hello from a Melbourne noobie

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jluca

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Hey folks, my names Jason and I have just bought my first home brew kit, a second hand coopers micro-brew kit.

After buying said kit I went straight to a local home brew shop to seek advice and to buy k&k.
The very helpfull person at australian home brewing in hiedleberg gave some bits of advice and set me up with a foil pack of Mangrove Jacks Export Stout and a brewcraft Irish stout converter #74.

well the brew has now been in the fermenter for a week and I have been reading the wealth of information on this site each night while listening to it bubble away happily, so far vevrything has been going along smoothly and im pretty happy with it.

I just want to say a big thank you to every one here for the freedom of information on here, so far ive found answers to all of my noob questions and answers to questions I hadnt thought of yet.

Cheers and I will let you know how the first brew turns out in about a month. :chug:
 
Welcome!

Glad your first brew is coming along well. This site is a fantastic resource for new brewers, learned basically everything from this one website.
 
Good work buddy!! Am still relitively new as well, have 10 brews under my belt now.

Biggest challenge is letting the brews mature... Too damn tempting to taste them... Then finish them :)
 
Good luck mate, hope that your first batch turns out well. Enjoy what is a great hobby.
 
well its been 7 days and the wort has stopped bubbling, I just took a hydro reading and its sitting on 1021, still a bit high from what ive read, og was 1040, but still im going to let it sit far at least a week so i will see what happens.
had a taste from the tube when i took the reading and it tasted pretty good, im really looking forward to this.
Already planning my next brew. :)
 
Yeah, that is definitely high given your recipe (some assumption on my part here) and OG.

Been freezing around my place lately. What temp is your fermenter getting down to at night?
 
fermenter is, and has been sitting on 22, a little high but the best i can do without a temp controller, got one coming from ebay.
I have the fermenter wraped in a thick towel with just the thermometer showing and i then have a heat cord wrapped around that, so far the temp has been pretty stable.
 
get yourself a fermenting fridge! I got one off ebay for $16!!! not even plugged, just got the temp controller and a heat belt!

Welcome mate. warning it gets very addictive fast
 
well the brew has been sitting on 1022 for 4 days now, temp is a steady 22, I should also add its an 18 lt brew not 23lt, will that make a difference to the FG?
 
It may make a slight difference but not nearly that much. 1.022 is definitely too high.

I wrote an article on how to deal with stuck ferments some time ago but unfortunately the articles section is defunct currently so I can't link you to it.

I know you will be eager to bottle but do NOT bottle that beer at 1.022. Give it a gentle stir with a sanitised spoon or just gently rock/swirl the fermenter and see if that does the trick. The beer won't suffer if it gets a bit more time on the yeast so don't worry about that side of things.
 
Actually just read that you added 'stout converter'.

Any idea what's in it? It may have lactose and/or maltodextrin which will contribute to higher FG
 
thanks manticle, the stout converter did have some lactose in it, it was in a packet with some black grain i had to steep
 
Stir/rouse as suggested but it might be all you'll get, depending on the rest of the ingredients in the booster. Ask the guy at the shop what's in it.

To check if a brew is finished, you can do a thing called a fast ferment test. There are variations on this but to see if the yeast you have is likely to get any more points, draw off a hydrometer sample's worth into a clean, sanitised stubby. Cover with foil, shake the shit out of it and leave it somewhere warmer than your ferment (say 25-30). Shake every time you walk past and see in 3-4 days if there's been any drop. If there has, repeat until there is none and this should indicate what level your current yeast should be able to get.

You can try this with fresh yeast, same strain too - if it drops lower add a fresh, active lot of yeast to the current brew.

If there is a lot of lactose and malto in the booster and you added no other fermentables, you might be done and could carb low in PET bottles. Err on the side of caution though - patience is your friend.

Crass or Blink182?
 
thanks manticle, I was planning on leaving it sit in the fermenter for another week or two anyway so i might give it a swirl and see how she goes, how does that sound?
 
ok, the beer kit converter contains:-
maltose
dextrose
malto-dextrin
malted barley
fuggles hopps
lactose

I gave the wort a good swirl last night and it bubbled a few times since but not much.
im thinking of letting it sit for a week and seeing how it goes
 
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