Just got my first kit Saturday and also ordered a Brain Eater extract kit (Zombie Dust clone). I have two questions. 1. The kit I bought comes with a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a spigot and a 5 gal. glass carboy. The brain eater kit says I will need to do a secondary fermentation (it says you can skip but I might as well go hard in the paint) So, do I do my first fermentation in the plastic bucket or the glass carboy? Then secondary in the remaining container? 2. This has a dry hopped citra after transferring to secondary. Does the hops just dissolve after the 1-2 weeks? Sorry if these are dumbass questions, I have watched a bunch of videos and everyone has different kits and buckets and carboys, which is messing me up. I am waiting for my books to arrive to get into some reading. But I want my first brew day to be this weekend. Thanks ahead of time.
1. The bucket with the spigot is for bottling...so unless you get another vessel, your only option is to just use a primary for the entirety of fermentation...which is honestly what I would recommend anyway. No need to transfer and introduce additional risks. You can just add your dry hop to the carboy. 2. The hops will not dissolve, they will eventually sink to the bottom and collect with the trub...avoid sucking this up through your siphon when transferring to bottling bucket. Hope this helps.
Perfect, so after the (I believe) 5-7 days of primary fermentation I should just add the last of the citra to that and close the carboy back up and wait the rest of the 2-3 weeks? Sounds right to me. Then after that transfer to bottling bucket and add priming sugar and bottle? And you don't want your siphon right at the bottom when transferring to avoid all that schlop at the bottom anyways so that makes sense with the hops. Thanks man.
Like kbuzz said, you'd need another vessel to do secondary fermentation and also... I'd recommend against doing a secondary fermentation. It's really not needed in most situations, especially if it's your first brew. Add the hops directly to primary (try to add them carefully and not creating too much splashing and such when throwing them in). When you siphon from primary to your bottling bucket, try to keep the end of the siphon just a bit off the trub that has collected at the bottom.
If you ferment a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon carboy, you are going to lose a lot of wort/beer due to blowoff (overflow). You need the headspace that is in the bucket (it's probably really 6.5 gallons, not 5). If you want to ferment in a carboy, you'll need at least a 6 gallon carboy. 6.5 is even better.
Citra is an intense hop, I'd probably only keep the beer on your dry hop addition for 10 days MAX. Not 2-3 weeks. Take your readings and when fermentation has stopped, add your dry hop addition and then get it bottled after another 5-10 days or so...
I agree with what VikeMan says that you stand a chance of your fermentation krausen bubbling up and out of the 5 gallon carboy since there is minimal head space if you have a 5-gallon batch, so the ideal way is to get a 6-6.5 gallon carboy or a separate fermentation bucket so that this bubbling mess will be contained. However, if you don't want to or can't do that right now, here's option #2. Your brewing instructions probably tell you to brew 3-4 gallons and then top off with water after the boil to reach 5 gallons. You can wait to add this top-off water until after fermentation and dry-hopping and you are ready to bottle. If you do this, you will need to mix that water thoroughly into your beer without generating any splashing from the addition and gentle stirring. You can also boil your priming sugar into this water so it gets mixed well too, which is very important. This is not the preferred way for adding the top-off water because your dry hopping will have less liquid for dissipation of the hop volatiles, but you'll still have a pretty damn good beer.
@skinny_mcginley Hey man, whenever you make that clone shoot me a message I would love to try it, maybe a bottle exchange or something. Good luck! I plan on buying mine from chicago brew werks soon. Been looking forward to making homebrew for a while.
Absolutely. My brew day is scheduled for this weekend, so I'll hit you up once it is done. CAN'T WAIT!
