This is How My First Brew Day Went with Notes!!!

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Ok this was a month ago, but this is a recap of my first day brewing.

29-8-15

9.00am make up 20litres of sanitizer, 120g for 20L

add 30 litres of hot tap water temp in kettle reads 50C

Heating strike water to reach a temp of 70C, then turn off gas.

Note: all the paint off the new burner wasn't burnt off prior to starting and is giving off a bad paint smell. While heat strike water.

Turned off gas at 71.5C

9.55am grains in and stirred and insulated with pillows temp reads 67-68C

10.10am check temp and stir temp is 67C and climbing slowly.

Note: noticed dry clumps of grain, gave it another good stir, remember to stir and add grain slower next time.

10.25am stir and temp is at 66C and climbing slowly

10.40am stir and temp is at 65.3C

10.55am finish mash and temp is at 64.4C

Note; was happy with mash temps

start a sparge with 74.8C water from jug, made up a 3L plus what drained from bag another 4L

now pre-boil volume is 30L.

Start gas back up and rolling boil reached at 11.28am

11.38am 1st hops 7g of cascade

2nd 30mins to go of 75min boil 14g cascade hops

10mins to go 34g add 1 and a half teaspoons of Irish moss and wort chiller for sterilizing

0mins to go 42g cascade hops

gas off.

20L of wort after boil, start to cool with wort chiller reaching 25C then transferring to fermenter gives me 18L in fermenter then I add 5Litres of cooled boiled water to bring my total back to 23L

aerate pitch yeast and set at 19C to ferment.

Dry-hopped on Monday 21st Sep.42grams cascade hops at 1pm

Tuesday start cold crash at 8pm 31 hours after dry hop

Wednesday 6.30am see the temp is at 5.7C reset for 3.0

Thursday still at 3.0C

Friday raise temp to 18C at 7.00am, 4pm beer is at 13.1C 7.34pm at 14.3C

Saturday temp is at 18.2C at 8.00am

Hydrometer reading taken at wrong time after I added the dextrose and hydrometer didn't float at all sat on the bottom of glass trial jar. 

Bottle day...today!!

I worked out how much was usable in fermenter and made up enough dextrose to boil with 2 cups of water put hat into another fermenter and then auto syphoned into that one keeping above the trub in primary (real yucky!!!) then I attached the bottle tube wand and bottling was easy as. Till I dropped the last one and it didn't break but hands were very slippery.

made up: 38 500ml bottles. will condition for 2 weeks then try when chilled!

yeah.

Today's Brew day, felt more at ease but got distracted, I guess made a couple e of errors, whoops!

.started with 34L of strike water, noticed temps dropping even with pillows and sleeping bag

after 45min temp got down to 62C so I panicked and turned heat up too high and the exterior temp gauge read 85C then I went SHIT!! and chucked in a jug of cold water and kept lid off this probably lasted for up to 4 or 5 mins. when I used digital thermometer I got a reading of 63C when outside gauge read 80C still so I won't be rely on that gauge much again. shouldn't have turn it up too high either.

pre-boil volume is now at 30L made a note of the burner adjuster to be more accurate.

nice rolling boil at 1.19pm added the simcoe hops 16g

at 2pm added simcoe hops 23grams

60mins gas off started to chill and realised I hadn't added my flame out hops Amarillo hops 20grams so chucked them in at 50C while chilling which took up to about 20mins.

I actually hit my target OG exactly 1.052.

Bottles are tucked away in a cardboard box in spare bedroom and new brew in fridge fermenter at 19C.

Having a few Moa's right now and I'm buggered.

Cheers to everyone that helped by commenting.

Daza.

  

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Yeast was fresh and aerated wort temp was 25C now in fridge at 18.7C will they come?

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

I have STC set for 20C

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

I have swapped lids and airlock for another all sanitised and hoping that helps? after I pitched the yeast I gave it a little stir so wasn't all sitting on top, would that have stopped fermentation or am I just over reacting?

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

well I went out to set my stc to 20.5C with the same tolerance of 0.5C so it can up to 21C and down to 20C and make sure lid is real tight and as I put a bit of weight on lid to turn it got airlock bubbles only while putting pressure on lid, so might be fine.....and is 21C to warm for an ale? cheers.

[Harry]

I have a couple of brews using US-05 at the moment and am holding them at 20°, and I don't go above that, but 21° shouldn't pose a real problem.

Where do you have your temperature probe for the STC? I keep mine attached to the side of the fermenter under some insulation so that It reads the temperature of the beer and not the air temperature in the chamber, reason being is that fermentation creates heat so the beer will likely be a couple of degrees warmer than the air temp. Just another thing to keep in mind when setting your STC. 

Oh and don't worry about a lack of bubbling in the airlock, so long as you have krausen you are fine.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

I too insulate my STC probe, but thinking of making a thermwell to get it spot on. Temp set at 19.5C bubbles are present.