First timer: how to brew in 14 days or less?

Okay well... it is what it is. If you can't get to a homebrew shop then I would do exactly as you suggest. I would use the grains from the gose but otherwise use the pale ale ingredients/process. I would ferment at about 70°F, which for standard ale yeast is a good compromise between fast and good-flavored. (That's with the thermocouple taped to the side of the fermenter, ideally with a little bubble wrap around it so that it's insulated from the surrounding air. The actual beer will be a little above that, but that's okay.)

In terms of hop scheduling, I would ditch the Nugget hops. [Edited to emphasize: the damn Nugget hops are ~4 years old! Don't use them!] Use like... I don't know, ~7 grams of hops added at the beginning of the boil, and then just at the end of the boil I'd add another like, you know, whatever, 15-30 grams of hops. Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic, they're all good. Personally I would use a blend of Citra and Amarillo, but I'm not a big hop guy, others will have more educated opinions. So really on the hopping I defer to others.

 

Yes, it is better to use fermenter temp because fermentation is an exothermic process, i.e. the yeast are churning out heat. As a result the beer is warmer than the ambient temperature during fermentation and it's more useful to measure the beer's temp than the air temp. The difference stops mattering once fermentation is over, but it's pretty easy to just tape some bubble wrap over the thermometer so it's basically measuring the beer's temp.

 

In my experience (and remember, I'm not a hophead), green hops don't smell that different from each other, and the fragrance doesn't closely track the way they will present in the beer.

If the hops smell cheesy or musty, that's a sign they're old. Intriguingly there was a thread on here recently about how cheesy hops might actually be good in the beer if they're used properly, but for your purposes as a beginner the fresher the better, which means cheesy = bad.

 

I'd put the opened vac bag in a ziploc bag and squeeze out as much air a possible, then keep them in the freezer.

 

I have attended multiple presentations at various HomebrewCon's (National Homebrewers Conference) where the presenter states that the a few pellets hops should be placed in the palm of your hands and vigorously rubbed between your two hands. This mechanical action (and resulting friction heat) will release the volatiles of the hop's aroma. How a Nugget hop should smell like? How does what you smell from this hand rubbing process translate to how that hop will express itself in the resulting beer? I do not know the answers here.

Just an interesting exercise for you to do?

Please report back.

Cheers!

 

I'm going to make a few general observations in this thread, take them or leave them.

If you want to get into the hobby, Brooklyn Brew Shop is not the supplier of choice. I'm sure the ingredients are fine, but they're just not geared toward educating homebrewers and providing a launchpad for getting into the hobby. That's okay for your immediate purposes (although I bet you'll find the instructions lacking - feel free to ask us if you're unclear on what you're supposed to do on brew day), but if you intend to make this a regular activity you'll want to move on. There are a lot of good vendors out there. Personally I like MoreBeer a lot (I order from their website), but there are plenty of other good ones.

You're going to want to pick up a copy of John Palmer's How to Brew. Far and away the best book I've seen for a beginning brewer.

This forum contains a homebrew recipes sub-forum. You will find a lot of good recipes there, including the "averagely perfect" recipes that @VikeMan developed using the "wisdom of crowds" method (he set up a series of polls to determine the process/ingredients for each recipe). Those recipes are highly regarded on this forum and would make a great starting point for someone wanting to make fairly straightforward examples of the styles represented there. The only downside is I believe all of those recipes are all-grain, although with a little work you could convert them to extract recipes.

There are some tough choices at the outset as you acquire the equipment for brewing. Don't just jump right in, take some time to think about (A) how big you want your batches to be, (B) how much you want to spend, (C) how you're going to control your fermentation temperatures, etc. (Your fridge looks great but I wonder how big a fermenter you could fit in there.) In this way, maybe Brooklyn Brew Shop is not the worst place to start because at least you get your feet wet without buying any equipment.

Maybe the most important piece of advice is to look for a local homebrewing club. There's just no substitute for brewing a beer with an experienced homebrewer, you'll learn more in a few hours than you would learn in countless hours of reading and self-teaching. We can help you a lot but a club is invaluable.

And since I don't think I've said it yet, welcome to the hobby! It is very fun and rewarding, and it will deepen your knowledge and appreciation of beer.

 

If you have a good LHBS (Local Homebrew Store), even if it is not all that local, I would recommend that you 'work' with them:

• Buy your homebrewing equipment kit from them (e.g., plastic fermentation bucket, etc.)
• Ask them for help putting together a kit of ingredients for a specific batch/style of beer
• etc.

Your homebrew store has a vested interest in having your batches of beer succeed since they want you to come back and buy more stuff. Get to know the folks on a first name basis. Ask them if they 'sponser' a homebrew club (if you are interested in joining).

And needless to say you should continue to use this forum as a source of help as well.

Cheers!

 

Of the Averagely Perfect (AP) series, the American Brown Ale is the only one without a defined extract w/partial mash option. The others have that option; American IPA, American Stout, NorthEast IPA, ESB, Dubbel and Saison.
The link below has links for all the polling/discussion threads for the American Brown. If you scroll to the bottom of that thread, you’ll find a link to the American Brown recipe and additional links to the discussion threads for the other AP styles.
The AP American Brown How We Got There Thread
Buckle up......there's a LOT of crowd-sourced info there.
As is fitting, props again to @VikeMan for walking us through and crunching the numbers.

I ferment 5.25 - 5.5 gallons in a plastic bucket that's ~15" diameter and ~16" tall, not including an additional 3" or so added height for an airlock and a larger footprint to accommodate a blow-off rig.

 

Since the weather is so warm? I’m sorry, but this sounds like the sort of lame reasoning that caused me to stop asking homebrew shop employees for advice.

 

My mistake, thanks!

 

Sounds good. There's probably not much need to switch to an airlock, the blowoff tube will work fine throughout. I'm assuming you only want to ferment for 4-5 days anyway so you can get the beer in bottles and carbonating ASAP.

 

Mostly, my point is that a brew shop employee should be telling a new brewer that controlling the temperature is important to the outcome. I read into that comment encouragement to ignore advice of temperature in favor of a fast fermentation.

If you are putting yourself at the mercy of the weather, may I suggest a kveick type yeast? This are pretty resistant to temperature extremes. If this is part of the plan your brew shop dude had in mind, maybe I judged him too quickly and perhaps he knows what he's talking about. Maybe, and perhaps.

 

Forecast: drain pour