Home Brewing
Out of context: Reply #39
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- dMullins0
Here are some notes I sent a friend recently:
A good place to start with equipment, beer kits, books, etc is www.NorthernBrewer.com. They have plenty of starter kits which have a lot of the equipment below and can get you brewing right out of the gate and then you can add to your gear.
Here's what you really need to get started. I'll start with everything needed to brew an extract batch of beer (as opposed to "all grain"). We can talk all grain some other time, because there are MANY options for AG brewing.
A boil pot. I have a fifteen gallon pot with a drain valve I attached near the bottom. It has a screen on the inside to prevent the hop leaves from pouring into the fermentation bucket. This way I can produce approx 12 gallons of wort to ferment into 2-6.5 gallon buckets with lids. The lids have a small hole in the top with a gasket that you put an airlock in. Since my boil pot sits on a burner that is raised off the ground, I pour the beer from the valve into the buckets without any hoses, which also oxygenates the wort. You will need a mash paddle to stir the wort. You will need a chiller to cool the wort rapidly prior to transferring it into the primary fermentation buckets. My recommendation on the chiller is to get something that is a little more diesel that you need so you won't have to upgrade for a while. We use a copper coil pre-chiller in between the hose and a copper coil immersion chiller that goes into the boil pot. You'll need the clear hoses that connect the chillers together and to the hose and outflowing from the immersion chiller into the yard. You'll need athermometer. Other thiings you need for the boil: a scale to weigh ingredients; grain bags to steeping grain in hot water (160 degrees) prior to the boil. You may also want to use hop bags--i just pour leaf hops into the boil.
Side Note: You can get away without using a chiller at first if you're brewing inside on the stove with a smaller pot. Fill the sink up with ice water and immerse the brew pot into it. Stir the wort taking temperature readings as it cools. If you intend to brew on the stovetop with a smaller pot, you can add water to the concentration in the bucket and don't need as big of a pot either. I haven't done this so I'm not as familiar with it, but it's fairly straight forward.
Prior to pitching the yeast into the buckets you'll want to take an initial gravity reading. There are several ways to do this. I use a barrel thief and pour some of the wort into a a cylinder and test using a hydrometer. Then I taste it, which is the first indication of how this may end up, but you can also see how the taste changes throughout the process.
After primary fermentation, I transfer from the buckets to smaller 5 gallon better bottles. They're smaller because you lose some volume during the first transfer and you need more head-room in the buckets for bubbling during primary fermentation. (Also, look up blow-off tubes for use during primary fermentation.) The buckets will need rubber stoppers for the airlocks. If you're looking to brew additional batches while you have batches fermenting, buy an airlock for every bucket or bottle you have--they're cheap.
To transfer beer from Primary to Secondary fermentation, you'll need some mechanism to get the beer from the bucket into the bottle. I use an auto siphon.
Note, my chilling method is not the only way to do it. There are also counterflow chillers and plate chillers. I can discuss the pro's and con's of these as well as our method if you want. Just let me know.
The next step is getting it from the secondary fermenter into a keg or a bottle to condition/carb it. You'll use the autosiphon for that.
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Some question and answers back and forth below:
• "Are grain bags re-usable? Should I buy bunches of those?"
The grain bags aren't really re-usable. Some hop bags are nylon and you could reuse those; I don't always use a hop bag, but I haven't tried the nylon ones.
• "When it comes to cleaning the equipment, what's the best practice? Should I break everything down and clean/soak them the night before, and then wash with fresh water before I begin? Do I need to break down all of the pieces, such as the bulkheads and the thermometers, and physically remove them from the kettles? Trying to make sure I don't cut any corners that would affect the final product."
I don't have thermometers attached to my kettles, but I do have the bulkheads. I don't remove them when cleaning. I usually clean everything either right before I start or right after I finish. I always sanitize right before I start with a no-rinse sanitizer. I use the PBW to clean and soak dirty equipment like kegs, etc, but only for about 20 minutes.
• "I'm confused about raw water weight vs. burn off. If I have a 15-gal. kettle, so I imagine I could run two batches at once in that kettle and ferment the batch in two of the 6-gal. carboys (link below that you suggested). How do I make sure I have the right measurements? Do I just fill up one of the carboys twice and dump it into kettle and begin to brew, or do I need excess/less water to begin. Wasn't sure how adding ingredients affected the water weight also, if at all. If I fill the carboys to transfer water to the kettle do I then need to clean the carboy again before I transfer the wort to second fermentation in the same carboy? Should I have extra carboys just for transferring?
There's definitely evaporation going on. You can get about two 6-gallon carboys by filling the 15-gallon kettle to about 14.5 gallons. Some kits will tell you how much water to start with. You can use a program like beersmith to calculate as well. I wouldn't worry as much about the other ingredients. Regarding transferring, I go from boil kettle to a 6.5-gallon bucket (for primary) to a 5 gallon carboy (for seconday).
• "Riffing off of the question above, I'm curious about how recipe kits are portioned, and what I should try first. I would like to start with one of my personal favorites, something like this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/sh… or really any type of IPA or Pale ALe, but then I noted the links on that page about 2-stage fermentation (which you recommended and I believe I have the proper equipment for), and the yeast starter (which really threw me off because their explanation was kind of vague). I also don't really see mention of how much volume each of the kits yields, which really made me throw my hands up and write this email. Yah, if you have any suggestions for a starter recipe or two, that would be great. Probably going to buy a couple just to practice with, and hopefully come out with a decent batch in the first few tries.
Usually kits are portioned to yield about 5 gallons and will tell you how much water to start with for the boil. You'll lose volume some during the boil and a little more during primary fermentation. That's why the primary fermentation vessel is bigger than the secondary; the difference in size is reduce head-room in the container so there is less air. Lot's of higher gravity beers recommend a yeast starter. I haven't tried this yet because it's a fairly involved process that includes cultivating yeast from basically a smaller batch of beer in order to increase yeast growth/activity before pitching into the primary. I've just bought two packets of yeast (I like the liquid wyeast but don't recommend mail ordering this during the summer) and pitched twice as much. The trade off here seems to be time vs. expense.
As far as a kit to try first, pick anything you're stoked to brew. Make sure you have everything before you start. Plan what you're going to do and follow the plan and any instructions. I do recommend starting with an extract kit.• "Carboys. Based on some of your notes before, I am not positive I have everything I need for these. I bought the three-piece airlock and the bubble airlock, as well as the bottle stopper. I think I bought an extra airlock, huh? Which is better to use, or there a difference? Is that everything I need for each of the carboys to have?"
Sounds right to me. I usually use the 3-piece airlocks on the buckets and the bubble airlocks on the carboys. You can use either one; it's more preference through experience. If you're doing primary fermentation in the carboys you may find one works better. You may need to rig a blow-off tube when primary fermenting higher-abv beers. The reason being these types of beers like to push out a bunch of foam through the airlock during the 2nd and 3rd day. This consists of hooking a tube up to the first part of the three-part airlock (the piece that fits into the stopper) and running the other end of the tube into a bucket where the end is submerged in sanitized solution. You are creating a large airlock and giving the foam a place to go without making a mess.
• "Regarding key line cleaner: http://www.northernbrewer.com/br…
cleaner http://www.northernbrewer.com/de… (is this used for cleaning everything but the keg lines? kettle, mash paddles, carboys, chiller, etc?)"Yep, anything funky but the keg lines. It's kind of like oxyclean (which i have also used when i run out of PBW). I soak the kegs, buckets, etc for a little bit and it loosens anything up. Rinse well.
" Regarding sanitizers: no-rinse sanitizer http://www.northernbrewer.com/br… (what is the difference between this and the cleaner above??)
This is actually a sanitizer, not a cleanser. It won't get crud off your bucket lids or remove residue from anything, but you want to rinse everything that touches your beer after leaving the boil kettle with this. Think of it as purell for your gear. It kills bacteria that could really affect your yeast and beer taste/quality. Use it after PBW. For example, I will wash my buckets and carboys after fermenting. Then, next time I will sanitize before use.