Brooklyn Brew Shop?

Beer happens.

If you're taking care of the sanitizing and paying attention to your ferment - good beer happens.

It may not be great beer, but it will be good.

Unless you really mess up your ingredient choices.

 

I always argue to keep things simple when you're still learning.

 

**** Topic Derailer**** I beleive it was either the owners of brooklyn brew shop, or some loyal customers on the tv the other day(Not my mama's meals). Bobby Dean was trying to re-create his mothers "beer in the rear" chicken and needed some lighter beer to roast his chicken in. Luckily his neighbor is an avid homebrewer and had a honey grapefruit ale that he gladly loaned bobby 4 of. Anyways i though it was freakin awesome to see homebrewing on cable tv and look forward to the day where there is a homebrewing tv channel.

OP. I would stick to the recipe as brooklyn brew shop is a highly respected shop and I'm sure there recipe will yield a very tasty beer.

 

Why wouldn't brewing with MrB 'count'?

 

K.I.S.S.

Stick to the recipe.

 

The BBS everyday IPA kit was my very first batch. All grain is a difficult undertaking for the first time, but its offset slightly by the reduced liquid volumes you have to deal with (not a huge benefit compared to 5 gal, but its there).

some thoughts for you:

1) take 3 gravity readings: after the mash, after the boil and after fermentation (let the liquid cool to room temp for the first two). These numbers will help you figure out how efficiently you extracted fermentable sugars from the grains, and to what extent your yeast converted them to alcohol.

2) don't worry about the honey, it's such a small amount and it ferments so completely that you won't taste it.

3) buy some no rinse sanitizer (star san or iodine) and leave the cbrite in the box. It was nerve racking to me to try and figure out if I had completely rinsed the junk out. Its really not a taste you want in your beer.

4) buy a mesh bag for the mash. Its so easy to just pull them out of the pot, plus you don't have to worry about oxidizing your hot wort that way.

5) speaking of oxidation, be very careful when bottling not to splash. Introducing O2 at this stage will lead to off flavors. Try this experiment to see what I mean: often when bottling you'll end up with some volume less than 12oz in your final bottle--go ahead and cap it and let it carb up with the rest. There will be so much headspace in this beer (and hence so much O2) that you'll easily be able to pick up that flavor in the future.

That's it for now, I'll post more if I remember something else. Feel free to use all or none of the suggestions. Best of luck!

 

I have never made that kit, but my first 3 batches of homebrew were similar idea but from a Canadian company. They worked out ok and allowed me to get a lot of the kinks of the process before I tried making my own recipes. I still make one gallon batches now (although I use the bag method) when I want to try something that I am not sure I am going to like. One thing to be mindful of is for the one I used (not brooklyn) they had the strike water temperature set way high, which I think had an effect on my flavour and mashing. Watch that, and watch how much your mash cools over the hour, and then keep an eye on your boil off.

One thing I learned after doing like 5 batches was to get a wooden measuring spoon and mark off 1 gallon with like a knife or something, so that you can tell where you are at at the end of your boil.

 

Actually the "oatmeal" method is similar to batch sparging whereas using a bag in this manner is known as BIAB (brew in a bag). Batch sparging is more efficient (more sugars extracted) but biab is a lot easier and only requires a single pot (maybe two if you wanted to dip the bag in a secondary hot water source rather than just squeezing as much wort out as possible from the single pot method). I recommended it to you because of the ease and reduced equipment requirements.

The flavor turned out ok (for a first batch), but it could have been a lot better. Nothing to do with the recipe, mostly I just had a terrible process. I myself just hoped to learn as much as I could when I brewed it (and I did), so it didn't bother me when the beer wasn't perfect. Its great that you've done so much reading before diving in. I can't tell you how much easier it is to figure out what went wrong if you have a clear understanding of each step. In fact its good to be cognizant of these things while you're brewing so you have some expectation of how it will turn out (ie "shit, i pitched my yeast at 78 instead of 68--i bet it will taste estery").

What book is it btw?

 

If you are bent on small batches, Mr. Beer is hard to beat as long as you are open-sourcing your ingredients.

 

I have started my homebrew hobby with exactly the same kit.
Read the instructions and watch the video , make sure you have every piece of equipment in needed.

Bottle process is really the down side of this kit, so get yourself Spring Loaded Beer Bottle Filler it fits the kit tubing and it will save you spills.
Your next brew can be made with grain from any home brow store.
Happy Happy.

 

Same can be said for every other basic kit...n'est pas?

Point being...brewing with any kit is still brewing.

 

Sorry to tell you this amigo but I think you would have been better off buying a bigger pot instead of both of the little ones. Its exactly the same amount of effort to do 5 gal batches, and based on your posts I'd be willing to bet that you'll migrate to 5 sooner rather than later. At least you'll have a couple of nice stock pots! I still use my 3gal stock pot for various things fwiw.

The book looks pretty good--well designed if nothing else. You should also check out www.howtobrew.com, "the complete joy of home brewing", "yeast" and "brewing classic styles". All are great and the website is particularly good for practical info.