Top off you glass, sit back and get ready to point and laugh at the new kid.
Quick background on me. I have never brewed a beer before yesterday, not an extract not even a Mr Beer kit. I decided to start brewing AG because I figured I'd never brew an extract so why bother learning that way.
I picked up a kit from NB for Caribou Slobber Brown Ale I love me a brown ale!! First thing to note is the amount of cleaning, scrubbing, washing and sanitizing is insane. I am germ-a-phobe to start so I mighta overdone the cleaning and sanitizing part but figured your gear can never be too clean right!?
So now that everything is clean enough to eat off it's brew time!! I live in Maine and we have amazing spring water here so I am brewing using that. I got 5gals to 168deg as my mash calls for 153 @ 60mins. I am using 10.625lbs of grain which means i am using @ 1.8qts of water per lb of grain, i realize now that that maybe more water than necessary to mash with. I am using a SS pot that is slid into a cooler to help retain heat as I didn't want to mash in the cooler itself as I was weary of off flavors from the plastic. This setup seems to work well for me as my starting temp for the mash was money @ 153.8 and finished @ 152.4. A big reason for the drop was my curiosity and opened up the lid a couple times to see how things were going. Oops
And for me I think this is where things went down hill. The recipe calls for a 10min mashout at 170degs I realized I didn't understand (and still don't) the term mashout. What I now "think" it means is to raise the temp of the entire mash to 170degs and let it sit for 10 mins. Is this correct? And if so how do I determine how much water and at what temp to get the mash from 153 to 170?
So that being said I had about 4gal of boiling water on standby so I got the mash to 170 just by dumping a bunch of boiling water in till it hit the 170 mark. I have no clue how much I dumped in but would like a way to know how much should be required to achieve this without having to fudge it.
So continuing on... After I hit my 170 I started to drain it off into the boil kettle, I didn't wait the 10mins as required as the temp was dropping fast because I had my lid open the whole time. I didn't measure how much wort I had after my first running for the mash so I just added water till I had about 6.75gals of wort in my boil kettle. Again it wasn't the correct way to do it but sometimes ya gotta just work with what ya got. I did notice a lot of what I call floaties in my boil kettle as I started the boil (before I added the hops) so not sure if I drained off enough of the first runnings or if I somehow disturbed the grain bed. Do you normally see floaties in your kettle?
Ok now I have my wort on an open flame to bring it to a boil. This took about an hour with my gas stove to get to wort to slow roll boil is this too long? I guess what I am asking is that from first flame to end of boil it was a total of 2 hours over a high flame how does the added hour it took to get to a boil affect the outcome of the beer? Also I was assuming that the hops addition didn't start till the wort was at a steady rolling boil correct?
I ended my boil and realized I hadn't taken a pre-boil gravity Dooh!! Owell it was too late at that point. I did take an OG and came in at 1.042 when I shoulda been at 1.052 can anyone tell me what part or parts caused me to be shy of the OG required (1.052)? Are there factors I didn't calculate when figuring OG like temp or atmosphere or how many beers I had consumed at that point?
I ended up with just shy of 5.5gal in the carboy @ 80deg. I hit that with about 3mins of oxygen and dropped in my yeast, capped the carboy and she was bubbling about 2hrs later.
that was about 18hrs ago and she is bubblin away. So all in all I really enjoyed brewing my first batch of beer. I am optimistic that the beer will turn out ok for my first ride at the rodeo. Mashing seems to be my crutch and need to get a better grip on understanding volumes needed/required to do it properly. Other than that I am like a kid in a candy store wanting to buy up lots more grain to brew. Cheers!'
David
CARIBOU SLOBBER BROWN ALE (All Grain)
OG 1.052
READY: 6 WEEKS
Suggested fermentation schedule:
1-2 weeks primary;
1-2 weeks secondary;
2 weeks bottle conditioning
MASH INGREDIENTS
- 9 lbs. Rahr 2-row pale
- .75 lbs. Briess Caramel 60L
- .5 lbs. Briess Caramel 80L
- .25 lbs. Fawcett Pale Chocolate
- .125 lbs. English Black Malt
MASH SCHEDULE: SINGLE INFUSION
Sacch’ Rest: 153° F for 60 minutes
Mashout: 170° F for 10 minutes
BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
1 oz. US Goldings (60 min)
1 oz. Liberty (30 min)
1 oz. Willamette (15 min)
YEAST
liquid yeast:
WYEAST #1332 NORTHWEST ALE YEAST.
Optimum temperature: 65-75°
Quick background on me. I have never brewed a beer before yesterday, not an extract not even a Mr Beer kit. I decided to start brewing AG because I figured I'd never brew an extract so why bother learning that way.
I picked up a kit from NB for Caribou Slobber Brown Ale I love me a brown ale!! First thing to note is the amount of cleaning, scrubbing, washing and sanitizing is insane. I am germ-a-phobe to start so I mighta overdone the cleaning and sanitizing part but figured your gear can never be too clean right!?
So now that everything is clean enough to eat off it's brew time!! I live in Maine and we have amazing spring water here so I am brewing using that. I got 5gals to 168deg as my mash calls for 153 @ 60mins. I am using 10.625lbs of grain which means i am using @ 1.8qts of water per lb of grain, i realize now that that maybe more water than necessary to mash with. I am using a SS pot that is slid into a cooler to help retain heat as I didn't want to mash in the cooler itself as I was weary of off flavors from the plastic. This setup seems to work well for me as my starting temp for the mash was money @ 153.8 and finished @ 152.4. A big reason for the drop was my curiosity and opened up the lid a couple times to see how things were going. Oops
And for me I think this is where things went down hill. The recipe calls for a 10min mashout at 170degs I realized I didn't understand (and still don't) the term mashout. What I now "think" it means is to raise the temp of the entire mash to 170degs and let it sit for 10 mins. Is this correct? And if so how do I determine how much water and at what temp to get the mash from 153 to 170?
So that being said I had about 4gal of boiling water on standby so I got the mash to 170 just by dumping a bunch of boiling water in till it hit the 170 mark. I have no clue how much I dumped in but would like a way to know how much should be required to achieve this without having to fudge it.
So continuing on... After I hit my 170 I started to drain it off into the boil kettle, I didn't wait the 10mins as required as the temp was dropping fast because I had my lid open the whole time. I didn't measure how much wort I had after my first running for the mash so I just added water till I had about 6.75gals of wort in my boil kettle. Again it wasn't the correct way to do it but sometimes ya gotta just work with what ya got. I did notice a lot of what I call floaties in my boil kettle as I started the boil (before I added the hops) so not sure if I drained off enough of the first runnings or if I somehow disturbed the grain bed. Do you normally see floaties in your kettle?
Ok now I have my wort on an open flame to bring it to a boil. This took about an hour with my gas stove to get to wort to slow roll boil is this too long? I guess what I am asking is that from first flame to end of boil it was a total of 2 hours over a high flame how does the added hour it took to get to a boil affect the outcome of the beer? Also I was assuming that the hops addition didn't start till the wort was at a steady rolling boil correct?
I ended my boil and realized I hadn't taken a pre-boil gravity Dooh!! Owell it was too late at that point. I did take an OG and came in at 1.042 when I shoulda been at 1.052 can anyone tell me what part or parts caused me to be shy of the OG required (1.052)? Are there factors I didn't calculate when figuring OG like temp or atmosphere or how many beers I had consumed at that point?
I ended up with just shy of 5.5gal in the carboy @ 80deg. I hit that with about 3mins of oxygen and dropped in my yeast, capped the carboy and she was bubbling about 2hrs later.
that was about 18hrs ago and she is bubblin away. So all in all I really enjoyed brewing my first batch of beer. I am optimistic that the beer will turn out ok for my first ride at the rodeo. Mashing seems to be my crutch and need to get a better grip on understanding volumes needed/required to do it properly. Other than that I am like a kid in a candy store wanting to buy up lots more grain to brew. Cheers!'
David
CARIBOU SLOBBER BROWN ALE (All Grain)
OG 1.052
READY: 6 WEEKS
Suggested fermentation schedule:
1-2 weeks primary;
1-2 weeks secondary;
2 weeks bottle conditioning
MASH INGREDIENTS
- 9 lbs. Rahr 2-row pale
- .75 lbs. Briess Caramel 60L
- .5 lbs. Briess Caramel 80L
- .25 lbs. Fawcett Pale Chocolate
- .125 lbs. English Black Malt
MASH SCHEDULE: SINGLE INFUSION
Sacch’ Rest: 153° F for 60 minutes
Mashout: 170° F for 10 minutes
BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
1 oz. US Goldings (60 min)
1 oz. Liberty (30 min)
1 oz. Willamette (15 min)
YEAST
liquid yeast:
WYEAST #1332 NORTHWEST ALE YEAST.
Optimum temperature: 65-75°