My friend and I just finished brewing a blonde extract kit. Everything went fairly well for the most part. We had a slight boil over that we caught quickly. Our timing was good throughout. The wort chiller dropped the temp to around 120 fairly quickly where we then pitched into the fermenter. The OG was right on the money. We had a little trouble getting the temp to drop to the max of 75 for the safale-05. This may be due to the fact that we didn't have the water we added to the carboy as cold as it should've been. We sat the carboy in ice and water for over an hour and finally got it down to about 78-79 degrees. We dry pitched the yeast at this temp and immediately placed the batch in the fridge. We are using a temp controller to keep it between 65-70 and are hoping things will be okay. We are a little concerned about the wort exposure and yeast pitching temp. Hopefully when we check on the batch in a few days, we'll see some fermentation. Other than that, my friend and I had a great time brewing. It was our first batch and we've already come up with more things to do better than we can count. I definitely want to make sure that the carboy is sealed up better during cooling and that we have more ice on hand to speed up the cooling process for our next batch which we are brewing tomorrow. Happy Brewing!
Congrats on your first brew day. I pitched us-05 around the same temp my first brew and had a lot more problems than you did from the way it sounds. The beer still turned out better than I expected. Good luck with your next batch.
Congrats on your first beer! I do not know alot of brewers that don't make mistakes. The good part is that beer is very forgiving. Why did you stop using your wort chiller at 120 degrees? It is not hard to rehydrate your dry yeast. Welcome to homebrewing!
It's your first batch. Stuff happens. In the future, I'd recommend getting your wort down to something below your target fermentation temp before pitching yeast. Also, as premierpro said, why stop at 120 with your wort chiller? It sounds like 120 was some sort of target and that someone may have given you some (bad) advice to stop there. You want to get to pitching temp, or at least as low as you can, before moving on to something else (like the fridge or an ice water pump).
I'm looking at the recipe directions right now and it says once the temp reaches 130, to transfer into the fermenter. Which is what we did. The target temp on the directions said between 70-80 degrees so it did note that yeast pitching temp needed to be reached. We're brewing a honey brown ale tonight so we are going to get a lot more ice and a cooler to fit the carboy in to speed that process up and also some sanitized plastic wrap and rubber bands to cover the carboy opening during cooling. I'm also thinking; like some of you have mentioned, of leaving the chiller in a bit longer. To my fault also, we didn't have the two gallons of water we added to the fermenter cool, it was more or less at room temp which most likely added to our cooling problems/time. As for the pitching temp from the kettle to the fermenter, I was a bit surprised that it would be that warm but, being the noob that I am I figured I would follow the directions.
Sounds like the instruction writer was counting on the top off water to bring the wort temp down to pitching temp. Which could work, but it would require a particular (easily calculated) temperature for the top off water. If the instructions didn't specify the temp for the top off water, I'd say they are bad instructions. Which is sadly not uncommon.
"I'm looking at the recipe directions right now and it says once the temp reaches 130, to transfer into the fermenter. Which is what we did. The target temp on the directions said between 70-80 degrees so it did note that yeast pitching temp needed to be reached." Probably the people who put together the kit figured that a certain volume of cold water added to 120F wort would get you down to pitching range and up to your desired SG, and they thought that'd be a quick and easy way to get her done. If that's the case, it's not necessarily a bad plan, but it does depend on the added water being pretty cold, I would think. Usually a wort chiller will take the beer down to just about whatever your tap water temp is, so next time you probably want to leave it in longer. SF-05 is pretty foolproof, which is partly why it's a great yeast for people to start with. I think you're going to be fine. But for future reference, it's usually best to get the wort down below your intended fermentation temp and then let it come up a little. I know a lot of the packaging on the yeasts gives a temp range of like 65-75F, but in most cases it's desireable to be on the low end of that scale.
You should just keep the chiller in there until you hit your pitching temp and then transfer to the fermenter. You could also try freezing some of the top off water, that will help it get down to temp a lot quicker.
UPDATE: Checked on the batch we brewed yesterday before starting the second and the fermentation has begun! The second batch (a honey brown ale from NB) went very well. We used a 8.5g kettle with this batch and didn't come close to a boil over. The timing was spot on. The cooling went far better than yesterday (didn't touch the 40lbs of ice I had on standby in the cooler). We left the wort chiller in a little longer and cooled to about 100. The cooling rate was much faster which I think had to do with the size kettle we were using compared to yesterday (5g). We then pitched into the fermenter and then added the two gallons of cold water. This dropped the temp to 74-75. The OG came out to about 1.04 (kit listed a 1.05 OG) We dry pitched the yeast at 74 and the batch went into the fridge at the same temp. Yesterday's batch is holding steady between 65-69 degrees. Now the waiting game begins... HAPPY BREWING!
I know you're not going to want to hear this, and 74F is way better than 79F, but 74F is still a bit high for most yeast strains. You can find recommended fermentation temps for every yeast strain on the web. Pitch at the the low end of the recommended range, or even a couple degrees below it. (Fermentation is exothermic, and will heat your beer/wort.) The idea is you want to start low and never let it get high (outside the range).
Just another quick pointer, with an 8.5 gallon boil kettle you can probably be doing full boils which would be very beneficial for your final product.
Quick update, I checked both batches this past Wednesday or Thursday and both are fermenting nicely. Tomorrow will be the 1 week ferm mark for the blonde ale and tuesday for the honey brown. Also, I couldn't figure out how to post a picture from my computer but, my avatar is a picture of both batches fermenting. the honey brown is on the left and the blond is on the right. the honey brown is on day two and the blonde is at day three.
Maybe I missed it, but it sounds like you guys didn't aerate your wort at all. This would normally not be a good thing because the yeast need oxygen to metabolize sugars effectively. They can also ferment without oxygen, but the process is not as efficient and may result in off flavors. One of the reasons to cool the wort below 80F is so that you can aerate it (common methods are mixing it with a whisk, pouring through a strainer, or shaking the fermenter). It is very important not to aerate when the wort is higher than 80F as it will lead to hot-side oxidation (cardboard flavors). So usually cooling the wort is not an optional step to help you pitch the yeast. It is a mandatory step to allow you to aerate the wort safely before pitching the yeast.
