Getting ready to try my first attempt at brewing. I would like to get started this weekend. I'll be around for the first 4 days of fermentation. However I am going out of town that Thursday - Sunday. No body will be around to keep an eye on things. I am planning on using a blow off tube until I get back. Is it a bad idea to leave it unattended during the early stages of fermentation? Wondering if I should wait till I get back. Thanks in advance.
If you are around the first 4 days, you are fine. Nothing extravagant will happening miraculously on day 5...you're all good
If you brew early on the weekend, you should be all right. The most critical period is the first 72 hrs (including lag time for the yeast to get going). I think a wet T-shirt around the fermenter in a tub of water is the way to go if you have no other way of keeping it cool. The blow-off will be needed initially maybe, but by Thursday I think you will be out of the woods. Use US-05 for an IPA (avatar?) and keep it simple...IMHO.
That was an easy guess right? Chinook Ipa and I did get the US-05 with it. The tshirt thing. Do I just put a little bit of water in the tub or is the fermenter partially submerged in water. Thanks for the advice.
If you have time, post your recipe/process or hopefully you've at least read: http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter1.html CHEERS
I have read most of how to brew. At least whats available online. Here is a overview. Hopefully I include the nessisary info. It is a Northern Brewer Chinook IPA extract kit to make 5 gallons. I am probably going to follow the instructions fairly close except I am doing a full boil and the directions are for a partial. I have a 10.5 gallon kettle and a outdoor burner. In the kit: Specialty Grains .75 lbs of Belgian caramel pils .25 lbs of Briess Caramel 120 Malt 6 lbs of pilsen malt syrup 1lb of Pilsen dme 1 oz Chinook (60 min) .05 oz Chinook (10 min) .05 oz Chinook (1 min) 1 oz Chinook (dry hop) Safale US-05 The beginning is a little confusing to me since I am doing the full boil. Directions say to steep the grains in 2.5 gallons(partial boil instructions). I have read to steep the grains in 1 gallon of water per lb of grain. So if this is the case I would probably steep them in a gallon of water and then combine this with the rest of my water and bring to a boil. At this point the instructions say to add all of the malt and boil for 60 min. Doing the hop additions as listed above. It will sit in the primary (bucket) for 1-2 weeks and then move to a secondary (carboy) for 2-4 weeks with the dry hopping. I will probably try to be patient and let it ferment 2 weeks in the prime and 4 weeks in the secondary. So here are my main questions. Steeping-How much water should I use to steep the 1lb of grains? Water-How much total water should I start with for 5 gallons. I would prefer not to have to add any on top at the end. Malt- Should I add it all at the beginning? I have read some people add portions at different times during the full boil. Hops- I read that in a full boil you might want to put less hops in during the bittering stage. Which I asume with this reciept is the 1 oz for 60 min. True? Yeast- the directions say just to put the yeast in the fermenter straight from the packagage. Should I rehydrate it first like in how to brew? If so when is the ideal time to do this? If you have the time to answer some of these questions or any suggestions I would really appreciate it.
Let the yeast tell you when it's done, not the instructions, and not some random amount of time you have selected before brewing. i.e it's done when the gravity hasn't moved between two measurements taken 2-3 days apart, and it's in the neighborhood of your expected FG. At that point, you could either move to secondary to dry hop, or just dry hop in the primary. The water to grain ratio isn't critical when steeping, but a gallon would be fine. Two quarts might be even better. Until you know your system's boiloff rate, 6.5 gallons for a 5 gallon batch is a decent starting point. Depends on what you're trying to achieve color and flavor-wise. For a first batch, I'd just add it all at the beginning to keep it simple. It's not going to make a whole lot of difference. But something to think about for future batches. Right now, I'd concentrate on the basics. Rehydrating will result in more viable yeast. Whether or not this will make a noticeable difference in flavor (given the already large number of cells in a dry yeast packet) has been hotly debated. If you do rehydrate, do it close to when you expect to pitch, but early enough that it will cool down to pitching temp before you pitch.
For steeping grains your water to grain ratio doesn't matter so steep in the full 5+ gallons. You have to account for boil off (which varies slightly from system to system and how intense your boil is...) but starting with 5.5 gallons is a good place to start, you can always top up with a little fresh water if you need to. The main reason not to add all the malt at the beginning is because it will darken over the course of the boil so if you start out with the wort at about the right color after 60 min of boiling it will be a few shades darker than that. Theoretically these darkening chemical reactions should affect the flavor but you would be hard pressed to be able to tell the difference. With a full boil you will get better "utilization" (how much of the actual bittering is extracted from the hops) but for an IPA 1 oz of a relatively high alpha acid hop should be fine. Some like to be more aggressive with their hopping but I think 1oz of Chinook is a good place to start. The late additions in the recipe do seem a bit light so you wouldn't get in trouble adding another ounce or two of hops in the 15-0 minute range. The recipe as it stands is on the lighter side of hopping. I have added US-05 directly without rehydrating and it did just fine, I have heard that yeast manufacturers compensate for the fact that a certain amount of the yeast will not survive their frozen cryovac journey from the lab to your beer, and therefore pitching the package directly into the wort is expected. With that said, I know a lot of people that swear by the benefits of rehydrating, so if you choose to go that route, follow Palmer's advice and you will do fine. Palmer suggests about 30 minutes to make sure the yeast are still alive, but he is talking about packages that have been taped to the outside of boxes and stored at room temp for God knows how long. Your packet is likely quite fresh and has been refigerated for most of it's existence so it should be fine. If you are doing a full wort boil it takes a while for 5 gallons of water to cool to a pitchable temperature. How are you planning on cooling the wort? The cheapest/easiest solution is sink/bathtub with ice water. With this technique it will definitely take a while and you will drive off some of the more delicate hop aromatics. Also, a secondary fermentation is not totally needed. Most people on this site would agree that 2-3 weeks in primary (check the gravity to make sure it hasn't changed for a couple of days then give it an extra day or two for the yeast to finish "cleaning up") and then 1-2 weeks dry hopping are normal. You can dry hop directly in the primary fermentor however yeast can strip some hop compounds so some prefer to transfer the beer off the trub (sludge at the bottom of your fermentor) before dryhopping. Also, I am by no means an expert, so if somebody else says something that makes more sense, listen to them.
Yeah, listen to this guy, not me, I forgot to factor in that every time you transfer the beer (secondary, bottling) you are going to lose some volume.
There was a LONG thread on here not too long ago that covered the water to grain ratio for a steep...I'm not sure it's critical, but less water seems to be better for ph considerations...I do all-grain so take that with a grain of NA. I am impressed with the OP's knowledge base before brewing his first beer! CHEERS
Thanks for all of the good responses and information. I did forget to list the O.G it is 1.050 I'm using an immersion chiller for cooling. Now I am a little worried about the amount of hops. If I get some extra chinook hops from a different source will that make much of a difference in flavor? Or would anyone suggest adding a different type of hop at the end of boil? Or just stick to the recipe because I'm a noob and will mess it up.
i dunno man... my first recipe I followed the recipe, but then I decided to just toss in two ounces of dry hops with a week left to go, and it turned out great. I am beginning to think that plenty of hops seems to result in batches that I most enjoy, perhaps there's a trend to be considered there... go for it
I am not one to beat the drum of "more hops" but the above recipe is honestly a bit light on hops for an IPA. My most recent IPA was 1oz 60 min 1oz 15 min 1oz 5 min 1oz 1 min 2oz Dryhop, 11 days I used all Citra hops which are comparable to Chinook and I did not find the hop presence to either be too strong nor too week, but it is all a matter of personal preference. If you like more assertive IPAs (stone...) then I would bump up the hops a bit. If you like more "balanced" IPAs (Bell's 2-hearted...) then keep it as it is. Using another source of Chinook hops, there might be some small variance but I don't think it would be detectable in the final product. As for picking up a different variety of hop, you could do that to balance out the flavor a bit, most commercial IPAs use more than one variety of hop, however I like the idea of using a single hop to learn what kinds of charcteristics it gives. Once you know what an individual hops adds to the party then you can use that knowledge to use multiple varieties in the future. For example, if you use more than one hop from the get go, you don't know if the grapefruit flavor you really like is coming from the chinook or the cascade hops.
“There was a LONG thread on here not too long ago that covered the water to grain ratio for a steep...I'm not sure it's critical, but less water seems to be better for ph considerations...” Yeah, I was one of the ‘participants’ in that thread. Al Korzonas (Homebrewing Vol.1) states that you should steep in a ratio of 1 lb. of crystal malt per gallon of water to maintain a proper pH; too high of a pH will extract tannins from the grains. “If you put one pound of crystal malt into 6 gallons of water the pH can be well over 7 and this is far too high for stepping grains. This high a pH will extract lots of polyphenols (a.k.a. tannins) from the grain and result in an astringent beer.” Cheers!
I think that's pretty good advice in general, though the ideal ratio (to minimize tannins) would also depend on the specific grain(s) being steeped and the residual alkalinity contribution of the brewer's water. Luckily, for the small amounts of grains usually steeped (in comparison to batch size), and the temperatures involved, not a lot of tannins are going to be extracted in any event.
This is going in a little bit of a tangent but on my first brew, we accidentally left the steeping grains in the pot for the entire boil, which according to most people would have extracted way too much tannins. But the tannin level was undetectable, even to several advanced palates. So in this case, I would agree with VikeMan that
