Twenty something new to brewing

[Al-Kaholik]

Hey guys,

I'm a guy in my mid twenties (maybe having a mid twenties crisis, I dunno) who just recently got into homebrewing. I recently bought a basic kit from a local homebrew store which contained two 5.5 gallon buckets for fermenting a bottling, an auto siphon, etc. I expanded on this with a wort chiller, brew kettle, water filter, etc. For a recipe kit I got a hefeweizen kit - which ferments at 70 fahrenheit and came with a 1 oz bag of hops, yeast, priming sugar, and two cans of LME.

Think I already screwed up though.. I started to use the wort chiller and noticed that no water was getting through the tube (it was just leaking out). I tightened it to no avail. As a result I decided to do an ice water bath in the sink but my sink was quite small for the brew kettle and as a result did not get the temperature down quickly enough. The wort was still quite hot when I pitched the yeast. Hopefully I didn't kill too many.. lol. I did attempt to rehydrate following John Palmer's instructions. I also forgot to aerate before pitching the yeast.

You live and learn I guess. I'll keep doing my research and hopefully will eventually get it right

It's been 20 hours and I didn't notice any airlock bubbling.. hopefully I didn't kill all the yeast

 

[tracer bullet]

You can still pitch more yeast, if the store isn't far maybe go grab some tomorrow. Also it's a good time to recommend keeping a packet of dry yeast on hand, US-05 perhaps as a generic example that works well in many styles, for situations like this as a plan B.

Get a thermometer as well, pitching while hot is a mistake you can certainly avoid. Though I can commiserate, I've done the same thing when flustered. It was ages ago, if you stick with the hobby some things like that never happen again.

Dry-run stuff as well, take this chance to try the wort chiller again and figure out what happened, so you know how to use it next time.

 

[Al-Kaholik]

Thanks for the reply! Keeping yeast on hand seems like a good idea... I'll definitely do that in the future.

I just took the lid off of my fermentor bucket and it appears to be fermenting (I see some kraussen on top) so maybe the seal on the bucket just isn't that good. In the future I'll definitely use a thermometer just to be totally sure!

 

[BQ&W]

Now is a good time to employ one of the most important (but hardest)steps in brewing - patience! Good luck!

 

[Al-Kaholik]

I just noticed the brew is giving off some banana-esque flavors. Hopefully no esters but just the natural aroma of the hefeweizen! Recipe says ferment for 3-7 but based on the forums here that seems pretty premature and it's better to wait more. Going to give it an extra week and see