Nwebie first brew

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jhay

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Joined
5/1/13
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Location
Tweed Heads
I have just put down my first brew.It is a Mangrove Jack Classic Blonde Bitter.Been very particular with cleaning and sterilising all the equipment.
.Although the instructions state that it can fermenate at between 18 and 30 degrees I'm going to try to keep the temp at 20 to 22 degrees
.I'm stuck with ice baths and towels as I don't have the room for another fridge or the like(not allowed anyway).
Fingers crossed and hope everything turns out in 7 days or so.
 
Hey Jhay,

Welcome and congrats on the first kit. Nothing wrong with the ice bath and towels, it served me well for a while.

Dont base your fermenting on time, wait until you get 2 constant hydrometer readings over 2 days before bottling or kegging.

Cheers

Robbo
 
Welcome aboard. You will enjoy the results a lot more from making that effort to keep the temp down....and as stable as possible. Let us know how it turns out.
 
^^^ + 1.

Fermenting on the lower temp range is always better. Varying temps throughout fermentation will affect the taste of your beer. If you can keep the temp steady and constantly around 20 to 22, you will be doing well and the taste of the final product will reward you.

Cheers and welcome to this great hobby :beerbang:
 
Thought I had a disaster yesterday.Here in Tweed Heads we had a humid day and to keep the temp at 22 degres I had the brew in an ice bath.About 3 pm a southerly hit and the temp on the brew fell to 16 degrees.Panic stations! Immediately emptied the ice water and wrapped in dry towel.Got it up to 20 but no sign of fermentation.
Wory,worry.Checked this morning at 22 but happily bubbling away
.Has the extreme drop have any affect later?
 
Don't worry, you wouldn't want that happening every few hours, but a once off temp fall won't do any harm. And better a drop down than a drop up, yeast tend to do more nasty stuff in hot temps than cool. Worst case a few of 'em might have gotten a little sleepy for a while, but they'll be back awake now and doing their job. It depends on the yeast too...I don't think you mentioned what you're using, but good dry yeast like a US-05 can operate happily as low as 15 degrees. The kit yeast that comes with the Mangrove Jack maybe not so much, but 16 isn't all that low. It'll be fine.
 
Thanks carniebrew for your comments.The yeast I;m using is the kit yeast which came with the Mangrove Jack kit.I;ve orderd some us 05 yeast and will try it with the next brew.Brew is sitting at 20 degrees and bubbling madly.
 
No probs. If you're going to use US-05 regularly, give some serious thought to getting a brewfridge. If you can pick up an old fridge for under $50 (I got one for $25), and an STC-1000 temp controller for ~$20 off eBay, you can temp control your brews down to 18 degrees (sweet spot for US-05) without any need for intervention or worrying about weather changes!
 
Now at the eighth day and bubbles appear to have stopped.Temp currently at 22C,but hydrometer reading at 1.011 but the instructions say rhe reading should be 1.008.Just about tempted to bottle but going to give it another day.
 
As difficult as it is to do, Ignore the airlock. It is not an accurate way of proving or disproving fermentation. Take two grav readings 48 hours apart. If they're the same, you're safe to bottle.

Edit: You're probably very slightly under-reading at 22 degrees, too.
 
Get a cheapo fridge man, I got a bar fridge off ebay for $10 -its set an forget, unless of course you have a power failure
 
Did a reading yesterday and hydrometer was 1.008.read again this morning and same .Tasted great and bottled 25 740ml and 2 stubbies.Probably lost a bit with too amy hydrometer readings.(most unnecessary).Look forward to the bottles maturing.
 
jhay said:
Did a reading yesterday and hydrometer was 1.008.read again this morning and same .Tasted great and bottled 25 740ml and 2 stubbies.Probably lost a bit with too amy hydrometer readings.(most unnecessary).Look forward to the bottles maturing.
Look forward to hearing how it turns out too mate. Post back with results when you've had a taster!

One thing i wanted to mention, are you using the stick on thermometers for your temp readings? If so, the "temp drop" may not have really happened at all.

It would take a hell of a lot of natural energy in the form of a change in the weather to affect your wort temp that rapidly. Thermal mass and all that stuff....I'm reckoning your stick on thermo (if that's what you've got) was probably reacting faster than the actual wort temp, with the actual temp of the wort lagging behind somewhat. Just a theory...

Also, nothing wrong with using water bath's to ferment in. A few years ago, i was building up stocks as my wife and i were hosting christmas, and i expected to get cleaned out by the old man, and my brother. I had four fermenters going with two different beers.
I put one of each recipe in my ferment fridge set to 18deg, and the other ones in water baths on my garage floor. Outside temp skyrocketed as it was during early december and when it was all said and done, none of the three of us could pick which was done in the fridge and which was done in the bath's. Very good way of controlling ferment temp.

However, if you're situation changes regarding having a spare fridge, carnie's suggestion of a cheapy with a stc1000 controller is a much easier and flexible way of fermenting.

Cheers,
Nath
 
Thanks Nath.Yes I do have a stick on thermometer and at times its hard to read.I take in what you've said abot temp changes.
 
I knew that I would get impatient and want to taste as soon as possible the first brew so I bottled two stubbies.Nine days since bottling and I cracked the two stubbies with my son.Result,not bad .In fact we were both impressed with the taste although probably a bit longer carbonating would be in order.Will allow the balance to mature a little bit longer and should be good.
 
carniebrew said:
No probs. If you're going to use US-05 regularly, give some serious thought to getting a brewfridge. If you can pick up an old fridge for under $50 (I got one for $25), and an STC-1000 temp controller for ~$20 off eBay, you can temp control your brews down to 18 degrees (sweet spot for US-05) without any need for intervention or worrying about weather changes!
Well, you can actually temp control them down to 4C or even lower ;)

great for crash chilling after the brew, and will also mean you can do lagers at 9-12C as well
 
jhay said:
I knew that I would get impatient and want to taste as soon as possible the first brew so I bottled two stubbies.Nine days since bottling and I cracked the two stubbies with my son.Result,not bad .In fact we were both impressed with the taste although probably a bit longer carbonating would be in order.Will allow the balance to mature a little bit longer and should be good.
I guarantee that if you can wait until the three or four week mark, the beer will taste great. But being a newb, as we all were once, it probably won't happen. :lol: My fist couple of brews were all gone within the month, and the last few bottles alway tasted the best.
 
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