10 steps to rookie brewing :)

[OhCrap]

Howya all doing'

As I said in my 1st thread, I 'brewed' my 1st beer a coopers Canadian blonde kit....shusssh
(I am in the process of gathering equipment)

1. Sanitise everything
2. Mix boiling water & 1kg brew sugar
3. Add & dissolve extract
4. Add water boiling/cold to adjust temp to 20/21c
5. Seal FV and put an heat belt to maintain temp and repeat the following 'I MADE BEER'
6. Marvel at the yeast action and keep telling yourself it really dosen't matter that you have no airlock RDWHAHB no nasties can get in my beer

7. Bottle beer in PET bottles primed with carb drops
8. Wait, wait, wait
9. Ignore ALL advice on this forum & Open beer after ONLY 1 week

10. REALISE why you should heed advice given by experienced brewers.

 

[Atonk]

Just curious - how did it taste? You didn't have an airlock - did you have it covered at all?

 

[birvine]

Don't use a heat belt unless you're using it in a cold room. You want to ferment at around 60.

B

 

[OhCrap]

Just curious - how did it taste? You didn't have an airlock - did you have it covered at all?

I had it covered with the lid and the airlock hole wasn't fully covered. It tasted like beer that was let go flat, some carb but not a lot, if that makes sense. Will try one next week and so on until all gone 😃

 

[OhCrap]

Don't use a heat belt unless you're using it in a cold room. You want to ferment at around 60.

B

Its a small belt placed at the bottom just to maintain the temp I was instructed to keep it at. If I left it off it would have been sitting in 6c which would be a weeee bit cold me thinks. But i put it on a brew last night and the temp rose too high so it's off now and sitting pretty dde01

 

[unionrdr]

Cooper's ale yeast won't ferment but very little at 60F. I did a test some weeks ago after an oversight with other things while giving the wort it's ice bath. It got down to 13C (55.4F). No action till 16C (60.8F),& only enough to get the reproductive phase started. It peged the airlock center piece against the cap. I felt that that was still too cold for good yeast health/action. When it got back up to 20C (68F),it had 2" of krausen,good but no airlock action. Not important,but worthy of note since I pitched a fresh 15g packet of Cooper's ale yeast. The larger 15g packets can be had from NB or Midwest. Higher temp noted was 21C (69.8F) from the 20C temp at 11:40am till 1:55pm when higher temp was noted on 1/23. Next day was warmer yet & temp went up to 24C (75.2). As of 1/30 it held at 19C (66.2F). So all in all,the lower temps do seem to prevent the need for a blow off by slowing down fermentation. Hydrometer samples still had a fruity taste from the yeast,but smoother & a hair less prominent. I can only imagine that good temp control would make for even less fruity esters. But at this point I'm inclined to think that the ale yeasts that produce them can't be stopped from making them entirely. But the hop/malt balance seems to be better at this stage than before. A 12 pack of the beer being discussed goes into the fridge for 1 week today. I'll be noting my observations at that phase as well. Since it accidentally got some 45 minutes chill time down to said 13C,we'll see what results chilling longer than 20 minutes will give in this case. It got down to 70F in 20-25 minutes,but forgetting to reassemble tha spigot on the FV caused that time to be longer & get down to a way lower temp.
I hope this gives some insights from my wanting to learn more from a mistake & relate the info to you folks.