My Plan for Starting Homebrewing

I've watched a few of those. In particular, Northern Brewers (who makes the 1G ingredient kit I ordered) has a nice one on 1G brewing. They start off by saying "If you can make mac and cheese without help you can brew beer!" and I had to laugh because there is a story my wife likes to tell about me making M&C the first time and I forgot to drain the water before adding the cheese packet! I'd like to think I've progressed from there and this will be easy!

 

My 1G ingredient kit has arrived and I've got everything all set for brewing on Sunday!

Update on the local store... I went in there today to get bottle caps (I know I won't need those on brew day but I wanted to make sure I had everything I need) and to assess what they had overall for my future needs. As I've said, it is really a small homebrew section in a little bar area where they serve craft beers. Two bartenders on duty and only a few drinking customers. First I bought a beer to drink and sat the bar so I could get acquainted with the guys behind the bar before I started asking about the homebrew stuff. It turns out that neither guy behind the bar really knows much about home brewing! The guy who was their homebrew expert quit a few months ago to start his own brewery and it seems that they don't really have anyone who can step in. They did give me his contact info if I wanted to ask him any questions - but that doesn't really help me much when I'm at the store and have a question!

They don't have much in the way of equipment. Based on discussion above I was looking to use my gift card to get a nice scale, a 5G kettle, and 3G carboy for use later when I increase my batch size. They had no scales, the only kettles they had were 10.5G, and they did have the 3G carboy. I was thinking of also maybe splurging (since I have this store credit on my gift card) and getting a refractometer so that my small batch size wouldn't get hit by a hydrometer reading - but they don't seem to carry those. So... on the equipment side they have only a small selection of the most rudimentary things (they had thermometers and hydrometers and syphons and such). They do have what appears (to my novice eye) a fair amount of ingredient stuff - I saw some Muntons brand LME and some DME made by LD Carlson. They also had 10lb bags of grain... but I did not look carefully at that since right now I'm focusing on extract brewing. They also had small bags that looked like they were probably grains for steeping. There were two coolers - one for hops (I think - didn't look to closely) and one for yeast. As I was there a guy came in and bought a 10lb bag of grain and used their grinder thingy. I talked with him and he is the brewer at another local upstart brewery. He assured me that they have the ingredients I would need to put together a recipe as long as I know what I need.

So it looks like I'll have to buy any but the most basic equipment elsewhere but I should be able to get ingredients there as long as I know what I need (and someone above said you guys can help me with that!). There is another homebrew shop that I could go to - it is not near my house but is near where I work (I commute a fair distance). It is called Docs and I'd appreciate of one or more of you could take a look at this link (http://www.docsbrew.com/) and give your opinion. They seem to have been in business for quite a long time and I'm guessing will give better customer service... they also appear to have a decent supply of equipment and ingredients.

In the mean time.... Sunday is Brew Day so wish me luck!!!

 

Yes! I put the two beers I had on the card! They also have a small bottle shop so I can spend it that way too. So I may end up doing a little fancy financial engineering and use the card for my usual bottle buys and then that frees up what I'd be spending on that for use on brewing stuff.

 

Brew day postponed until next weekend.... One big motivator for me doing this is that my youngest daughter will be going off to college next year to study bio-chemistry and I thought she would find home brewing a fun "lab" experience to learn a bit about some bio-chemistry type stuff. But she said she has too much homework this weekend and asked if we could postpone to next weekend, which will be a 3-day weekend for her. C'Mon... where are her priorities??!!!

 

OK... tomorrow is a go for brew day!! The 1 week delay allowed me to get a refractometer so I won't waste as much from my 1G batch. (I've read all the details in other threads on using the refractometer - calibrated it with distilled water and know how to use Sean Terril's spread sheet to convert my Brix readings.)

This afternoon I'm kind of going through a dry run or at least a semi-wet run to make sure I've got everything I need and know what to do. And here is my first question:

The instructions for the ingredient kit I got is here and it does not really say when to start steeping the grains - it just says in step 1 to heat the water and then in step 2 to steep the grains for approximately 10 minutes. Not very precise if they don;t tell me when to start!!!

Now I've seen other places say to start when the water gets to 150 degrees so I did a test by putting the called-for 1.25G of water in my pot and turned on the heat. I started with the water at about room temp (72 degrees or so) and after 7 minutes I was only up to about 130 degrees and didn't hit 150 until about the 9 minute mark. So... if I just put the bag in right way (which is kind of what they seem to allude to in the instructions) and steep for 10 minutes I'll only get about 1 minute of steeping at 150 or above.

Could someone please advise me on this? Thanks in advance!!!

 

That is what I've been seeing so the short duration seemed odd and to just start it right away seemed odd. Note that their 1G equipment kit does not come with a thermometer (but I have one) so they may be trying to set it up so that you don't have to know the temp to get it done... So could they have put MORE grains than usual and then only need to steep for 10 minutes? I just weighed them on my wife's crappy little dietetic scale and I've got about 8 oz of grains.

 

Here is what they state as the ingredients. Quite hazy on the specialty grains, though. So all I know is that there is about 8 oz of something in that bag but I don't know what!


--Steeping grains and mesh bag
Steep approx. 10 minutes - Brew Day, step 2
--1 lb. Briess Gold dry malt extract
Boil for 45 minutes - Brew Day, step 4
--3.5 grams Chinook hops
Boil for 45 minutes - Brew Day, step 4
--3.5 grams German Hallertau hops
Add at end of boil - Brew Day, step 4
--2 oz Ames Farm Single Source Honey
Add at end of boil - Brew Day, step 4
--Danstar Nottingham brewer’s yeast
Add HALF packet to cooled wort -

 

Yes... I've got a pot that holds 3G so I'm good there.

I already had read about not exceeding 170 degree when steeping but thanks for making sure I'm not screwing up! I think I'll go with the 20 minute steep while at 150 or so. I don't have a problem waiting for it to get to full boil... in my "dry run" today it only took about 20 - 25 minutes to get there so I can be patient!