice. I just had some time to kill so I figured I would just write this for other people to waste time reading and posting on.
Also a another story for a different day is the day it took me to dry my grains out
