First Brewday

[davidbrown100]

After months of fiddling, tinkering etc. I finally decided what I didnt have by now would have to wait.
My set up is:
50l s/s boiler - made from an insulated cookpot from Ebay http://vvebspace.de/bda/fr/10228.pdf, fitted with two Tesco Kettle elements and a s/s ballvalve and hop strainer made from s/s fine gauge mesh.
2 25l Youngs FV's
Thermos Coolbox mashtun
Home-made copper chiller

My recipe was a Wooly Jumper from Barley Bottom.

I started at 10:30 and put the boiler on, and heated 4 gallons or so of water to 70 degrees and poured this into the Mashtun to pre-heat it. I then poured this back into the boiler and heated to 72.5degrees.

This was then poured back into the mash tun and the grain added - stirring well to ensure there were no dry patches. Temperature after mixing was spot on at 66degrees.

11:07 I put the lid on and wrapped her in a duvet
Whilst mashing I turned my attention to how to sort out a sparging system - this has caused me much anguish as I didnt buy one (perhaps I should/will) and started to make one out of copper pipe, but felt it was a pointless excercise and ended up buying a garden rose that fit directly to the end of a pipe. I trialled this and even with a modest head of water I got a good spray.

12:47 I opened up the mash tun and took a reading and couldnt believe my luck the temperature hadnt dropped at all. 13 tog duvet wrapped round all sides does the trick.

I then took off the first runnings and poured these back into the mash.

Now I started sparging - not really sure what I was doing, but sprayed water directly onto the grain bed (thinking now - I wonder if I should have put some foil over the bed). Also not sure how long a sparge is supposed to take. This only took about 15-20 mins to get 6 gallons of wort.

1:14 wort poured into boiler and switched boiler on
1.36 wort boiling - turned one of the tesco element off and left on a rolling boil with one element. Added first Goldings
2.52 Second Goldings added and protofloc tablet - Added my copper chiller to boiler - to sterlise propoerly.
3.07 Added Bobek
3.08 Turned off boiler and left to cool/settle for 20 mins
3.27 Started the cooler temp 84 degrees
3.30 59 degrees
3.37 34 degrees - reduced tap pressure
3.40 stopped the cooler - this was a mistake as the wort wasnt cool enough I though it wouldnt take long to cool naturally to the 25 degrees I was after -- I was wrong .........
7.00 OG 1.048 = 6.0%
Volume 4.3 gallons - bit dissappointed with the volume - squeezed an extra 0.2 gallon from the bottom of the boiler - this might be a mistake as it had more sediment in it?
Yeast pitched 24.7 degrees and put into my fermentation cupboard at 22degrees, with the lid on but slightly open to allow CO2 to escape - I dont have an airlock

Had a look this morning and fermentation is definetely underway.

This evening had another look and all seems to be working - turned the temp down 1 degree to 21 degrees.

Lessons learnt:
a) More evaporation/loss than I had hoped for - I would have like my FV full to the 5 gallon mark.
b) You cant have too many clean buckets etc. for cleaning
c) Use the chiller for longer to get nearer to the target temp - having said that the chiller worked brilliantly and I had piping hot water coming out of the other end.
d) Not sure if my wort is a little on the strong side - could be connected to the fact that I had more evaporation loss than I had hoped for.

Next step is to drain wort into secondary FV - should I use my tap on the bottom or a tube to syphon it out? What am I trying to do at this stage?

Then I am planning to bottle it in 4 weeks or so when the fermentation has stopped.

Then I will do another - great fun, enjoyed it and hopefully will be rewarded for the fruits of my labour, if not I will be disappointed but will try again.

David.

[Garth]

looks like you've had a good one David, well done for taking the plunge, lots of folk dither about before getting into AG, as you've found you've just got to get on with it and do it!

1048 will probably give you around about a 5% beer and not a 6% as you've stated, it will ferment down to around 1012/10/08

with sparging the slower the better, if you sparge too quick and the gravity of the sugars you are washing out will drop and you won't get your desired amount, check towards the end of ther sparge that the gravity hasn't dropped below 1006, 1010 is better still. After 1006 supposedly the grain starts giving out tanins which can impart bad flavours in the finished beer.

use the tap to rack off from the yeast sediment, siphoning is a pain and if you're sucking on the tube there's more chance of introducing beer spoiling bacteria.

[Dennis King]

sounds like you have had a good 1st time.

[Nermal]

Do you remember the seller you bought the 50l s/s pot from on ebay ?

[Garth]

they don't sell those on http://www.ebay.co.uk anymore but if you go onto http://www.ebay.fr and search for 'marmite special' it will bring them up, stockpots and insulated ones, they have hiked the price up since I bought one a few years ago

alternatively search for the seller 'catering-service-fr' (although they are based in Germany)

[subsub]

Just go for plastic, shiny is a disease dude

[davidbrown100]

OK the brew has been on for 2 weeks this Saturday.

Is it getting to the stage where I should test the gravity?

I wasnt sure what to do for secondary fermentation - should I transfer to FV2 (and if so how - I dont want to get any air?) or straight to bottles.

Also do you put sugar in the bottles or FV2?

[Eric]

You should be testing gravity to confirm that primary fermentation has ceased or is near completion.
Assuming it has (summer temperatures will hasten fermentation) the next stage will be conditioning/secondary fermentation.
This isn't done in an FV, but in a sealed, pressure withstanding container.
Belief is this shouldn't be a bottle, but an intermediary, larger vessel, before bottling.
The preferred method requires priming to be done in a single vessel before transfer to bottles with little or no further priming.
If you don't have the likes of this 'barrel', put it into your bottles which you should prime.

I've a smile on my face. Just thinking of the looks I've seen on the faces of those trying their first AG brew. Nobody ever expects their first AG to taste as good as it invariably does.

[davidbrown100]

Can someone suggest a link to a secondary FV?
What should I prime with - white sugar? - what weight etc...
I thought I had done the hard bit - oh I have a lot to learn
Do I try not to disturb the primary FV - or should I stir it????

[Deebee]

I usually use the mini keg system and tap straight from the Fv into this.
In these 5 l kegs i use 15-17 grams white sugar although you can use spray malt too.

This gives you the chance to experiment with dry hopping too.

My next one is fermenting right now so i'll be using some of the kegs with brown sugar, some with white and some with spray malt just to experiment a little.

Dave