Help a noob

Sanitation and temperature control fermentation. Do you have a temp stable location around 62-68 degrees? Remove the secondary fermentation info from your mind unless you get into things like fruit fruit beers or oaking beers.

I would also recommend doing some shaking or similar act for aeration of the wort and get another smack pack of 3068 yeast to pitch. Assuming solid sanitation practices are followed, a strong healthy fermentation will make great beer and fix the more common short comming for first time brewers.

 

Hefe is a good choice for a first brew...you'll need to cool your wort down fairly quick to get it down to yeast pitching temp...problematic without at least a shit load of ice, since most beginner kits do not include a wort chiller.

 

I agree that keeping the ambient room temperature below 70F in the area where your fermenting wort will be stored is of high concern. That will cover one major factor if you can take care of it.

Cooling your wort - you're gonna need 20 lbs of ice, so either crank up your ice machine or grab a big bag or two smaller bags on brew day. Make sure wort is below 70F when you pitch.

How are you gonna bottle? You need an AUTO-siphon. They're not expensive, but not having one (and just having a standard "racking cane") is a pain in the ass. Practice using water before the time comes so you know how it works.

Sanitize of course! Starsan is recommended highly by me and many here. Get everything nice and covered with plenty of sudsy starsan, including your hands and anything that will touch beer.

Bottles need to be clean, dry, debris free, and dust free. I bottle and I'm anal about the bottles. Rinsed several times with HOT water (including shaking), dried upside-down until COMPLETELY dry, then covered with a square of tinfoil until bottling day. Any crud in bottle = rejected.

Sanitize with starsan. Drain the liquid starsan obviously, but don't worry about a little foam. Don't fear the foam, it won't hurt your beer. What might look like a lot of foam just means you sanitized well and the yeast will be happy. Starsan and sanitization mentioned twice for a reason.

Recipe sounds fine. It's hard to screw up a hef if you follow advice in this thread.

Aerate well after cooling and before pitching yeast. This means vigorous stirring. Don't scratch up the sides of your bucket tho.

Don't mess with your beer for at least two weeks after you pitch the yeast. It should be done by then.

Fermenting beer doesn't look all that appetizing and it might not even look that appetizing come botting day. It might have yeast crud on the sides of the bucket and hops debris floating on the beer or in the bottom of the fermenter (where there will be a thick layer of yeast/hops/crud). This is not a worry. Try to minimize the amount of trub (i.e. crud) that gets into your bottles, but be mindful that a little isn't going to hurt anything. Homebrew sometimes has sediment (i.e. yeast and often some amount of hops debris) in the bottles and this won't mean a thing if you pour carefully into a glass. You'll learn how to minimize and eliminate such debris over time.

If you use bombers to bottle (which I use a lot of), make sure to bottle a couple or three 12ozers so you can pop a "test" bottle to see if they're ready. Leave for two weeks, then pop a test bottle. They will probably be ready if you brew well and have happy yeast.

Anybody mentioned water? If your city water is chock full of chloramines, it will affect the taste of your beer negatively. Campden tablets cure this tho. Might be worth checking into.

Boil as much of your wort as possible, even if you need to use two pots. Minimize top-off water or eliminate it altogether. Boil freely without a lid, getting a rolling boil going. Watch for boil-overs.

Normally you'd split the hops proportionately between the pots if you boil in two pots. However, with only one ounce of low AA hops, this won't be a major concern. Still, split them anyway according to the amounts of liquid boiling in each pot.

As a noob, I'm impressed that you've already been reading noob threads and how to brew. I suspect you will wind up with tasty beer in the near future.

 

What others said. But as importantly, don't stress and have fun!
Also I find at this point in my relatively new brewing career, dry yeast is just fine if you can get that cheaper.
If I may repeat the mantra:
-Sanitize, sanitize. If in doubt about whether you accidentally contaminated a piece of equipment, do it again.
-Watch your temps closely. Harder on a stove. I failed 2 out of 3. but that's probably just me. I didn't understand extract brewing. life is much better for me with full grain and a DIY $60 mash tun.
-Cool it as fast as you can after boil. This is when the yeasties you don't want will want to get in.
-Yeast it and make sure the seals are good.
-Wait impatiently for several weeks
-Repeat step 1 for bottling. Before you put beer in the bottle, hold it up to the light and look inside. See anything that isn't glass, put it aside. Don't forget to add the sugar!

For bottles, if you drink bottled beer, just do a quick rinse after you finish the bottle. If you drink at all like me, you'll have way too many in short order. A bottle tree (about $17) is a wonderful thing for both rinse and sanitize.
-Wait again impatiently.
-Drink something YOU made. ahhhh.

 

Ahh AlCaponJr beat, and much more thoroughly to the punch.
Still, don't stress, enjoy!

I do disagree on the auto-siphon. Did 10 batches without one. Just takes a bit of practice. Now that I have one, of coarse I would not go back....but it's optional beginner equipment.

 

Good point about water. If using all extract, you could use distilled water. It would negate the uncertainty that tap water brings.
There's plenty to read and learn, but in the end it's about putting grain in water, collecting the sweet water, adding yeast, then carbonating and drinking. How you go about doing those things and sanitation make all the difference.

 

Totally agree. Dry yeast cheeper and easier. I don't personally know of a really good dry hef-ish yeast, but one may exist, (anyone?). I use bavarian wheat yeast for my "house" elderberry wheat (similar to a hef in composition) but I make a starter for it.

You kinda need a starter for liquid yeasts, as they generally only come with 100 billion cells (dry with 200 billion). They're not hard to make, but require you start them a few days before you brew, and you'll need some extra DME (not a lot). 100 grams DME per liter water is generally starter territory.

I tend to assume 200 billion cells is the "starting point" for a five gallon batch of an average strength, normal beer*. It's not an exact number, but it's a good place to start. More gravity, harsher conditions = more cells needed. Beer software and online calculators can tell you how many yeast cells you need, and there's plenty of online advice on how to do starters.

If you don't get an auto-siphon, at least practice with your racking cane BEFORE you to go to use it on the actual beer. I wouldn't go back either (probably nobody would, lol).

One other thing, have a procedure before you start, and follow it. I developed my own procedures and used checklists when I first started. It helps a lot. My early blogs have procedures you can use as guidelines.

*a hef would fit in this category quite easily. A double IPA or imperial stout would NOT.

 

If you're not sure if you want to follow through with brewing, I'd ask myself a few questions:

Do I like to cook? Do I like craft brew? Do I have patience? Do I know anyone else who brews, or has the equipment that I can test out without investing? i.e. find a local homebrew club and see if someone will let you sit in on the process.

 

If you like to cook, and have patience, you'll be almost halfway there for brewing. I'll assume you already like craft beer, since you're here............................

 

It is simple insurance. If the pack is really fresh one is enough to make beer, BUT if you are not making a starter, your process under oxygenates, and the pack has some age on it or temperature stressed in transit (either to you like from an online retailer or to the LHBS from their distributor) you run the risk of under pitching. One is absolutly enough, but enough to make drinkable beer is different than enough to make great beer. If you are making a starter, 1 is enough. If you go dry route, one pack is enough. Under pitching and underoxygenating lends to that snappy "homebrew flavor" that is common with new brewers.

When transferring, you want leave as much trub behind as possible. I will say this also, measure your priming sugar accurately and MIX it thoroughly. Don't assume that just because it whirlpooled with the beer as your were transferring it into the bottling bucket means that is sufficient.

It's nearly, if not impossible, to boil out all of the chlorine (chloramines). If you are using all extract, you will have no issues using all distilled.

 

The second pack of yeast might be a good idea if you have a home brew store near by. The only time I've had an issue with liquid yeast was when I had it shipped during the summer heat. The smack pack did not swell at all. I now buy all of my yeast locally and take it straight home to the fridge.

I would use all distilled if you can for extract beers. I have read it is probably not necessary to boil it if it's bottled water. But don't have personal experience with top of water.

I usually move my fermeter to where I am going to bottle 3-4 hours ahead of time so it can settle from being moved. I put a book under one end of it so it is tilted. I can almost get all of the beer and get very little if any of the yeast cake/trub.

 

Just went through the same thing (Cali to Louisiana). YMMV but mine were pretty trashed, even with ice packs. I made a starter using all 3 vials and will probably have to step a total of 3 times to get where they need to be. You could augment with dry yeast.
Ref:
http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/lager-starter-from-questionable-yeast.103369/
http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/is-this-starter-building-worth-continuing.103947/

 

Only water with a lot of chloramine will taste like band-aids. Chlorine boils off. Distilled water for extract batches makes this 100% a non-worry tho. You can't use distilled water for all-grain without adding salts tho, which is why we specify extract. Good spring water makes fine beer, even with all grain. Beware tho, bottled water may not be what it appears to be from the label.* Although bottled water can help if you have heavy chloramines in your local water, so can campden tablets.

This is how I do it too. Works like a champ, hardly waste even a 12ozer of beer.

Note that a little trub doesn't ruin a beer, but a lot certainly takes away from the appearance, and may have other negative effects. Minimize trub and yeast, yes. But fretting excessively over it, no. Use of a sanitized paint strainer bag around the end of your siphon is helpful. Make sure to also sanitize whatever you use to attach the bag to the siphon.

Priming sugar - WEIGH it, don't measure with a measuring cup. You NEED a gram scale for brewing, unless you're going to pay extra for pre-packaged hops and sugar forever.


*In general, bottled water is a scam, and was no doubt invented by some guy who was thinking "hmmm... how can I make a bunch of money, even tho I have few resources and no expertise at anything? I know... bottled water! I'll convince everyone that city water = bad, bottled water = good! Then I'll bottle my water from the houston municipal water supply and call it something that sounds new-aged, thus ensuring every woo-believing sucker in the US will buy my water! Just think, it'll only cost me about 4 cents for every 100 gallons, and I'll sell it for $1.25 a gallon!" Now he's sitting on a beach in Mexico, smoking a fat hooter and getting fanned with a big palm leaf by scantily clad ladies and drinking pina-coladas from a coconut (with a little umbrella, of course), and you're paying $1.25 a gallon for the same crappy water that comes out of the faucet!

 

Yep. 3B is great. But they did exactly what I asked them to do. That was my screwup. I can't expect liquid yeast to make the trip to the deep south over several days and make it in decent shape. Next year I'll just order all my summer yeast that I can't get dry in march. I'm getting some positive action in my starter and will probably be alright.