DasHos
Active Member
Hello again, everyone! Just brewed my second batch last night, and I'm already pretty pumped with all the changes made from my first batch. (Oh, I've also got Ed Wort's Apfelwein in a carboy....not sure if that counts as "brewing", though...
)
If anyone checked out my first brew, you know I made a few noob mistakes. The biggest one being, boiling the wort for like 2 hours:smack: This time, though, I'm pretty sure I won. I upgraded to propane, for one, and did a full volume boil. I will NEVER doubt the power of propane again. 5 gallons boiling in less than 30 minutes, I love it!
I also did late additions. I put in 5 lbs of extra light DME at the beginning, and then the rest (only 3 lbs) at the last 5 minutes of the boil. It looks sooooo different doing it this way. It was a beautiful golden color. I also used a hop bag for my hop additions, and whirlfloc as well.
Oh and I remembered to take a gravity reading, too. OG came in at 1.072. I tossed in two packs of Wyeast 1388 while the wort was at about 72. The only thing I didn't do was make a starter, but I figured I had two packs of yeast, so I should be good....right? Put my mind at ease, guys!
As far as temp control goes, I can't really justify the purchase of an expensive freezer/cooler with a digital controller to SWMBO right now, especially with Christmas coming up, and I've got three kids who think Santa just has endless funds. So what I did was I took this trash can, probably 50 gallons or so, put enough water to go up to the 5 gallon mark on my fermentor, and threw some frozen water bottles in there. I'll be monitoring the temp and replacing the bottles as needed.
Oh, one final change, instead of using my tap water, I used distilled water because I've read on here that the extract should already have minerals and such in it from the water they used. Man, I am REALLY excited about this one!
) If anyone checked out my first brew, you know I made a few noob mistakes. The biggest one being, boiling the wort for like 2 hours:smack: This time, though, I'm pretty sure I won. I upgraded to propane, for one, and did a full volume boil. I will NEVER doubt the power of propane again. 5 gallons boiling in less than 30 minutes, I love it!
I also did late additions. I put in 5 lbs of extra light DME at the beginning, and then the rest (only 3 lbs) at the last 5 minutes of the boil. It looks sooooo different doing it this way. It was a beautiful golden color. I also used a hop bag for my hop additions, and whirlfloc as well.
Oh and I remembered to take a gravity reading, too. OG came in at 1.072. I tossed in two packs of Wyeast 1388 while the wort was at about 72. The only thing I didn't do was make a starter, but I figured I had two packs of yeast, so I should be good....right? Put my mind at ease, guys!
As far as temp control goes, I can't really justify the purchase of an expensive freezer/cooler with a digital controller to SWMBO right now, especially with Christmas coming up, and I've got three kids who think Santa just has endless funds. So what I did was I took this trash can, probably 50 gallons or so, put enough water to go up to the 5 gallon mark on my fermentor, and threw some frozen water bottles in there. I'll be monitoring the temp and replacing the bottles as needed.
Oh, one final change, instead of using my tap water, I used distilled water because I've read on here that the extract should already have minerals and such in it from the water they used. Man, I am REALLY excited about this one!
