First brew Chinhook IPA

[pawsjk]

Well after months of reading and gathering equipment I finally had my first brew morning. A little over 4 hours from start to finish. Throughout the process I found issues and lots of room for improvement.

Some of the efficiency issues I ran into were
1) measuring the water by the gallon before it goes into the boil kettle for strike water seemed like a east of time. Is there and easier way to a shear to the recipe and not have to pre measure? Meaning I just want to fill up my kettle and be able to measure when adding to mashtun.

2) The mash out. Could have better matched my flow between the fly sparging and draining the mashtun. Not that I went fast just couldn't get them to match up.

3) during the boil I had a few boil overs which left behind the hops stuck to the side of the keg. Need to watch it like a hawk, turn down the heat and leave the lid slightly off.

4) cooling the wart sucked. I built my own chiller but the water out of my faucet was not cold and the ice I had on hand melted quickly. There has to be a better way for this? More ice water to run through the chiller?

5) My transfer from boil to fermenter went ok while still a little warm for the dry yeast I put the fermenter in the freezer to cool it to - little below 80ish, then added the yeast. Hope this was ok?

6) there was loss from the strike water to the mash to the boil. I am not sure how to measure this or make up for it. Do I add more water and if so where? I know it's knowing my equipment and I think it's mainly the boil that I lost the most on.

Finally added the yeast and put fermenter in a nice cool pantry. Saw activity within 12 hours


and now at 24 hours there is a good cake on top.


Only 12 more days to go In the primary.

Any pointers to make this easier? I am ready to buy my next beer kit.

 

[pawsjk]

Also, this was a 5 gallon batch in a 6.5 gallon fermenter. On top of that, I think only 4 to 4.5 gallons of wart was produced. So not great but not bad for my first brew.

 

[Yooper]

Welcome to the obsession!

In answering some of your questions:
1. I made marks on my pot that heats my water at every gallon and half gallon place, with tacky pink nail polish on the outside.

Other people put in a gallon, mark their big spoon, then another, etc. It really helps with volume measurements! Even now, when my system is quite a bit nicer than the above way I started, I have a big marked spoon to see my volumes at a glance.

2. That will come with practice, but as long as you had 1 inch or more of water over the grainbed, it really doesn't matter if the flow is exactly equal. Close enough is more than close enough!

3. Keep the lid off at all times- always. That allows volatiles to boil off, such as the precursors to DMS. If you need to have the lid off to get to a boil, that's fine but then take it off so that all of the steam and condensation can go away, and not drip back into the boil pot. You want to maintain a nice rolling boil, so that you 'lose' about 1-2 gallons per hour in the boil. You may need a bigger burner, like a turkey fryer, if you can't maintain a boil with your current burner.

4. Many have tap water that is warm this time of year. A 'prechiller' would really help. We can give you more info on that.

5. Add the yeast when the wort is low-mid 60s and hold the fermentation temperature in the mid-upper 60s. It's ok to cool the wort in the fridge until it's ready for the yeast.

6. You should lose about 1 gallon of water per 10 pounds of grain, more or less, in the strike water. You should boil off approximately 1.5 gallons of water in an hour long boil, and you may lose more to trub. It's ok. Just increase your boil volume (and so your sparge volume), to get to where you need to be. We can help alot with figuring it out!

 

[histo320]

All of the questions you asked are just a part of brewing.

1) You can make a measuring stick and just put marks. I use the marks on the side of the kettle.

2) I batch sparge so I don't have this issue. Not sure what to do here.

3) After you brew a few more times you will be able to predict boilovers. Once you get to the "Hot Break" when the wort looks like creamy foam, you are close. You will also experience this when adding Hops or Extract.

4) No matter how you do it, cooling wort sucks.

5) I did the same thing yesterday. Added yeast when temp was 79F. I just got in a hurry. As long as its ferementing it's fine.

6) You will always experience some loss as stated before. It varies from one brew to the next especially if you brew outside. I typically lose about 1.23 gallon so in order to get a .50 gallon batch (I account for trub and bottling loss) I boil about 7.25 gal.

 

[Natdavis777]

Looks identical to my very first brew. I was using an empty milk jug for my water measurements, and thought I was "more efficient" than the calculators I was using. I ended up with 4 gal in the fermenter.

1) Your best bet is to mark a spoon like mentioned. I use a 5 gal bucket from Lowes that is already marked with Liters/Gals so I can dump in my RO water into the bucket and measure fairly quickly. I know this isnt the method you were looking for, but it does speed things up a bit.

2)As Yooper said, it takes time to dial fly sparging in, but as long as there is some water above the grain bed, you're good. If you are a stickler and want the rates to be the same though, time how fast it takes to run off 2 cups of wort from the MLT, then do the same with you HLT to match the rate.

3) I usually have my burner full blast while getting the temp up to boil, but once I hit boil, I usually have to dial back the burner a lot. Then keep a close eye for the next five min bc that is usually when you will boil over. You should be good after that five minute mark until you add hops. Keep a close eye on your boil when doing hop additions.

4) I run into this issue as well during the summer. Sometimes I can only get beer to 78F so into the fermentation chamber until the next morning when it has dropped to pitching temps. Im looking into fountain pumps from Amazon which are fairly cheap. With a couple spare bags of ice, you could recirc some ice cold water which would help drop the temps to the correct range.

5) As mentioned, wait until the beer is in mid 60s to pitch. I have waited as long as 15 hours to pitch yeast because it wasnt cool enough yet.

6) Brew365 has a good mash/sparge calculator that takes a lot of factors into account. For a 5 gal batch, I strive for a 7.3 gal pre boil volume, and for a 10 gal batch, its 13.5 gal. You can find out what % of liquid you get back from the mash, (if you mash with 3 gal, and get 1.2 gal of wort production, its 40%. For future brews, you know you will get 40% of your strike volume, so you can calculate that number, subtract from your typical pre boil volume of 6.5-7gal, and that gives you your sparge volume in gal)

 

[SeeMont]

I sure like beginners asking good questions, good job Pawski, You learned alot. One piece of equipment I use is a 1 gallon SS sause pan (got at Good Will) This makes adding water easy. I chill with a 35 gallon garbage can filled with ice water. I freeze five 2 liter bottles to chill the water. Picked up a $15 fountain pump at Harbor Feight and I can chill to 80 degrees real fast, the last 10 to 20 degrees is a pain, just be patient. I save back the first five gallon of hot water for clean up. Your temp will also fall when you transfer to your carboy. Good Luck.

 

[pawsjk]

Thanks everyone. I have ordered a few more things from store and I'll test a second batch. Might shoot for 10gallon batch of a light summery session ipa. This way, if my first batch is shot, I'll have a second on the way.

Cheers!