Welcome Beginning Brewers!

[kh54s10]

Hey y'all! Hopeful first-timer living in Southeast Spain.

I'm wanting to get my first beer kit together, but I had a concern about fermenting temperatures: I see a big recommendation is to ferment at a "cool room temperature" around the upper 60's and lower 70's, but where I live central heating isn't really a thing and my apartment is completely tiled, so my apartment is kind of an ice box (outside temperature right now averages between 50F-60F).

Will fermenting in a cold environment absolutely wreck my chances of beermaking? Should I just attempt this in the spring?

Thanks chums.

Or buy a Brew Belt or other fermenter wrap heater and a temperature controller. Are InkBirds available. In the US they are about $34 usd.

 

[ncbrewer]

Will fermenting in a cold environment absolutely wreck my chances of beermaking? Should I just attempt this in the spring?

Thanks chums.

Summer might be more of a problem. Heating is pretty easy, but cooing can be a challenge. A freezer or refrigerator with a controller is often used, but can be expensive. Swamp cooler (fermenter in a large tub of water and maybe bottles of ice) is pretty good but requires attention. If you decide on a swamp cooler for cooling, you could add an aquarium heater for heating in the winter.

Welcome to HBT.

 

[SEndorf]

BAH! New Brewers ! They have tiny hands and smell of cabbage....

Welcome to HBT anyway...…

 

[Professor Frink]

Hi Doug!,
So, I'm a Witbier, Weizen lover .... and I just saw a video of a guy brewing his first Hefeweizen. That was super cool. He did a few things that I think I'd do different, like:
1- He had a Home Depot Cooler for mashing ... but the grains were free. I have a sort of bag i'd put the grains on, that way I think i'd avoid having grains on my wort.
2- He used a carboy which, I get it, you can see the fermentation process but I ended up buying fermentation tanks at first so I'll try with that first hehe.
3- He keg the beer adding carbonation and such. I think for a beginner I'd stick with bottling and maybe adding a drop of .(for natural carbonation).. i'm not sure if you add a sort of liquid sugar ... i'll research haha but I'll stick with bottling.

I think for a first beer, that was not too hard, and its a hazy beer, but, I'd probably try with a Blonde Ale or maybe a Smash (single malt single hop)

What'd you think?

I think a SMASH pale ale would be great. There are a lot of great versatile hops out there. I'd go with a Maris Otter base and choose your favorite hop.

 

[89Hen]

As good a place as any to post this question. Has anyone seen or made a thread on abbreviations, acronyms and slang? I can figure most of them out like QD for quick disconnect, but I seem to be wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what folks are talking about that have been doing this for a long time and know all the vernacular. I think it would be a great thread to have somewhere.

 

[eric19312]

Hey y'all! Hopeful first-timer living in Southeast Spain.

I'm wanting to get my first beer kit together, but I had a concern about fermenting temperatures: I see a big recommendation is to ferment at a "cool room temperature" around the upper 60's and lower 70's, but where I live central heating isn't really a thing and my apartment is completely tiled, so my apartment is kind of an ice box (outside temperature right now averages between 50F-60F).

Will fermenting in a cold environment absolutely wreck my chances of beermaking? Should I just attempt this in the spring?

Thanks chums.

Honestly sounds like good temps now for brewing ales. Low 60s will be fine, figure out temperatures in different rooms in your house. Start the fermentation in cooler location then move your fermenter to warmer location after 5-6 days. Spring should be ok...but I’m really worried about your summer. For summer you might consider trying kveik yeast which does well pretty hot.

Eventually if the brewing bug hits you like it hits many of us, active temperature control is what you will want. I’ve always been happy with fridge or freezer as a fermentation chamber with a heat source and a dual stage controller like an ink bird. An old used fridge is good enough...energy efficiency is not that important maintaining temp about 17-18C. I use a ceramic reptile bulb for heat, lots of other ways to do it.

 

[vicdry52]

Here's hoping this is still active. My son and I started doing some homebrewing as a hobby to do something together. We have successfully completed an English Brown, and a Belgian Dark. Both came out okay but, they were kits. We are on our third brew, a red ale. We went full grain and dry extract this time and are currently two days into the primary fermentation stage. We favor secondary fermentation as a means of reducing the amount of sediment in the liquid so,

1. How much filtering can we do prior to adding sugar without damaging the product.

2. Can we filter again as we bottle?

 

[JohnSand]

Hi Vic! Welcome aboard!
I have never filtered beer, I let it settle clear in the fermenter. You can check on it or just wait, almost all of mine clear up after three weeks in the bucket. If not, cooling them clears them in the keg or bottle. You can also use gelatin or other additives to clear your beer. Good luck, brew on and keep us posted.

 

[doug293cz]

Here's hoping this is still active. My son and I started doing some homebrewing as a hobby to do something together. We have successfully completed an English Brown, and a Belgian Dark. Both came out okay but, they were kits. We are on our third brew, a red ale. We went full grain and dry extract this time and are currently two days into the primary fermentation stage. We favor secondary fermentation as a means of reducing the amount of sediment in the liquid so,

1. How much filtering can we do prior to adding sugar without damaging the product.

2. Can we filter again as we bottle?

Welcome to home brewing and HomeBrewTalk.

Filtering beer is not a simple thing to do correctly. After fermentation, beer is very sensitive to oxygen exposure, so any filtering has to be done with a sealed filter system that prevents oxygen exposure. As John said, you are much better off waiting to allow the particulates to settle, and this is best done by leaving it in the primary fermenter longer. Racking to secondary is just another chance to oxidize, or infect, the beer.

I'm assuming that you are bottling, which means you have to add priming sugar to the beer when you bottle, in order to get carbonation. Even if you bottled perfectly clear beer, the fermentation of the priming sugar will still create sediment in the bottom of your bottles.

Brew on

 

[user 272380]

Thanks for the assurances, guys! I just bottled my first batch of APA. Looks like everything went off without a hitch, but it's also been warming up a bit where I live.

New question: I'd like to start a new batch right away, and this time I'm feeling like an IPA. Oranges are in season where I live, so a juicy orange IPA sounds like a fun experiment.

So when is a good time to add the oranges so I get some good juicy flavors? I don't necessarily need it to be sweet, but I'd like to be able to taste that orange. I'm picturing something that would be refreshing on a warm beach day.

 

[bwible]

Hi Doug!,
So, I'm a Witbier, Weizen lover ....

Mashing wheat can be a bit of a PITA and using rice hulls is recommended. Rice hulls are just the husks of rice used as filler or spacer because wheat can get gummy and the hulls prevent the mash from all just sticking together and gumming up solid so no water can pass through the grain bed. The term everybody uses is “stuck mash.” And thats not a good term. Rice hulls don’t add anything fermentable to the mash.

A much, much easier way to make weizen is using wheat malt extract. I like dry malt extract. Its more expensive than buying grain but its the only way I ever brew wheat beer. Makes it nice and simple, too. Just wheat DME and whatever hop you choose. I usually use Hallertauer or something similar like Liberty, Mt Hood, or Crystal. Tettnang would also be a good option. If you are only using bittering hops for 60 min then it really doesn’t matter what hop you use. Hefeweizens don’t need much hops. Use just enough to get to 15 IBUs or similar low hoping level. The yeast is the most important ingredient in this beer. Different yeasts will produce vastly different flavors. For Hefe yeast I like Wyeast 3068. If you ferment it warm it will produce more bananna esters and less clove. The best wheat beer I ever made was fermented in the summer in my shop back when I didn’t have a/c. Had to be fermented at over 90 degrees.

 

[bwible]

Thanks for the assurances, guys! I just bottled my first batch of APA. Looks like everything went off without a hitch, but it's also been warming up a bit where I live.

New question: I'd like to start a new batch right away, and this time I'm feeling like an IPA. Oranges are in season where I live, so a juicy orange IPA sounds like a fun experiment.

So when is a good time to add the oranges so I get some good juicy flavors? I don't necessarily need it to be sweet, but I'd like to be able to taste that orange. I'm picturing something that would be refreshing on a warm beach day.

With IPA, you are going to have alot of aggressive hop flavor that will tend to cover or mask just about anything else. Especially if the recipe has large late hop additions.

Orange peel is used in beer. It can be added late in the boil, like with 5 or 10 min remaining. It’s one of the key flavors in witbier. You want the orange part of the skin and as little of the white stuff underneath as possible. Orange is also added to the secondary fermenter (settling tank). People who brew New England IPA use oranges and blood oranges pretty commonly. But NEIPA is not one of my favorite styles and I don’t brew it. So hopefully others can fill that in. NEIPA might even be what you are after.

This may also help:
http://allaboutbeer.com/article/is-that-an-orange-in-my-beer/

 

[bwible]

Hi! I’m planning to make my own beer. What equipments should I prioritize on having to start my first batch? Also can I grow my own barley or hopps at home? Still doing research
Tia for replies!

The very first piece of equipment I’d recommend is a quality Stainless Steel brewpot. It will be one of the most expensive items on your list. There is debate about SS vs aluminum, some have said aluminum can react with acids and leech substances that contribute to alzheimers. Again, this is debate in homebrew forums. I’d rather not chance it.

Whether you go for SS or aluminum, you should get a pot big enough to hold more than your entire batch and avoid concentrated wort boils if doing extract brewing. Many of us started out doing concentrated boils, ie boiling all the sugar for a 5 gallon batch in 2 gallons then adding 3 gallons of water at the end. It’s not a good practice. There are a number of issues with concentrated boils, including color darkening and improper hop extraction. So start with a pot bigger than your entire batch. Obviouly you cannot boil 5 gallons in a 5 gallon pot, for safety and if you need to use a chiller. Which brings me to:

Your second investment should be a wort chiller. Immersion chillers are easiest to use and great for batches 5 gallons or less. Long cooling leads to a number of issues and ice baths don’t work well unless you are doing very small batches, like 1 gallon.

These two items will make the biggest difference in your brewing the fastest.

Then get a good, long, SS brewing spoon.

As far as growing your own, I’d say not so much on the barley. In addition to growing the barley plant and harvesting the seeds (which are the grains we’re brewing with) barley has to go through a process called malting before we can brew with it. Malting means they basically wet the seeds and allow them to germinate to a point. The emerging plant naturally converts the starch in the seed to sugar for its use. At the point the sugars are converted the grain is dried and kilned. Not saying you can’t do it, but its a whole lot of effort for something you can buy pretty cheap.

You can grow hops. Most homebrew shops sell or can get hop rhizomes in season. Hops are a vine and they need to have something to climb on. I have seen people successfully use their clothes line. The only issue with growing your own hops is that unless you send them out to a laboratory for testing you don’t know the real alpha acid percentage. This makes recipe formulation difficult. So we say buy your bittering hops and if you want to grow hops then grow your aroma hops. Like Cascade or Centennial.

 

[bwible]

Hey y'all! Hopeful first-timer living in Southeast Spain.

I'm wanting to get my first beer kit together, but I had a concern about fermenting temperatures: I see a big recommendation is to ferment at a "cool room temperature" around the upper 60's and lower 70's, but where I live central heating isn't really a thing and my apartment is completely tiled, so my apartment is kind of an ice box (outside temperature right now averages between 50F-60F).

Will fermenting in a cold environment absolutely wreck my chances of beermaking? Should I just attempt this in the spring?

Thanks chums.

That sounds like the range for lager yeast.

There are 2 types of yeast. Ale yeast - which is also called top fermenting yeast, and lager yeast - which is also called bottom fermenting yeast. The 2 are different strains.

Ale yeast works warmer and its the one people talk about when they say 70 degrees. Lager yeast likes it colder. The 50’s range. If you’re going to have those temps for any length of time like several weeks then you could make lager.

There are multiple lager styles too. Its not all Coor’s light.

Or there’s a hybrid strain used for Steam beer (exact number not coming to mind, Wyeast 2112?) that might also work.

 

[bwible]

Hello everyone here is my new question. I would like to brew a one gallon batch of a maple beer. The recipe that I have calls for Amber dme and lite lme. Are there any grains that I could use to substitute in place of the dme and lme? Thanks

Extracts come in two forms. Dry malt extract (DME) has had almost all the liquid removed and is like a powder or fine sugar. Liquid malt extract usually comes in a can and still has much liquid. Its like a thick syrup.

Liquid malt extract contains about 38 gravity points per pound of extract. If you were to dilute 1 pound of liquid extract in 1 gallon of water you should end up with a solution that would measure 1.038.

Dry malt extract is more potent, having had more water removed. It contains about 45 points per pound of extract. If you were to dilute 1 pound of dry extract in 1 gallon of water you should end up with a solution that would measure 1.045.

If we mash grains, they usually contain 30ish points per pound, but we also lose part of that because we don’t get 100% efficiency. Assuming 33 points per pound and 70% efficiency, you might get 23 points out of a pound of grain. So it would take about 2 pounds of grain (or more depending on actual efficiency) to equal what’s in one pound of DME. From that, its not really much savings. Especially if you are only doing 1 gallon.

So you have to make up your recipe that way. For Amber DME use 90% base malt or two row malt and 10% Crystal malt, maybe 80L. For Light DME just use 100% base malt or two row malt.

These may not be perfect calculations but they should get you close

 

[doug293cz]

...

Liquid malt extract contains about 38 gravity points per pound of extract. If you were to dilute 1 pound of liquid extract in 1 gallon of water you should end up with a solution that would measure 1.038.

Dry malt extract is more potent, having had more water removed. It contains about 45 points per pound of extract. If you were to dilute 1 pound of dry extract in 1 gallon of water you should end up with a solution that would measure 1.045.

...

Gravity points are a good way to do recipe formulations and efficiency calculations, but the quoted description contains a subtle and very common error.

To get wort at the SG corresponding to the point potential of the LME, DME, or grain, you must mix 1 lb with enough water to make 1 gal of wort. The required amount of water is less than 1 gallon, since the fermentable contributes a significant volume to the total wort volume. If you mix with 1 gal of water the resulting wort volume will be more than 1 gal, and the SG will be lower than expected.

Brew on

 

[ncbrewer]

I'll offer some alternate ideas:

If you are only using bittering hops for 60 min then it really doesn’t matter what hop you use.

I taste a difference between varying types of hops, even when used for bittering. I used some non-noble hops in a Hefeweizen once and was disappointed. I've had a similar experience with a Nut Brown Ale

Many of us started out doing concentrated boils, ie boiling all the sugar for a 5 gallon batch in 2 gallons then adding 3 gallons of water at the end. It’s not a good practice. There are a number of issues with concentrated boils, including color darkening and improper hop extraction. So start with a pot bigger than your entire batch.

Another option is to use the late extract addition method. Add about 1/4 - 1/2 of the extract initially and do a half volume boil. Then add the rest of the extract at flameout, and let it steep for ten minutes to pasteurize. Add top-off water after chilling. The only substantial limitation is that you can't get over about 50 IBUs in the final beer, since there is a solubility limit of roughly 100 IBUs, and it's diluted by the top-off water. I never approach this limit with my brews.

 

[JohnSand]

Plenty of good advice above.
I believe that new brewers should start with proven recipes and simple equipment. While it may cost more in the long run as you upgrade, you don't really know what your style and preferences will be when you start.

 

[Jabronisaur]

Possibly very dumb question. I’m looking at making my very first brew this week. When a recipe here says hop (60 min) is that T the 60 min tire mark of the boil or is that to boil for at least 60mjnutes??

 

[user 272380]

Possibly very dumb question. I’m looking at making my very first brew this week. When a recipe here says hop (60 min) is that T the 60 min tire mark of the boil or is that to boil for at least 60mjnutes??

The hop additions on a recipe refer to time left. So if the recipe says that addition is at 60 minutes, it's at the start of a boil. What it says at 15 minutes drops with 15 minutes to go, etc.

 

[kh54s10]

To further clarify, some recipes call for a 90 minute boil or such, then you would boil for 30 minutes then add the 60 minute hops when 60 minutes are left. 15 = 15 minutes left. 5 = 5 minutes left. Then there are flame-out additions that would be added when you turn off the heat. And hopstand or whirlpool hops where you would cool to a certain temperature then add the hops for a certain amount of time before cooling the rest of the way. These are more advanced ways but timing and temperature are not critical.

 

[Jabronisaur]

The hop additions on a recipe refer to time left. So if the recipe says that addition is at 60 minutes, it's at the start of a boil. What it says at 15 minutes drops with 15 minutes to go, etc.

Thanks

 

[davidgogz]

This is a great place to start if you have ANY questions at all about brewing your own beer.

From Mr. Beer and extract kits to all-grain brewing, we welcome all new brewers who have questions or need advice on their equipment, techniques, fermentation, wort making, yeast, and more.

If you have a question, that means that others probably have had the same question too so no question is too silly. I promise. Ask us!

And to more experienced brewers, it goes without saying that we will be welcoming of those questions and be as helpful as possible in our answers. If someone feels that they can't be positive and helpful, they should refrain from posting in the Beginner's Forum. Ask me if you are unsure if something is appropriate- remember what your mother told you, "If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all!"

Feel free to message one of the admins or moderators if you have any problems with posting on the forum, or if you have any problems with navigating around the forum at all.

Cheers!

Hey Guys,
I've bought a CHUR all grain kit but the recipe is for the grainfather, which i don't have.....yet.
does the recipe need to be tweaked if I'm using home-brew equipment.
thanks in advance.

 

[Yooper]

No, it shouldn’t. I don’t know what a CHUR is- but recipes are recipes.

 

[Tony Thomsen]

Thanks!!
Best Regards, Tony

 

[Aki]

Hi y’all! I’m going to brew my first batch soon and would love to hear if this sounds reasonable or has some errors. I had to be creative with recipe ’cause I am starting small with 10L kettle.

Malts:
2kg pale ale
0,2kg caramel 50 ebc
0,1kg light munich

Single hop Challenger:

60min 5g
45min 10g
10min 10g
5min 10g
0min 10g

+ 1,4G irish moss 15min
+ dry hop, 15g??

This should result in approx. 57 ibu with 0,83 bu:ratio assuming I calculated correctly.

Going to start with mash water 5L and sparge (though doing biab) with 5,5L. Mash water 77 celcius, 80 degree oven for an hour to keep the heat up, then sparge, boil an hour, cool off with ice cubes.

End result approx. 7L to be fermented(?).

Does this look like an OK way to start ?

 

[justin.osburn.clarendon]

Hi Team. So lockdown hey...i have the following...
Ingredients:
100g bakers yeast
6l pure apple juice
4 pineapples
2kg brown sugar
Various kitchen ingredients

Equipment:
Various kitchen equipment
5l water bottle and the like
Balloons
Various miscellaneous items

Not ideal, but any ideas?

 

[kh54s10]

Hi Team. So lockdown hey...i have the following...
Ingredients:
100g bakers yeast
6l pure apple juice
4 pineapples
2kg brown sugar
Various kitchen ingredients

Equipment:
Various kitchen equipment
5l water bottle and the like
Balloons
Various miscellaneous items

Not ideal, but any ideas?

Sounds like kitchen or "jailhouse" hootch. You can make some cider or pineapple something. Whether you will want to drink it is another question.

But then again you might make something good. I would probably add .5kg of the sugar to the apple juice. If it has Potassium Sorbate in it it will/should not ferment.
I don't know how much yeast you would need but certainly not 100g, maybe 10-20g.

 

[SEndorf]

Agreed. Why not just use the apple juice and make a cider?

 

[justin.osburn.clarendon]

Thanks guys. Do you have an easy recipe? UPDATE! I managed to get my hands on BREWERS YEAST. Does this change my prospects?