it all starts this Saturday

[bradsbrew]

The secret is to have your first beer prior to mash in. Everything will go fine from there on end. Trust me.......

Stop giving new brewers such bad advice Rowy!!

You have your first beer whilst the HLT fills up.

 

[lukiferj]

Stop giving new brewers such bad advice Rowy!!

You have your first beer whilst the HLT fills up.

To be fair he didn't mention how far prior to mash in...

 

[Yob]

Stop giving new brewers such bad advice Rowy!!

You have your first beer whilst the HLT fills up.

Bugger, I fill mine up the night before and put it on a timer... man, Im gunna get shit everywhere :lol:

 

[The Wynnum Beer Project]

Damn! What a day!

Anthony at Craftbrewer was extremely helpful and sorted us with a recipe for a basic APA with mosaic hops. He explained things very well and filled in a few blanks I still had.

But... we got started pretty late. By the time we did more reading, made some notes, cleaned everything and did a test boil for evap estimate it was 4pm before mash in. Which actually made having people over for dinner heaps fun .

I think the mash went well, not that I'd know but it smelt delicious.

There are a few things i'm a bit worried about:

i accidentally dipped the (unsanitised) outside of a jug into the mash when recirculating

and .... Post boil we didn't quite have enough wort to fill a 20 litre cube so there was still air in it. We then tryed to quickly chill it to fermentation temp in a boig esky with ice. We really didn't think about how long that would take . At midnight we ended up sticking it in the fermenter with the lid off in cold water. It was about 32 degrees then. When it it dropped below 25 added yeast (and the lid) stuck it in the fermenting fridge and went to bed.

Is this going to be a disaster?

also, how do I store the unused hops? Fridge? Freezer?

 

[NewtownClown]

You don't have to worry about the jug in the mash, the grain is covered in nasties that get killed during the boil.

If the volume is just a bit short, you should be able to "squeeze" the air out of the cube by pushing in the sides. After you have burnt your hands doing so, get a towel to hold against the sides....
Did you check the gravity after the boil? If your volumes were calculated correctly, the extra evaporation would push the gravity up, so you would have been able to top up with boiling water...

It would be safer to have covered the fermenter's opening whilst it was cooling :huh: it's quite vulnerable before you pitch the yeast.

Store the hops in the freezer if you have room, or the coldest part of the fridge if not...

Disaster? most likely not...

Enjoy your new obsession

 

[The Wynnum Beer Project]

Cool. Thanks heaps

 

[seamad]

You don't need to starsan anything on the hotside, hlt/mt/kettle as the boil will take care of that for you, starsan everything on the cold side, fermenters/transfer tubes etc. If you are no chilling you can starsan the cube as a extra precaution, even though technically it's not required.
Just keep good records of volumes at each stage so you can use your brew software more effectively.

 

[seamad]

You may want to back the lid off a bit or replace with some gladwrap/elastic bag, if done up tight something will give way.

 

[The Wynnum Beer Project]

Gravity after the boil was 1.043

 

[The Wynnum Beer Project]

Thanks heaps for the backing up the lid advice.