Starting 2nd Batch, need some help

[derek704]

Hey all, I have been researching home brewing for several years now. I bought a premium brewing kit from my local LHBS for Christmas, and I am about to start my second batch. I brewed their house Basic Wheat with good results. It has a fantastic head and carbonation, and tastes pretty good after two weeks in the bottle. It is a little lacking in flavor complexity for me but still a good brew, so I decided to buy Austin Homebrew's solid rated Bavarian Hefeweizen extract kit.
I think I'll step it up to partial mash next round, but I want another quality brew with extract (with steeping grains) under my belt so that I'm confident going forward.
Anyhow, my question at the moment is if it is okay to boil everything in my pot with this nylon bag that I just bought. The grains came in a sock already, however I want to remove my pellet hops before pouring the cooled wort into my glass carboy. Last time, before I had the bag, everything got caught and clogged the funnel filter, causing a mess in the kitchen. Will I burn the bag doing this, or am I on the right track?

Thanks,
Derek

 

[amie]

The nylon material from that bag is likely to melt/burn if it touches the bottom of your kettle during the boil. Do you have a bottling bucket? If you do, I would line the bucket with this bag and transfer your cooled wort to that bucket before you fill the carboy. Since you'll want to aerate the wort at that stage (before pitching the yeast) anyway, a little extra agitation from this extra step won't hurt and might even add extra O2 for fermentation.

I just got a nylon bag like that and I'm planning to do exactly that for my next brew... currently I just siphon the cooled wort into the bottling bucket and try to leave most of the hop guk and trub behind. Then, I use the spigot and tube of my bottling bucket to feed the wort through a wine aerator as I fill the carboy. Ultimately, our beers come out pretty clear with this method as most of the sediment falls to the bottom of the carboy and is packed into the yeast cake. But I hate "wasting" a quart of wort that gets left behind in the kettle, so I think filtering with the nylon bag could be useful.

 

[flars]

I pour through the bag, as it sits in the funnel, into the fermentor. My wife is the second set of hands for doing this.
I will be building a stand to hold the bag to make it a one person job to pour.

I would be leary of trying to stir LME or DME into solution inside a bag.

 

[derek704]

Thanks for the help guys! I'll probably line the funnel instead of the bottling bucket because I use the bucket to hold my sanatizer ( Iodophor).

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Many, many brewers-myself included-boil with a paint strainer in place to contain the hops but allow them to move around freely in the wort. I have a gas stove and have never had an issue with one melting on the bottom of the pot...the sides if I'm not paying attention, yes! This keeps a lot of the material out of the fermenter then I use a second strainer as I pour into a bucket where I top up and aerate, then I pour into my carboy. If you just line the funnel you will probably clog up like the filter in the funnel. If you use a strainer during the boil to catch most of it you'll be fine lining the funnel to catch the rest.

 

[derek704]

Here's how it went.

Steeped in 2.25gal at 160* for 25 min:
1/2lb Cara Pils Malt
1/2lb German Pilsner Malt

Added 7lb Wheat LME

Boiled for 60 min:
3/4oz German Hallertau (60 min) bittering
1/4 oz German Hallertau (5min) aroma

Cooled and pitched into 5.05 gal @ 68*:
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan MFG 14 NOV 13

Projected OG (tasty brew calculator): 1.056
Actual OG (including hydrometer correction): 1.055
:rockin:


Update: at 12AM we already have bubbles in the airlock (4 hours)

 

[RonPopeil]

i would use the bag to line the fermenter. i have a ball valve on my kettle that i use for this step. even still, pouring through the bag will get it done. just be careful not to blow the bag off the sides. did this on friday and pull a few ounces of hop muck out of the bucket.