First brewday - lessons learned!

[Drzava]

Had my first honest to goodness homebrew day last Saturday (details of batches in their fora). Bottled a demijohn of turbo cider and set up two more. Also put on my first kit - Cooper's stout. A few things that caught me which may be useful to others:

Siphoning - it works both ways! Bottled my cider by siphon, raising the bottle above the level of the demijohn to stop the flow when full. A bit puzzled why the level of the first 8 or so bottles dropped - because they were 'reverse' siphoning back into the demijohn! Doh!

Adding teaspoons of sugar (xylitol for me) to bottles is not a good idea - sugar everywhere, including the threads of the bottles.

Remove the paper from the kit tin before heating - not because of likelihood of it getting into beer (although that's a good reason anyway), but because the wet paper jams the tin opener!

If you raise your drill stirrer too high in the wort, you WILL get it everywhere!

Make sure your fucking stick on thermometer is working, lest you end up pitching your yeast way too warm, like me.

Keep an eye on your taps. I have two fermenters with standard taps (plus one with just a hole currently!). First now has a stout kit in it and seems to be leaking very slightly (yes it is closed). May be an idea to seal it up with Parafilm or another flexible tape until sampling time.

It WILL take much longer than you thought!

[Drzava]

Another salutory lesson learned today. I put on a Bulldog Cerveza last week which gave an OG significantly higher than expected (1.053 vs 1.039) which, seeing as you only need to add water to the kit, shouldn't really be possible. This was on top of my previous (second) brew, which also gave an unexpectedly high gravity. On reading around, I put it down to poor mixing technique (can't even stir something!). However, the Cerveza reading being so high was niggling at me so I emailed Hambleton Bard asking their opinion. They suggested that they put too much wort in the bag (happy days, except I weighed it and it was spot on), or my fermenter graduations were out. Didn't really think they could be out that much (it's the standard 33L one sold by a few companies) but checked it tonight anyway. Well blow me, but wasn't it indeed way off! So, when I thought I filled to 22.5L last week, it was actually only about 19L! At least now I know I can actually stir!

[molc]

I spent a few hours last Sunday measuring water into my fermentor to get an idea of measurements for the same reason. Those stickers aren't the most accurate...

[armedcor]

Yea those buckets are totally inaccurate. The lads just stick on a sticker any ole way when you purchase.

[Drzava]

I would have thought they might be out half a litre maybe.......a whole litre at a push. However, being 3.5L out on a standard 23L fill is insane! I reckon the scales are for a different bucket, but they just lashed them on anyway.

[Ed]

I spent a few hours last Sunday measuring water into my fermentor to get an idea of measurements for the same reason. Those stickers aren't the most accurate...

I did the same thing a couple of months ago, one of them was  way out, the other was only about 0.5L, but still worth doing.