First home brew day down. Made SMaSH Maris otter and williamette. Learned a few lessons for next time.
Filled a bucket with 20 litres of water and made my own sanitizer, mixed in 35mls thin bleach, stirred, 35mls vinegar. Put in syphon, 1 gallon fermenter, hydrometer, funnel with strainer
Brought 3.3 litres to 70° and added 924 grams Maris otter.
lesson 1, turning off the heat and putting the top on will keep the mash temperature level. I learned this during but it was a surprise.
45 mins later started heating 4 litres, got to 70 at almost exactly the hour. I bought a straining bag for this part but the mouth of it wasn't large enough. I worked around with a normal kitchen sieve , going back and forth and dumping grains in the bag as I went but next time I'll get a better set up here.
Brought wort to boil, put in 4grams of hops. Waited 55mins put in 7 grams. On the hour I turned off the heat and put in 10grams
I took a liberty with 15mins left in the boil, added 20g of unrefined Brown sugar
Lesson 2, Ice bath needs more ice next time, it took ages for the wort to cool.
Took hydrometer reading, 1.045, used sanitised funnel to transfer to fermenter, pitched yeast, shook for 6 minutes, attached syphon to the airlock, other end in sanitize solution cup.
Now I wait
on my boil a lot was evaporated, any tips on getting better efficiency here?
Congratulations on your first brew!! You'll be building a keggle and ordering grain in 25 kg bags before you know it :)
Try putting the grain in the straining bag to do your mash next time, it'll save a lot of time getting the grain out of the wort. Just lift out the bag when the mash is done.
As for evaporation loss during the boil, the best way to deal with it is use more water for your mash so you start the boil with a higher volume. The sugar is still in there and the SG will incease as the water boils off. I start boiling with 27 or 28 L to end up at 23L after the boil, but thats in a 30 L boiler. If your short of space or boil capacity you can use a second pot to get the extra wort up to boiling and use it to top up your main boil as it evaporates. you might need to boil a little bit longer to get down to your batch size/gravity or you can boil down the un hopped (extra) wort in your second pot as much as you want before you add it to the main (hopped) boil pot and it wont effect your hop utilization
Put the grain in the bag at the start. Perfect, so disappointed I didn't think of it.
I'm gonna stick with the small batches so I can try a lot of different recipes. If I got one recipe I really like or more space for equipment I'd step it up. Tpray was really fun and I can't wait to try the beer and do another one
Update on this. Another lesson. I reckon I mashed at too high a temperature. The fermentation seemed weak but I gave it benefit of the doubt and waited 10 days. Hydrometer og was 1.045 and reading now is 1.024. That would give an abv of 2.76%. I'm using a sanitised oil baster to extract a sample for hydrometer readings, I'll do it Thursday and Friday. If reading stays the same I'll bottle Saturday, call it a dessert ale and write it up to experience
If you mashed at 70 like you say it should have finished lower than that. What yeast did you use? What temp did you ferment at?
Did you aerate the wort before pitching, could be a stalled fermentation if there wasn't enough oxygen for the yeast?
I was heating 3.3 litres in a pot on the oven. Got to 70 and I put the grains in but didn't turn off the heat. I didn't realise the temperature would keep if I put the lid on. I kept checking the temp and it took me a while to realise what I'd done wrong. I've been thinking stuck fermentation as well. I used 5grams dry yeast safale us-05. It started fermenting the day after but stopped after another day. I didn't want to mess with it. Kept at little below room temperature about 18 degrees. Saturday I tried swirling it a bit to check for any action but nothing. Yesterday I made a starter with some Danstar Nottingham and put it in but I've seen nothing. I'm open to suggestions as I reckon I've messed this one up royally. If the hydrometer readings stay the same after repitching I'm assuming there's nothing fermentable left. I've aerated the last batch I did properly but this batch I pitched the yeast and then shook the carboy for 5 minutes
Oh well if it got really hot its probably denatured the enzymes. At least it was a small batch and not 5 gallons. Live and learn.
Just having my first bottle, 1 week later. It's perfectly acceptable and I can honestly say I've had worse. I've had much better. Lots better in fact. But this is a promising beginning and i'll wait another week before having more. Also it makes me feel very optimistic about the brews I've done since