Hey everyone! My first brew is in the fermentor and the yeast is doing its magic. Everything seemed to have gone well! I do, however, have a few questions. I sanitized using Star San, and rinsed the items with preboiled water. I ran out of preboiled water, so I rinsed the fermentor out with filtered water from my refridgerator. How concerned should I be about contamination? I used spring water for the boil (because my tap water tastes slightly strange to me), and I boiled the water before cooling it to 160°F for steeping. Was boiling the water before steeping necessary? It took me about 30 minutes to cool my wort. I used a steel trashcan filled with ice water. Is 30 minutes a particularly long time? Thank you in advance for all the help!
Star-San is a no-rinse solution. Ideally, you will only sanitize with it, and no rinsing will be necessary. 30 minutes is a good amount of time to cool a five gallon batch. It takes me about the same amount of time with an immersion wort chiller.
Welcome to the obsession. Be prepared for much more equipment, ingredients and beers hanging around. For the questions, you really don't have to worry about using plain water to rinse your fermenter. Any nasties in there will be so far outclassed by the yeast that there is minimal chances of anything bad happening. Same with the pre-boiling steeping water. By the time it's steeped and then boiled for an hour, that will kill any other bugs in there.
Anything that touches the beer before the boil, just needs to be nice and clean. Clean enough you'd literally eat off of it. Doesn't need to be sanitized, but free of any debris, gunk, etc. No need to boil your water before you use it, if it's going to be boiled again. Anything that the beer touches AFTER you cool it, needs to be clean, and sanitized. Spoons, funnels, fermenters, airlocks, everything you use to transfer it. Don't rinse your gear after you've used Star-san. You essentially "re-dirty'd" what you just sanitized with the acid sanitizer. If mixed properly, Starsan is perfectly safe. Chances are you, should be okay, so just let it ride and enjoy the first batch. Cooling it down isn't bad. I'm assuming you also did a partial boil, so for having under 5 gallons of wort, it's pretty much normal, especially if you live in a warm climate. Now.. make sure you keep the wort in the correct temp for the yeast you are using. Too hot and you'll run the risk of fusels and off flavors.
Thanks a ton for the input. It looks like many hours of my free time will now be put into thinking about, brewing, and consuming my homebrew. The only reason I rinsed the Star San is because I noticed some residue left over on a few items after they dried. I then boiled water and used the water, while it was still hot, to rinse the items off. I suppose next time I will just leave it. Perhaps I messed up the concentration of Star San somehow? Preboiling the brew water was unnecessary so I won't do that again, thanks everyone. I did do a full boil, so the 5 gallons did cool to below 80°F in 30 minutes. I'm keeping a close eye on the temperatures now. How much at this point does light affect the quality of the beer? I have the fermentor in a dark room in my basement, but I can't stop going in and looking at it
Also forgot to ask... My recipe was for an Irish red ale. The wort, before the yeast was pitched, was a nice deep red. Now, in the fermentor, it is a dark brown. As the yeast comes out of suspension and falls to the bottom, will the red color come back?
If your wort was red, your beer will be red. Yeast do affect the color while they are in suspension. Also, your beer won't be as dark in a glass as it looks in the fermenter (yeast or no yeast).
You mentioned that you cooled your wort to under 80, but is that also when you pitched your yeast? I hope that you can get it down to around 65 degrees in your basement setting. And, no, occasionally turning the light on to check on your beer in the dark basement room is okay. But you do have to exercise patience when it comes to taking gravity readings to determine when fermentation has ceased. Wait at least two weeks to do that (unless you're still getting bubble activity in your air lock), and then only two readings about 2-3 days apart will tell you what you need to know.
Good on you for doing a full boil. Pay attention to your volumes though. If you started with 5 gallons and didn't top up to 5 gallons then you are probably short around .75-1 gallon roughly. Also- you mention 80*.. I hope you didn't pitch your yeast at 80*. You'll want to pitch it on the low side of your fermentation temp, and allow it to rise to the temp you want to ferment at. Ideally with a fermentation chamber/chest freezer/etc, but thats later down the road if you decide this is something you want to really take on.
80 degrees is a bit warm for pitching - personally I try to get it below 65, but absolutely no warmer than 70 before pitching. Any warmer and you're risking getting some off-flavors and fusel alcohols. Nothing worth dumping the batch, but not ideal. As MotherGoose said, turning on the light isn't too bad, as long as you're not sitting there for hours at a stretch. The hardest thing for a new homebrewer to learn is patience. I know we all want to be drinking our creations as soon as possible, but time is your friend. Most kit instructions say to bottle after 2 weeks, or transfer to secondary in 5 days or something. Let the beer tell you when it's done. I generally give mine 3 weeks in fermenter - first gravity check 2.5 weeks (so if I brew on a sunday, I'll wait 2 sundays, then check either Wednesday or Thursday. plan for bottling that weekend, but check gravity before moving the beer. Assuming it's the same I go ahead. The best thing to do is that now you know that fermentation is happening, forget about it. Don't go look at it all the time, it is doing just find by itself. I personally will check in morning after brew, that night and the next night (unless something is worrying me, like really high krausen) and then forget about it until gravity check time.
Excellent! With my cooling method, the rate of change of the temperature of the water was different based on where the water was in the pot. At the bottom, it was getting quite chilly, ~60 degrees. At the top it was hovering at 80, so I figured pouring it would split the difference and be somewhere close to a good pitching temperature. I then forgot to take the temperature... I started with six gallons, thinking about one would boil off. Thanks everyone! Hopefully my batch isn't ruined from my lack of awareness at the pitching temperature. And my basement is about 67°F, give or take a degree.
JohnnyTee, you are me about a month ago. I'm drinking my first batch right now. Sounds like you did a good job. Someone told me that where you are now is the hardest part; the waiting. My 2nd batch is fermenting now and I like to just go check on it. The novelty of making my own beer hasn't worn off yet. Not sure how you're maintaining fermentation temps or where you want to be but keep in mind that your wort/beer will be warmer than your basement's ambient temp of 67F while the yeast eats. Are you using anything like a swamp cooler to keep your temps in line? Good luck on your first batch. Hope it turns out ok for you and you'll be anxious to get busy on your 2nd batch asap!
Curmudgeon, thank you for the kind words. It certainly is hard waiting, however I've been spending this time formulating a long list of things I want to purchase before my next batch. As of now, I've been relying solely on the fact that my basement's concrete floor is significantly cooler than my basement's ambient temperature. Seems to be doing the job well. I'm excited for my next batch already!
Congratulations on your first batch. Everything will likely be just fine. I've had batches where I was sure I had ruined them. I've had bugs and dog hair and leaves fall in batches and usually got away with it. Relax, wait a bit, and enjoy a beer.
I'm a new brewer who is waiting to taste his first batch, too. I grabbed a Hop Head double IPA kit from Midwestern and it's current carbonating in the bottles. I definitely made a few mistakes as I was going, largely from impatience, but from the samples I've tasted I think that it will at least be drinkable. Fermentation temperature was a bit higher than I wanted, since my basement is at about 73F these days, without taking any temperature rise in the fermentor into account. I also transferred it to the secondary after just over a week (since the gravity was where it was supposed to be), but I left it there for another 3 weeks before bottling, so I'm hopeful that things will work out on that end. I somehow managed to lose a full gallon from the 5 that I had in the primary when I started, maybe because of dry-hopping and definitely because I left more than I should have in the secondary when I went to bottle the stuff. Despite all that, I'm still pretty excited to finally get a proper taste of the stuff in another 10 days or so. I'm trying to keep my expectations in check - this is only my first batch after all. And I definitely don't think it will be the last, I've already got a tripel kit in the basement waiting for when I get back from vacation...
The slogan everyone always says when using StarSan is 'Don't fear the Foam!' A little residue clinging to the sides or even a big plume of foam is just fine so long as you use the proper dilution factor listed on the bottle.
