I’ve always been blessed by having a competently staffed home brew store nearby. It also helped that I worked there one summer when the owners wanted a vacation. 
A store also serves as a place to meet other brewers, so you can pick their brains and get ideas.
Woohoo! My stuff got here yesterday! I activated the yeast and Saturday…I brew!
Good luck!
Being a winemaker myself, I haven’t attempted beer yet. Sounds like fun, with all these dopers getting involved and all.
Keep the thread going, and if you like I can publish the photos on a blog for you. Just e-mail me the pics as you go.
(or I can help you get started if you want to start your own blog 
)
Good luck with your first batch. Another tip: Write down everything–how much of each ingredient and what type, boil time, cooling time, gravities, and anything else that seems pertinent.
If you want to, look for a program called “Promash”. It is a free trial software download that helps you keep track of your brewing. I love it.
Be sure to give us all the details.
Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of taking photos during the process, but it’s a good idea. I usually use photobucket.com for posting pics, so I’ll see how that works.
You must be a mind reader. Just last night I was thinking of how best to diary my brewing. As I was looking through some other materials about the math of brewing (IBUs, gravities, ABV etc.) I was thinking that it would be handy to create a spreadsheet with all of the formulas for calculating IBUs and ABV. Then I wondered if anyone had written a program to do just that. It would surely make experimenting with different hops and boil times a bit more predictable to the beginner. I will check out Promash and see if it does all I’d like to do.
My yeast started in only one day…sooo, we have liftoff! I decided to get the batch started tonight, and all went pretty well. I took photos when it was convenient, but during the boil I was paying close attention to what I was doing and didn’t take pictures. Photos are here. You will need a password to view them - beer.
One thing I noticed is that toward the end of the boil when I went to add my aroma hops, there was a lot of trub (hops mostly) on the sides of the kettle above the level of the wort. I would assume that this means that the beer won’t be as bitter as it should - perhaps I should have stirred more often or used less heat. I stirred the trub back in and extended the boil for 10 minutes, then added the aroma hops and the honey 7 minutes before the end of the boil.
As you can see in the picture I’m using a water bath in the sink to cool the wort. I also only boiled 3 gallons. I poured in 1 gallon of chilled spring water when I started cooling and I’ll use another gallon in the fermenter to get it up to 5 gallons.
The house now has a lovely hop aroma, which Mrs. Vet quite likes. I personally prefer the sweet smell of the malt at the very beginning of the boil…Yankee candle ought to make a candle that smells like boiling malt. Mmmmmmm.
Well, I’m off to check the wort - should be about cool enough to move to the fermenter and pitch my yeast.
Kick ass! I cant wait to go Homebrew shopping this weekend!
Well, I did something right because the brew is fermenting - the airlock is full of small bubbles. I did check out Promash and it looks way more powerful than I expected. I’m also looking at this, and even more simple to use is this. Unfortunately, brewing from a kit makes it kind of hard to translate into a recipe, since I have no idea what hop variety is used. I do know what the OG, FG, ABV and IBU’s are supposed to be. I’m thinking of calling Williams and asking if they make recipes for their kits available, which they should for those who like the kit beer and want to experiment with small changes to the recipes.
Anyway, here are some more specifics on my first batch:
Tested the gravity this evening and it was ~1.055, which is pretty durn close to on the money with 8 lbs of extract/honey. I have a thermometer that records high and low temps in memory and over 24 hours the temp range in my basement was from 58.5 to 61.2 degrees, which is cooler than necessary but steady (particularly in view of the fact that the outside temperature has changed over 30 degrees in the same time period).
My wife thinks I’m nuts but I tasted the wort sample, just to see what it tasted like. It was pretty bitter and yeasty…fairly awful tasting really. Not that I expected it to taste like beer, but I guess I expected something sweeter with all the unfermented sugar. Not something I need to do again, but now I know.
One minor beef about the fermenter - the gasket on the transfer valve didn’t seal too well and there is some weeping. It’s not bad and easy to control with some paper towels under the fermenter, but I don’t know how that’s going to affect the ferment or if it risks bacterial infection. It didn’t leak when I first filled it with water, but I guess the added pressure put it over the top. I can’t really fix it now without risking infection, so I guess I’ll have to keep it as clean as possible. I’ll have to crank down on it some more before my next batch.
Warning, this post might get up there in length…
Houston-like! Woohoo! (get it? lift off?) 
This is normal. Though you should stir the hops back in continually, I would never extend a boil because of it. An extra 10 minutes here probably didn’t hurt you. All the hops had been boiled for hour? And only then you added the flavoring and/or aroma hops? Then no problem.
Spoiler below is my first response based on my first misapprehension… While it’s not relevent, it is true.
[spoiler]At first I read this wrong…
…but since I wrote it out I’ll post it anyway for future reference…
I think the extra 10 minute boil would normally convert a substantial percentage
of your flavoring and aroma hops into bittering hops.
That’s what happens, you see?
Volatile compounds from your hops boil away into the atmosphere.
ANY hop will bitter your beer.
Some hop varieties, however, taste and smell better than others.
That’s why, in general, we use the stronger, more potent bittering hops early, and more flavorful, fragrent hops later in the boil.
Get it?[/spoiler]
Assuming your chilled spring water is sanitary, no problems here.
Sweet. As long as she likes something BTW, you will undoubtedly encounter the acronym, “SWMBO” in brewing parlance. SWMBO stands for “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. Spills, smells, explosions, week old stickiness, etc… you WILL understand from where we speak.
One little thing I would like to say… use Promash. It’s the best.
And program all of your recipe kits, and brewing sessions, and yes, even experiments you knew were doomed to fail, into it.
If the kit does’t tell you what’s even it? Don’t bother. Buy better kits.
2 cents.
Great habit, but seriously, I don’t currently run these tests… I ferment at the lowest temperature as possible within the house (with a wife, that’s like 70f), and dry out my batches as much as possible.*
As long as you used a wine thief or similar contraption designed for tasting I hope you didn’t lick it!
If I read you correctly, there is almost NO chance of infection here, thus far. As long as all the matter is exiting rather than entering. Trust me, I’ve had those bubblers clog up and explode onto the ceiling many, many times, and then I just cover the bucket/carboy with a towel. From there I get a big continual mess of thick green hop/yeast goo just FOAMING out for days on end.
Trust me, when the yeast has a chance to take hold, and show you any way shape or form of “explosive fermentation”, it’s already taken over and “won’t let” any bacteria in there. They compete, and the yeast kicks ass.
The S-shaped bubbles are much better IMHO than the three piece, but be prepared to install a “blow off tube”, which consists of a big-ass vinyl tube which leads directly into a bowl of sanitizing solution of the floor… Google it if I’m not coherent enough.
There’s not really much you can do after that point, so I say, “fuck it”. 99% of the benefit from these tests/records comes from troubleshooting. This early in the game… I don’t know.
Actually - repeatability… moreso than anything.
A common complaint is finding bottles in the closet from a year ago, and having no idea how you made them.
Excellent advice. My thought has been to record everything and I probably will go with Promash since a lot of recipes out there are saved in Promash. It has way more functions than I probably need and a higher learning curve, but I will dig into it. First thing I need to do is get the recipe specifics for my kit. I’m sure that Williams will provide me with those answers if I ask - they just don’t come listed with the kit. I guess the assumption is that the kits are intended for beginners who are probably not recording everything they do and are just learning to brew beer.
I, OTOH, am totally anal about logging stuff in general. When I bought my first brand new car I started a gas log which I kept for 7 years. I have a spreadsheet which contains a log of the price, amount and mileage of every tank of gas I ever put into that car. I have another spreadsheet which records every round of ammunition I’ve ever bought and every round I’ve ever shot through each of my firearms, along with target scores and weather data for range visits. I keep a deck log on my sailboat which I’ve updated every time I have gone sailing for the past 5 years, where I record maintenance, upgrades, weather data, sailing times and other minutiae which come to mind when I’m on the boat. Is it anal? Neurotic? Overkill? Bordering on obsessive compulsive? Absolutely and unabashedly. But it’s also part of how I enjoy a hobby - to me, it’s part of the experience, and knowing that it isn’t necessary is part of why I do it.
As for the boil - you are correct. The exact timeline was like this: Boil started about 15 minutes after dissolving the malt extract. I started the 60 minute timer once it was a rolling boil and lowered the heat to medium. I stood watching for a boil over until 5 minutes had passed (none did) and added my bittering hops. I stirred it well and replaced the lid. Then I sanitized my fermenter and covered the bottom of the lid with foil. Had another Celebrator, and cleaned up the area a bit. When the timer got down to about 10 minutes I opened the lid and discovered the hops stuck to the sides of the kettle - it was then I realized that I should have been stirring/boiling with further reduced heat. I stirred the trub back into the wort and added 10 minutes to the timer. Then when it got down to 7 minutes, I added my honey and aromatic hops and proceeded as normal.
Since I had no way of knowing how long the floating hops had been stuck on the sides, I figured to give them 10 more minutes to make sure I got some bitterness out of them. I expect that the beer will not be quite as bitter as it should, but since I don’t know what was going on in the kettle for about 45 minutes, I can’t really predict the result. The beer is supposed to finsih with 32 IBUs…maybe I can find a comparable commercial beer and compare for an estimate of what the effect of my inattention was. In any event, it was my first lesson from experience - stirring during the boil wasn’t mentioned in any of my reading and it didn’t occur to me. But now I know
It’s good to know that my minor leak isn’t a big concern for infection on the inside. I am going to sanitize the hell out of the spigot on the transfer valve before I transfer the beer to the priming tank though…I can only imagine that a sticky mess on the outside of the fermenter will be a breeding ground for bacteria when there are no yeasts to compete with. I’ll continue to post observations and links to photos in this thread over the next couple weeks.
Thanks again for the nice long post, **Eleusis ** - there’s a lot of great advice there.
I checked it out and viewed the reviews… that looks like it will be a FANTASTIC ipa… I ordered the kit today along with a few other things…
Earlier today however I visited my local shop and purchased a kit with most all essentials… or at least the things I wanted… heh. Also a Kettle and a KC Pale Ale kit that is supposed to mimick a local brew pub pale ale. (Boulivard brewing company Pale Ale) Which I have had my share of six packs of.
I got everything home and looked it all over and checked everything… looked good.
started brewing just before 5pm… finished with airlock right about 10pm…
I had fun buying my equipment…
here is the contents of my kit… not sure why I need two plastic buckets… in fact im sure I dont… lol http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114447131/
Here is the KC Pale Ale kit contents… http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114448192/
steeping the grains… http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114449395/
Seeing as this is my first REAL homebrew BEER… I didnt have a homebrew to drink with it, HOWEVER I did have my first tasting of my homebrew sparkling MEAD. It was nice, lightly carbonated and slightly sweet with citrus and spice and hints of vanilla. I am going to let it age some more. http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114450334/
The WORT she is a boiling! http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114451178/
Given the brewing day I also felt a need to test a still fermenting Wine I have going. It was sweet and good. http://www.flickr.com/photos/44145716@N00/114452204/
I hydrated and pitched my yeast after airating the 5 gallons… its alll sealed and waiting for bubbles.
how fun.
Question for the experts here…
My starting gravity was estimated to be 1.045 - 1.050
What I measured was 1.031
That seems very low to me especially since I followed the procedures to the letter and I used the whole 6.6lbs of malt extract, even rinsing out the container with the boiling wort.
does that SG seem likely? I may have read it wrong as the fermenter did have large foamy head to it after airating it.
Thanks.
My guess is that the hydrometer stuck to the side of your test tube. Give it a spin when you put it in, and make sure it is free-floating. Otherwise, relax. It will be a great beer.
I almost always taste my unfermented wort, and again take a taste at bottling time (using good sterile technique, of course). I think you do get something out of it, much like taking periodic tastes as you are cooking a stew or chili or something. You get a better idea of how that particular combination of ingredients combines over time.
It isn’t unusual for the unfermented wort to taste bitter (depending on the style), you are tasting a lot of hops bitterness which will fade somewhat as the beer ferments and ages. On that note:
.
Ain’t no such thing!
My fermenter is a 6 gallon bucket with a spigot, so I just filled my hydrometer tube and tasted it after the reading. Then tossed the sample. I most definitely will wet my lips again when it’s bottling time, because it will be BEER (albeit flat and undeveloped). Then I should have a good idea of how it will turn out. My shock at the bitterness of the wort was because there’s still so much unfermented sugar in there, I expected some sweetness. All I got was a mouthful of yeast and hops…bleccchh.
I respectfully disagree about “undrinkably hoppy”. Overhopped beer tastes nice for a few sips. After that it’s overwhelming. I like to drink a minimum of a 12 oz serving so I like less hoppy brew. Commercial examples: Sam Adams Boston Lager - overhopped…I can’t drink more than half a pint. Pilsner Urquell - just about right, I can drink it all night long.
This is my first real attempt at Beer also… I tasted the malt extract from the freshness seal expecting a sweet somewhat Honey or mollasses taste as thats what it looked close to. I found it more bitter then sweet, very unlike honey.
Mmmm… I love Sammy Boston Lager!
I hope so, I’m trying to relax lol I just dont want my first batch to be crap and get me down about future batches.
Well, after considering it for several years now, this thread finally convinced me to take the plunge and try brewing my own beer. So, last weekend I went and bought myself a kit, and did the boil on Sunday morning. It’s now fermenting happily in the carboy in my dining room.
Here is the kit I selected for my first batch.
A couple of questions:
I bought the kit that included a secondary. How long should i let the beer sit in the primary before transferring to the secondary? After that, how long should it remain in the secondary before I bottle?
My kit included a hydrometer, but I didn’t take a base reading before I sealed up the carboy. Will it do me any good to take any readings now?
I’m expecting my first batch to turn out badly, as I really have no idea what I’m doing. Heck, as long as it’s somewhere around Budweiser-quality I’ll be satisfied.
Yay! Welcome to the club, this is a fun and rewarding hobby.
Looks yummy.
Usually figure about a week in primary. A little longer won’t hurt but after too long you might get a yeasty taste. If I get really explosive fermentation for a few a days and then it all but stops bubbling, I’ll usually go ahead and rack to secondary.
It’s been bubbling away for 24 hours? Probably not. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I broke my hydrometer like 10 batches ago.
I’m not. It’s far more likely that you’ll be very happy and proud of your first brew.
Trust me, barring some nasty bacterial infection which renders it completely undrinkable, it’ll be way better than Budweiser. Probably even then
Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew!
Oops missed one question there.
I’d give it probably two weeks, though you can go much much longer. If you’re in a hurry and are sure it’s fermented out, you can go ahead and bottle after a week a so.
If you bottle too soon and there are unfermented sugars left in there, you risk exploding bottles. Too long, and there might not be enough surviving yeast to natrually carbonate in the bottles.