KarvEm
New Member
- Joined
- 4/10/11
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 1
First post, after much (belated) forum reading.
Years ago i used to love helping a mate who knew how to brew his beer (by help i mean i would stand around sinking pints and paying too little attention to the finer points). Haven't seen him in years so i decided this summer that i'd lash out and build a setup and learn whatever i can't remember from those days.
So i bought some stuff, fermenter, keg, beer/gas lines and connections, various sanitation chemicals, soda stream adapter(too poor for much else atm) and a little 'fisher and paykel P120' bar fridge.
I found this simple looking Coopers kit (Mexican Cerveza) at kmart and got straight into it, bypassing the "read AHB.com forums" step.
I did sanitize the s**t out of everything, made sure of that. But then as i'm cooking up the wort i walked away to my kid for a tick and it boiled over. Not much, about 1/4 cup, so i thought big deal and continued on. I went ahead and used 1.25 KG normal(sucrose) sugar too. Probably not the best way to go, but hey it's my 1st brew and the supermarkets real close.
So i filled the fermenter, took an OG reading of '1046' and pulled out the instructions to the part where it says "Once the wort is at ideal temp 21 - 27C pitch the yeast. If it is between 17 - 32C it is more important that you pitch now as the wort is vulnerable". The temp was 30C so i went ahead and pitched, sealed her up and put her in the end room which is always around 18 - 25C.
When i checked the following day to see if the airlock was crackin away much to my disappointment..........it was not.
I *finally* had a quick peek around on this forum and found some conversation about yeast burning in hell and figured that was my problem. So i went and bought another kit and used the identical yeast packet to re-pitch this time at a fair 22C, all the while being as careful as possible not to infect the batch.
When i came back the next day again the airlock was as stagnant as Wagga Wagga's Lake Albert.
Stumped, i returned to this board to find a conversation about 'not trusting the airlock'. I went back to my brew armed this time with the hydrometer.
'1006' was the reading and the swill out of the tube tasted surprisingly decent if a touch fruity. Shitty seal i thought to myself. Given that my readings were now my only gauge of the process i decided to leave it a couple of days and test again: '1004'- still dropping. Another couple days: '1004' and holding.
Still sitting at '1004' today (8 days later) so i decided to rack it via tap and tube to bottom of cube and fridge it. I gotta say it didn't smell like a disaster at all, and was already very very clear.
Is it possible that i haven't destroyed my beer after all of this or do i have a surprise coming? Thoughts?
Either way i have been reading this forum a lot over the last 8 days and will be doing things a little different next brew......
Years ago i used to love helping a mate who knew how to brew his beer (by help i mean i would stand around sinking pints and paying too little attention to the finer points). Haven't seen him in years so i decided this summer that i'd lash out and build a setup and learn whatever i can't remember from those days.
So i bought some stuff, fermenter, keg, beer/gas lines and connections, various sanitation chemicals, soda stream adapter(too poor for much else atm) and a little 'fisher and paykel P120' bar fridge.
I found this simple looking Coopers kit (Mexican Cerveza) at kmart and got straight into it, bypassing the "read AHB.com forums" step.
I did sanitize the s**t out of everything, made sure of that. But then as i'm cooking up the wort i walked away to my kid for a tick and it boiled over. Not much, about 1/4 cup, so i thought big deal and continued on. I went ahead and used 1.25 KG normal(sucrose) sugar too. Probably not the best way to go, but hey it's my 1st brew and the supermarkets real close.
So i filled the fermenter, took an OG reading of '1046' and pulled out the instructions to the part where it says "Once the wort is at ideal temp 21 - 27C pitch the yeast. If it is between 17 - 32C it is more important that you pitch now as the wort is vulnerable". The temp was 30C so i went ahead and pitched, sealed her up and put her in the end room which is always around 18 - 25C.
When i checked the following day to see if the airlock was crackin away much to my disappointment..........it was not.
I *finally* had a quick peek around on this forum and found some conversation about yeast burning in hell and figured that was my problem. So i went and bought another kit and used the identical yeast packet to re-pitch this time at a fair 22C, all the while being as careful as possible not to infect the batch.
When i came back the next day again the airlock was as stagnant as Wagga Wagga's Lake Albert.
Stumped, i returned to this board to find a conversation about 'not trusting the airlock'. I went back to my brew armed this time with the hydrometer.
'1006' was the reading and the swill out of the tube tasted surprisingly decent if a touch fruity. Shitty seal i thought to myself. Given that my readings were now my only gauge of the process i decided to leave it a couple of days and test again: '1004'- still dropping. Another couple days: '1004' and holding.
Still sitting at '1004' today (8 days later) so i decided to rack it via tap and tube to bottom of cube and fridge it. I gotta say it didn't smell like a disaster at all, and was already very very clear.
Is it possible that i haven't destroyed my beer after all of this or do i have a surprise coming? Thoughts?
Either way i have been reading this forum a lot over the last 8 days and will be doing things a little different next brew......