First Brew

[Sando]

Hi all

This excellent site has inspired me to crack on with my first ever brew (not counting a pretty poor attempt at a kit when I was a student a million years ago). Probably a mistake for a complete newbie, but I'm going to dive straight into an extract brew and I'm after a few pointers.

I've ordered all my kit from H&G, and am going to go for a (hopefully) simple 5G recipe of:

3kg Brupacks Almondbury Old
70g Fuggles (55g boiling / 15g finishing)
110g Black patent
225g Crystal
300ml dark DME
Safale s 04 yeast
H&G Isinglass finings

Does this sound ok as a basic recipe? Picked this because the book I took it from reckons it's a quickie and I hope to be supping by Christmas.

Also, I've not bought a chiller yet - is it ok to transfer the hot wort onto cold water in the FV to help rapid cooling? I've not gone for a secondary FV, is this ok?

And finally...I've decided to keg rather than bottle and have ordered a King Keg but not gone the whole way and bought a gas system- I plan to in the future but want to practice the basic brewing process first. Is it ok to keg without gas, or is oxidation a real issue? How long can i expect my beer to last in the KK without CO2 (apart from what I get through natural carbonation)

Cheers for any suggestions & advice - I feel like I've already learnt a load browsing this forum. Really looking forward to getting started

Sando

[yashicamat]

Hi Sando,

Your recipe looks quite interesting - the Almondbury Old, is that a hopped kit? If it is you might find the bitterness levels getting a bit excessive boiling up a load of Fuggles on top of it. If it is a hopped kit or hopped extract, I'd suggest just adding the finishing hops.

Safale 04 is a good quality yeast, although give it a good 7 to 10 days on the yeast in the fermenting vessel as it can only do good things for the beer in my experience. A secondary FV is a bonus but not a requirement - I've only used one once.

As for the lack of a CO2 system on your keg, I really wouldn't worry about that. I use 3 old plastic pressure barrels and don't use any kind of gas on any of them. In fact, I don't even bother priming them as I find the beer liberates a bit of CO2 by itself, sufficient to give it a bit of a CO2 blanket on top of the beer to keep it ok. My barrels can be "on tap" for up to 2 weeks sometimes since the first pint was pulled and I don't have any issues with oxidation. I just lift the pressure release valve on the lid when I open the tap so it doesn't glug as the pressure drops. If it glugs, it's pulling air through the beer and also probably unsettling the yeast - both are not a good thing. Just watch the flow of the beer, if it starts to slow down, ease the valve open a touch. You can feel if it's got pressure still as it'll hiss out if it is, if not it'll actually hiss in and the flow with increase again.

Finally the chiller aspect, I presume you're boiling your wort in a stockpot or something similar. Once it's done, lower the stockpot into a sinkful / bathful (depending on the size of your pot!) of cold water (colder the better) and move it around continuously, stirring with a sanitised spoon inside. I did this with my first extract brews and it worked very effectively. I used a sanitised thermometer to keep track of the temperature - when it was down to about 25 deg C, as the bulk of the wort was added water, I emptied the pot into the FV and added the rest of the water. Always a good idea to check the temperature of the wort before you pitch the yeast though - you want it about 17 deg C to 22 deg C ideally.

Final thing (yes this is getting a bit wordy now ), SO-4 is quite an aggressive yeast so unless you've got at least 8" of space in your FV above the wort, I'd make sure that the krausen (foam) will be able to escape somewhere. If you're not using an airlock and just have a hole in the lid, it should be OK though. When I used plastic bins without an airlock, I used a folded piece of card to create a little "roof" over the hole so nothing could drop into it.

Hope this has helped and good luck with your first brew!

[Sando]

Rob,

That's great, thanks for the really helpful reply.

I think the Almondbury is hopped, so many thanks for the advice, I'll save the fuggles for finishing.

That's a relief to hear about the gas - I'm pretty sure I'll go down that route before too long but it's good to hear I can keg from the off. I don't have a local HBS so getting the CO2 cannisters would have been a pain.

I'll be boiling up in a 10Gall boiler from H&G, which I guess I won't be wanting to immerse in water So I was planning on boiling 1.5 G of wort, adding to 2G of cold water sitting in the FV then topping up to 5G with more cold and waiting for the temp to come down before pitching.

Cheers for the advice on the SO4- I chose it for its quick settling properties and wasn;t aware it was a feisty bugger. My FV is 7G though so hopefully enough space to let it work its magic!

Thanks again for your help.

Sando

[yashicamat]

No problem - just was trying to think where I went wrong or "made discoveries" in the past.

The 10 gallon boiler is very good, but you will lose some wort out of it as the tap level isn't right at the bottom of the container. I measured it to be about 5 pints loss as standard. Using some clear plastic soft tubing, slotted one inside another, then fitting inside the tap exit (to create a narrow exit line), I created a siphon on mine and this pulled the wort through below the level of the tap, but I still lost about 2 or 3 pints to the hops.

If I were you, I'd mark up the boiler with 5 pint intervals (adding 5 pints at a time and using a black permanent marker on the outside - it is opaque but if you shine a torch inside it when in use, you can then clearly see the level), then when you've done your boil on brewday, add your cold water to the boiler instead. Make this up to the volume (add a few pints too probably to compensate a bit for losses), then run it into your FV from there. If you can set up a siphon tube you'll save a few pints. If not, don't worry too much, it's not a huge amount of loss really. By diluting it to the final gravity in the boiler, you'll be losing a lot less of the fermentable sugars, flavours from your hops etc. as the wort left behind will be a much lower dilution. If you're using tap water, run it for a good 30 seconds or so at a good rate before using it to top up to the level, this will help to get it as cold as possible. At this time of year it should be plenty cold enough to bring 1.5 gallons of hot wort down to the correct temperature I should think.

Keep us posted on how things progress!

[Sando]

Cheers Rob, I'll do as you suggest and add my cold water directly to the boiler. I'm planning on using bottled water this first time out so will have them chilled in the fridge - should help things along.

Should be getting everything in the week so will be brewing next weekend - can't wait I'll be using the waiting time to do lots of reading up on here!

Again, thanks for the pointers, much appreciated.