Wish Us Luck

[sgoehner]

Well, tomorrow is going to be my first AG brew session, and my first side by side brew day. Have some friends coming over who want to give me a hand and see what brewing is all about, so we are going to be doing one AG and one Extract with Grains. I have my MLT built, I just made an immersion chiller yesterday, and following the stuff I have read on MrMalty, I will be making my first starter for one of the batches when I get home from work around 12:30ish tonight so that is should be ready to go by the time the wort is ready tomorrow.

Freaking out a little bit since if we have a massive failure on the AG batch I will have an audience for it instead of me just kicking myself.

Oh, and I will definitely be having a homebrew to kick of the day so that I can relax.

Updates to follow tomorrow.

 

[Krane]

Don't get too worked up about all grain. I thought it was such a big deal until I actually did it. Just take it easy and it should go smoothly. Having an audience can make it a little worse...but it's nice having someone to talk to/help. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[djfriesen]

Pulling for you dude. It'll be a blast either way. Also, you'll make beer, so there's that. . .

 

[Montanaandy]

Well, tomorrow is going to be my first AG brew session, and my first side by side brew day. Have some friends coming over who want to give me a hand and see what brewing is all about, so we are going to be doing one AG and one Extract with Grains. I have my MLT built, I just made an immersion chiller yesterday, and following the stuff I have read on MrMalty, I will be making my first starter for one of the batches when I get home from work around 12:30ish tonight so that is should be ready to go by the time the wort is ready tomorrow.

Freaking out a little bit since if we have a massive failure on the AG batch I will have an audience for it instead of me just kicking myself.

Oh, and I will definitely be having a homebrew to kick of the day so that I can relax.

Updates to follow tomorrow.

No worries. Just don't expect everything to go smoothly because it won't and it never does.

After brewing 100's of home brew batches it seems that I always manage to screw something up each time and if I don't I am a bit worried because that is not the norm. Example - one, decided not to decant starter prior to pitching to pitching as I normally do and went to swirl the beaker to loosen the yeast cake and was greeted by starter foaming out of the beaker like crazy. Probably lost half of the starter but the beer is stil fermenting like mad. Two, decided to use some leaf in my last batch after having switched to all pellet for a while (actually had to because only had Simcoe in leaf form). Didn't dump the trub into the garbage but tried to wash it down the drain like I do with pellet trub. Bad idea. Clogged sink that required me to fish the leaf out by hand out of the wash basin. RPITA.

The key is to go with the flow and to not allow the problem to stop you be it a stuck sparge, too little wort for the BK, to much wort for the BK, low OG readings, high OG readings, etc.

The only other advice that I have is to not relax too much (ie. have too many homebrews while brewing). My system is so Macguyverish with having to go up and down stairs and bring all of my equipment upstairs and then back downstairs for cleaning & storage that I remember thinking after the aforementioned mishaps how much worse/difficult things would have been if I was not sober.

 

[sgoehner]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I will definitely be keeping the homebrew consumption limited as I am excited/stressed enough already. Of course there is a Packer game, so that will make it tougher but hopefully we will be close to finished by then.

 

[Goblism]

Plan everything out, know how much water at what temp you will be adding to the mash, write down your steps. it isn't terribly hard, just keep cleaning and preparing for the next step as you go

 

[Kate00]

A good pointer I got is to keep a couple pounds of LME on hand to add if you miss your gravity on your all grain batch. I've done two AG batches so far and had to add a little extract in the second one.

 

[scoundrel]

Put everyone to work. It will relieve the stress of people hovering over you and if something goes wrong you can blame your drunk friends . Not to mention, with two brews going, you can focus on the process while they do the heavy lifting. You're the conductor my friend... Good Luck!!!

 

[sgoehner]

Well, all in all the day went pretty well. The extract batch, which I made a starter for since I was using liquid, is already bubbling away. The AG batch went pretty good, had a add a little water as the temp dropped a few degrees because it was cold here. Then, I we ended up having a boil over in the last 20 minutes when we just happened to be inside, we were down to 2 people, trying to catch some of the game and warm up, and we lost about a gallon. Took a reading after is cooled down and I was a little high, so I added a little water to get some more volume and after mixing got to the target gravity. Pitched some rehydrated S-04 and am waiting for it to take off. Tested the sample and it was very good and has the chance to turn out like I wanted it to, Newcastle clone. I will definitely be doing another AG soon.

 

[djfriesen]

Good to hear! Happy brewing. And not a bad football game either. I guess you take 'em however you can get 'em, huh?

 

[sgoehner]

Yeah, the game wasn't pretty, but a win is a win. Our defense needs to get it's act together or they are going to have a hard time going back to back.