Hello all, After all the research I did in books and reading/posting in this forum I finally got my NB Irish Red into primary. Overall I think I did OK seeing as I have never brewed before. I started the day indoors (it was raining out) heating my 5gal full boil on an induction plate (1800w). After a while it got to about 170F when I steeped my grains (30min). The recipe called for 20min but Mr. Palmer convinced me otherwise. I don't know, but I'm assuming there weren't too many tannins flying around my wort. I turned the plate up to full blast and waited for a boil, and waited for a boil, and waited for a boil....you get it. Seeing as I didn't have all day and 2 hrs went by and I was hovering at 190F I moved the operation outside onto the propane burner. A risky maneuver but the rain subsided and it started to boil in 5min. Actually it almost boiled over at first (hot break? I actually don't know what that looks like). I had it boiling so rapidly some bubbles were flying over the edge of the pot, only for a few minutes. Common sense told me that was too much so I toned it back to what I considered a "rolling" boil. Can you burn the wort this way? There were no scorch marks on the pot when I cleaned it but I smelt a slightly "burnt" tinge from the wort before I pitched my rehydrated yeast. I should mention that I started with 6gal water and my wort, before I topped up, was 4.5gal. That leads me to beleive I boiled it too long/too hot? I forgot to add the IC in the last 10mins so my boil was about 70min long to sanitize it. Anyways, I was just curious, thank you all for reading this and helping the n00bs around here. I had a lot of fun and can't wait for my next brew!
Th longer you boil, and the more vigorously, the more water you will boil off. You now know that on your system (and the flame settings you used), that you'll boil off about 1.29 gallons per hour... ((6 gallons - 4.5 gallons) / 70 minutes) x 60 minutes/hour = 1.29 gallons/hour BTW, you can sanitize your IC in the last 10 minutes of the 60 minute boil...no need to add an extra 10 minutes. Depending on your setup, you can scorch wort. The lack of scorch marks kind of indicates that you didn't.
I think you did fine. You'll get a slightly different character from the hops since you boiled them for 70 and 40 mins respectively (instead of 60 and 30) but not a huge big deal. Topping off with water is what most extract brewers do, IMHO, though soon enough you'll be able to do the math on your evaporation rate and starting volume and won't need to top off anymore. Sounds like any "burning" of the wort that might have happened was outside of the brew kettle and not a problem, though, for the future, you can get scorching of the malt extract syrup when it sinks to the bottom of the kettle if it doesn't get mixed in right away. Consider turning the flame off for a minute or two until the syrup is well dissolved. Welcome to the hobby!
Congratulations! I had my first brew day Friday. Mostly "watch and learn" but I did a lot of hands-on stuff too. I was exhausted--but now I can't wait to try it again.
Hate to say it, but it sounds like you'll end up with 4.5 gallons of tasty beer... Now you're hooked! Everyone else touched on the other points, but another tip is have a spray bottle of water for when it starts to foam up at the beginning of the boil. You can also blow on it like crazy, but I find it way easier to just spray it down if it gets to big. Just out of curiosity, how long are you going to ferment it?
Thanks for the tips. Now that the fermentation has begun, the beer already started to look better. In fact the air lock keeps bubbling in my closet, it's kind of distracting while trying to sleep, best distraction ever if you ask me. I'm going to keep the boil a little less vigorous next time and add a spray bottle just in case. I wasn't going to secondary my first brew but I have the gear and want to get another beer into primary before the first is bottled while every little mistake is fresh in my head.
Measure your gravity with a hydrometer and don't transfer to secondary until primary fermentation is complete, i.e. the final gravity reading has stopped dropping and holds steady for a few days.
