Moving up from kits!

scrapsmac

So I've done a couple of kits. My first was a Canadian Blonde which ended up a bit too sharp for my liking - I foolishly used more brewing sugar than dry malt.

I'm starting to see the limitations to brewing in this way. I read you can get much better results from extract and all grain brewing. So I think I want to make the step up to extract.

My current setup is literally a 33l fermenter with tap and airlock. What sort of kit will I need?

Also what is a nice handy enough recipe to get started with? I would like an ale or something along the lines of smithwicks!

lar203

Now this is something i have allways wanted to do

Martyn1989

You can do a perfectly good extract recipe on your hob with your saucepans at home. Before I got my boiler I did 10 litre steeping/boils.

My 1st extract recipe was an Irish red I used 400g Crystal and 100g Pale Chocolate Malt steeped for 30mins @65C

Then added the 2.5kg extract and started the boil.

Hops I used Northern Brewer and Cascade. 15gs of each @60mins, 15mins and 0mins of the boil.

Then I poured into my fermenter and topped off to make 23l. I used white labs Irish ale yeast. It turned out great. Ive tried attaching a photo of the finished beer dont know if it will upload though.

BeerNut

A step-by-step guide to extract brewing, with pictures:
Link

I had this open on my first few brews and found it very useful.

scrapsmac

Martyn1989 wrote: »

You can do a perfectly good extract recipe on your hob with your saucepans at home. Before I got my boiler I did 10 litre steeping/boils.

My 1st extract recipe was an Irish red I used 400g Crystal and 100g Pale Chocolate Malt steeped for 30mins @65C

Then added the 2.5kg extract and started the boil.

Hops I used Northern Brewer and Cascade. 15gs of each @60mins, 15mins and 0mins of the boil.

Then I poured into my fermenter and topped off to make 23l. I used white labs Irish ale yeast. It turned out great. Ive tried attaching a photo of the finished beer dont know if it will upload though.

Looks good! Might give this a whirl. I take it you used a big ass pot on the cooker? Was it difficult controlling the temp at around 65C?

Martyn1989

scrapsmac wrote: »

Looks good! Might give this a whirl. I take it you used a big ass pot on the cooker? Was it difficult controlling the temp at around 65C?

Yeh play around with it, I used american hops because thats what I like but you can use whatever you want (I was also using my bittering and aroma hops in the wrong places but it didnt seem to matter), it was quite hoppy aswell so if your looking for something more 'true to style' might want to reduce that a bit.
If your going to start putting your own recipes together http://www.beertools.com/ is great and easy to use, it'll guide you on colour/bitterness/abv etc.

Once your pot can take about 7-10l of water you'll be ok (bearing in mind when the DME goes in the volume of the pot dramatically increases) but for your first few recipes you can dissolve the DME in your fermenter, until you upgrade to a boiler. Also bear in mind boiling wort can boil over and make a mess, so a little headspace in the pot is handy, either way watch it carefully.

Get the water up to about 68C, throw your grain in (in a muslin bag), cover, take off the heat, leave it. Check it every 10 mins or so and stick it back on the hob if needs be. A couple of degrees loss will be fine. Your only steeping the grain to get the colours, flavours and body out of the grain rather then mashing and getting fermentable sugars, so don't worry about it, it'll turn out.

Good Luck!

scrapsmac

Cheers lad!

Right I've decided Im going to give it a go for my next brew. Think I'll try the irish red ale!

quick question - what extract did you use? I've about 500grams of light spraymalt leftover from other brews. Reckon I stick with it and just get another 2kg?

Martyn1989

scrapsmac wrote: »

Cheers lad!

Right I've decided Im going to give it a go for my next brew. Think I'll try the irish red ale!

quick question - what extract did you use? I've about 500grams of light spraymalt leftover from other brews. Reckon I stick with it and just get another 2kg?

Yeh that'll be fine, order from the same place and you'll probably get the same brand anyway, its not something I'd be overly concerned about (I stand to be corrected on that)
If I was doing it again I would also have used either chocolate malt or roasted barley instead of the pale choc malt to get more of a roasty, burnt, chocolatey taste in there and don't forget to put your hops in muslin bags too, they can be a nightmare sometimes.
Let me know how it turns out!

poitinstill

anyone use the craftsman kits... it is the right amount hops /grain yeast needed ...thehomebrewcompany.ie do them
I was doing a bit of extract brewing but found i had a lot of grain and hops that i never got to use so they jsut fill the freezer and grain goes off...

covey09

Hi Guys, found this website, looks like they have lots of good stuff, has anyone bought form them?

http://www.wexbrew.com/

BeerNut

I'd heard they went out of business.

I use The Homebrew Company.

covey09

Yeah, i thought that the Web site is a bit out dated (1993ish). Any who ive just seen this thought it might be useful, im way to much of a noob to take it on yet but some day i'll do it

http://www.adverts.ie/other-home-garden/brewkettle-50litre/1063517

scrapsmac

Martyn1989 wrote: »

Yeh that'll be fine, order from the same place and you'll probably get the same brand anyway, its not something I'd be overly concerned about (I stand to be corrected on that)
If I was doing it again I would also have used either chocolate malt or roasted barley instead of the pale choc malt to get more of a roasty, burnt, chocolatey taste in there and don't forget to put your hops in muslin bags too, they can be a nightmare sometimes.
Let me know how it turns out!

Ordering from homebrewcompany today. They don't have chocolate grain in stock but they have crushed chocolate grain. Is that ok?

Don't want to sound like a total noob but I take it the crushed stuff won't get through the muslin?

BeerNut

All grain has to be crushed. Uncrushed is no good to you unless you have a crusher.

mayto

scrapsmac wrote: »

Ordering from homebrewcompany today. They don't have chocolate grain in stock but they have crushed chocolate grain. Is that ok?

Don't want to sound like a total noob but I take it the crushed stuff won't get through the muslin?

You would have to crush the chocolate malt anyway for steeping, so thats ok. Steeping the grains will be fine in a muslin bag.

scrapsmac

Cheers folks! I'll get my order in and keep you all updated

scrapsmac

Martyn1989 wrote: »

Yeh play around with it, I used american hops because thats what I like but you can use whatever you want (I was also using my bittering and aroma hops in the wrong places but it didnt seem to matter), it was quite hoppy aswell so if your looking for something more 'true to style' might want to reduce that a bit.
If your going to start putting your own recipes together http://www.beertools.com/ is great and easy to use, it'll guide you on colour/bitterness/abv etc.

Once your pot can take about 7-10l of water you'll be ok (bearing in mind when the DME goes in the volume of the pot dramatically increases) but for your first few recipes you can dissolve the DME in your fermenter, until you upgrade to a boiler. Also bear in mind boiling wort can boil over and make a mess, so a little headspace in the pot is handy, either way watch it carefully.

Get the water up to about 68C, throw your grain in (in a muslin bag), cover, take off the heat, leave it. Check it every 10 mins or so and stick it back on the hob if needs be. A couple of degrees loss will be fine. Your only steeping the grain to get the colours, flavours and body out of the grain rather then mashing and getting fermentable sugars, so don't worry about it, it'll turn out.

Good Luck!

So I finally got the ingrediants together. Now I'm just waiting for my probe thermometer to arrive.

Jumping the gun a bit but I might try batch priming this time round. Would I be right in saying that I can batch prime in my boiler? When I'm transferring from fermenter to the boiler is it okay to use the tap? I don't have any tubing/siphon tubing.

Also what quantity of priming sugar would you recommend?

Martyn1989

scrapsmac wrote: »

So I finally got the ingrediants together. Now I'm just waiting for my probe thermometer to arrive.

Jumping the gun a bit but I might try batch priming this time round. Would I be right in saying that I can batch prime in my boiler? When I'm transferring from fermenter to the boiler is it okay to use the tap? I don't have any tubing/siphon tubing.

Also what quantity of priming sugar would you recommend?

As far as I know aerating the wort at that stage could give you cardboard/off flavours. People always stress the importance of syphoning carefully with as little splashing as possible. An autosyphon is one of the best homebrewing bits Ive bought, it saves alot of heartache when trying to move the beer around.

Up until now have you been bottling with a bottling wand (http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_24&products_id=55) or just filling the bottles from the tap directly?

I cant see a reason why you cant use the boiler to batch prime, except to be sure all aound the element is extremely well cleaned and sanitised with no little burnt on bits and the likes and the tap has been removed dismantled, cleaned and sanitised.

I primed this recipe with the standard 1 teaspoon brewers sugar per 500ml bottle and I had no complaints. This carbonation calculator http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html?13999025#tag will help you work out how much to add and offers a style guide aswell. I would say about 120g of dextrose would give a decent amount of fizz without going over board.

scrapsmac

Yeah I've been using the little bottler system with carbonation drops and it's working grand but I want to move into batch priming purely to ensure consistency with carbonation.

cheers!

scrapsmac

Long overdue update!!

I'm standing in the kitchen watching the wort cooling on my red ale. The whole process was very enjoyable and a lot more satisfying than kits! I would urge anyone who has doubts to give it a go.

scrapsmac

Ok so pitched my yeast at 8pm last night. Woke up this morning and there was no sign of action

it took a few hours for the wort to chill back to 25degrees before I pitched. Could this have affected it?

BeerNut

Doubt it. Lag-time of a couple of days isn't unusual. What yeast did you use and did you rehydrate it before pitching?

mayto

scrapsmac wrote: »

Ok so pitched my yeast at 8pm last night. Woke up this morning and there was no sign of action

it took a few hours for the wort to chill back to 25degrees before I pitched. Could this have affected it?

If you added the yeast at 25C it will be fine. I rehydrate my dried yeast at about 30C before adding to the wort. I find it an take up to a day for fermentation to kick in. Usually after 12 hours onwards krausen foam usually forms on top of the wort. By tonight there should be a krausen formed and feermentation beginning.

scrapsmac

White labs irish ale yeast. Stored in the fridge, took it out 4 hours or so before pitching. Went by the instructions on the vile and through it straight in after a good shake!

BeerNut

Ah. I've heard that, despite the instructions, those vials aren't really pitchable and need a starter. I'd still give it a couple of days before doing anything, though. It'll probably be fine.

Martyn1989

Only for my last brew did I use a starter, every other time I just threw it straight in and its been fine. The good thing about using a starter is you get to see the yeast is healthy before adding it to the wort.

Did you aerate the wort before adding the yeast?

scrapsmac

Martyn1989 wrote: »

Only for my last brew did I use a starter, every other time I just threw it straight in and its been fine. The good thing about using a starter is you get to see the yeast is healthy before adding it to the wort.

Did you aerate the wort before adding the yeast?

I gave it a good stir! Still no signs of life in the fermenter.

mayto

We directly pitched white labs vials loads of times and never had a problem. Give it time and it will start, the yeast will begin to multiply.

Martyn1989

scrapsmac wrote: »

I gave it a good stir! Still no signs of life in the fermenter.

I would normally plug up the airlock hole of the fementer with some sanitised tinfoil and shake the fermenter until my arms get too tired.

Don't worry about it just yet, it seems common enough for people to wait 48+ hours for fermentation to start.

If in the next few days theres still nothing happening you can just get more yeast and pitch it.

Ive read before that the liquid yeast vials compared to the dry yeast packs have a much lower cell count, they also diminish over time, so the older the vial (even though its well within its use by date) the less active healthy cells are in there. As Mayto said give it time, they'll multiply and get going.

scrapsmac

Positive signs lads. We have a bit of foam! Also, I got the aquarium heater which was recommended in another thread and it's working great.

scrapsmac

Brew is coming along nicely it has come down to 1.013 or so. I have a Couple of questions,

what fg should I be aiming for? Starting gravity was 1.044?

Also, has anyone any experience of carbonating Irish ale with carbonation drops. Do I go with the standard 1.5 drops per 500ml bottle? Don't want it to be too fizzy

BeerNut

scrapsmac wrote: »

what fg should I be aiming for?

You're not aiming for anything: the yeast is doing the work It'll stop when it stops. I doubt it'll go down a whole lot further in the second week.

Martyn1989

scrapsmac wrote: »

Brew is coming along nicely it has come down to 1.013 or so. I have a Couple of questions,

what fg should I be aiming for? Starting gravity was 1.044?

Also, has anyone any experience of carbonating Irish ale with carbonation drops. Do I go with the standard 1.5 drops per 500ml bottle? Don't want it to be too fizzy

Just checked my notes and mine came down to 1.011 when I did this recipe.