First pre-hopped extract - Advice sought

[Bob_Loblaw]

Hi All

After bottle brewing with just extract kits and dextrose for years, I have now moved to kegs with hops and grains added. I put my first one down on Sunday following the method below:

* Grains cold steeped the night before
* Strained and boiled for 15 minutes with hops added at flame out

* Into fermenter with BE2, Light Dry Malt and can of extract and top up to 21 litres

* Fermenter into a fridge to cool to 21degC before adding yeast
* Glad wrap lid
* Fridge temp controlled using STC-1000 at 18-20degC

This is my first time using the glad wrap lid, so maybe it's just me, but when I had a look in the vessel last night, the surface looked sort of wierd - like it had formed a solid foam that was bubbling. Almost like the yeast particles had just swelled in place. Maybe this is normal and I just haven't seen it before because the lid of the fermenter doesn't allow you to see as much as the glad wrap. Maybe it's the hops. It just doesn't look like the normal krausen you can see from through the fermenter lid.

The glad wrap is forming a nice bubble and I googled images of infection and it doesn't look like this. I'll take a photo tonight and post if I remember.

Is it just me?

 

[michaeld16]

Its fine mate all normal glad wrap is the way to go IMO

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I think it's just me.

I actually just googled some images of krausen and mine looks pretty much like this:

It's amazing what you didn't know was going on in there with the non-clear fermenter lid on. I do kind of miss the "bloop" of the airlock, but it's now replaced with the bubbling/crackling noise of the yeast doing its work.

 

[Droopy Brew]

MAte when you say you used a can of extract do you mean a kit? IE liquid malt with hops for bitterness added?
Typically extract brewing is done with unhopped liquid and dry malts and the bittereness is added in the hop boil with fresh hops. If this is what you have done then the hops at flame out wont add near enough bitterness to your brew. You need to have some bittering additions at 45-60minutes.
If you have used the kit can you;ll be sweet.
For the next one try doing all hop additions yourself using unhopped cans and it will come out even better- seeing as you are doing most the process anyway .

 

[michaeld16]

I thought the title said it prehopped extract

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Sorry all, my terminology might be a little shady.

A can of kit extract (ie Black Rock IPA) was used.

Cheers

 

[Alex.Tas]

You will be fine. That can has been prehopped.

Off topic: Nice forum name. I just started season 3 of arrested development. how good is Tobias' business cards with the job title!

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Haha, yeah there aren't too many series that funny and clever left anymore.

I really should get back to writing my law blog now...

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Just in case anyone was worried, here is a shot of the krausen:

 

[michaeld16]

Looks spot on nothing to worry about