Drunkenpolack Brewing

First off, before I start I just want to give a big thanks to Bill, Brad, and Aaron for all their advice.  Without you guys my first time would a total mess instead of the little one that occurred =) 

I woke up at 6am, I couldn’t sleep.  I don’t know if it was because I was excited to start or just plain scared.  I smacked the yeast pack around 7:30am and chilled out for 30 minutes knowing that soon I would be stepping into the world of Home Brewing, what a scary world it is =)

At 8:00 I start sanitizing all of my stuff, I know how important this is so I tried my best to clean everything I could.  That took about 45 minutes until I was fully happy with everything.  I went over everything, then I got to trying to fit my wort chiller to my sink.  First bad move of the day!  I should of tested it earlier.  Even with kitchen faucet adapter I ordered with the chiller, it didn’t fit.  Of course I have to have some space age faucet.  So I took the trip out to Home Depot and bought a 50ft hose.  They had nothing smaller.  I got back home and started.

I threw my 1 1/2 gallon of water into the Brew Kettle and got the temp up to 155 degrees while heating up another batch 1/2 gallon of water.  After I got the temp up to 155 degrees I steeped the grains.  After 10 minutes I opened up the lid to see my first Home Brewing experience, the grains seemed to be steeping just fine.  I checked the temp and it was sitting at 165, even though I turned the heat off it was still going up a tad.  I put the lid back on and checked twice more.  Everything looked good 20 minutes later.  I took out the grain back, put it in a strainer, let it all strain out and poured my 1/2 gallon of 175 degree water over the grains, let it drain someone and I was ready to go. 

I brought the water to a rolling boil, turned off the heat, and added my first ingredients, some of the Malt Extract, the hops (pungent bastard it was).  While putting these in I gave it a nice mix with my spoon and turned it back on the burner.  Now I have a question for all.  This might of been answered before but please bare with me.  When you get the first boil and turn off the heat and add the first ingredients does that start the clock?  Or does it when start when you start the boil up after you add the ingredients?

At 30 minutes I added the 8oz Malto Dextrin for the mouthfeel and at 15 minutes I added in the remaining Malt Extract, more hops, a whirlfloc tablet ( I don’t think this is needed in my pot, it’s so damn big) and the wort chiller. 

With 1 minute to spare I added in the remaining hops.  Oh boy crunch time! I took the kettle off the burner and put it next to the sink, I ran the hose from outside and hooked it up to the wort chiller and the water started to run.  Now this is where things didn’t go so well.  First off, I think I ran the water to quick.  The connection from the chiller to the clear hose came off and shot water all over my kitchen.  It happen so damn fast I didn’t know what hit me but it was pretty damn funny.  After fumbling around we got it hooked back up.  But the chiller wasn’t doing it’s thing.  No hot water was coming out from the other end, the temp wasn’t going down.  I believe the issue is, the kettle is so big, that the chiller barely touched the wort on the bottom.  I quickly got a tupperware container, put the kettle in the container and threw as much ice as I had into the container.  Within 15 minutes from stove to container the wort was cooled down to below 100 degrees.

Now for the worst part, I gave the wort a good mix, like Bill and Brad said get it into a whirlpool type movement, I did that and waited a bit, time to get into the carboy!  As I began transferring the wort, I noticed a ton and I mean a ton of sludge.  It kept on clogging my strainer within the funnel.  I had to scoop out alot of it with the spoon.  It was sticky as hell.  So something had to go wrong here.  Once down I topped the carboy off to 5.5 gallons using about 4 gallons of cold water.  Somewhere along the way, something went wrong.  Now I could think of the following things.

- My brew kettle was to big and my biggest burner on my stove was to small.  I tried my best to use fit as much of the kettle on the burner
- The calibration of my digital thermometer was off.  I followed the instructions but you never know.
- I didn’t get the wort chilled quick enough even though I think I did.
- I didn’t whirlpool enough or mix enough when I added in the ingredients.

It could of been a lot of things. But I guess this is the beginners curse.  Who knows.  Once it was at 5.5 gallons I aerated the wort using the contraption Bill showed me how to make, the aquarium air pump with stones.  That really worked nicely and created a good amount of head.  I then pitched the yeast and put on the airlock and the creation is now sitting in my closet in a bucket filled with water and ice packs.  The airlock is bubbling so at least that is a good sign.  How is this beer going to taste?  My guess?  Shitty and horrible.  But hey we’ll see.  One thing I know is, I had such a blast doing it.  I learned a lot, I learned the process and now I’m not that scared. I took a lot of pictures (well Emilie did) and I’ll put them up tomorrow.  I’ve decided my next batch is going to be an IPA and I already have the bug to do it again.

 - 5 hours before scheduled pitching of the yeast, take the yeast out of the fridge and smack it to activate it.  Package should blow up like a balloon within the 5 hours before the pitch

 - Clean out the primary fermentor

 - Fill primary carboy with 5-6 gallons of water with lopophor solution.  Submerge the following making sure of at least 5 minutes of contact (using sanitized bucket)
 Air lock
 Hydrometer and thief
 Siphon and tubing
 Stiring spoon
 Aeration tubing and stone

 - Mix up 1/2 gallon of one step and rinse items with it.

 - On freshly laundered towels, layout everything you just rinsed.

 - Collect and heat 1.5 gallons of water in the brew kettle

 - Crush specialty grains with a rolling pin trying not to pulverizing the grain.  All we want to do is crack the grain.

 - Steep the grains.  Turn on the heat and bring up to 155 deg F.  Shut off the heat.  Put the lid on and let them sit for 30 minutes.  Check the temp of the water every 10 minutes to make sure it does not go below 150 deg.  If it does, fire up and burner and add a little heat.  When the 30 minutes is over, get a strainer or collander and hold it over the kettle and lift the grain bag out and place it in the strainer.  Let it drain by itself.  While waiting during the 30 minutes, heat another 1/2 gallon of water up to 170 degrees.  When the grain stops dripping, pour the 1/2 gallon of 170 degree water slowly over the grain bag.  Now I can discard the grains. 

 - Bring water to boil.  Shut off the burner.  Add the following at 60 minutes.  Stir like mad until it all desolves. 

 Add the following at 60 minutes
  – 3.15 lbs Dark Malt Syrup (Add water to Jug to get out all of the DME)
  – 2 oz. Willamette
 Add the following at 30 minutes
  – 8oz of Malto Dextrin
 Add the following at 15 minutes 
  – 1 oz. Cascade
  – 6 lbs Dark Malt Syrup (Add water to Jug to get out all of the DME)
  – 1 Whirlfloc Tablet
  – Drop in Wort Chiller
 Add the following with 1 minute left
  – 1 oz. Cascade
 
 - When the boiling time is up, hook up the Wort Chiller to the kitchen sink.  While circulating cold water through the chiller, swirl the wort chiller around inside the Kettle.  Check the temp after 10 minutes and then after 15 minutes.  We’re trying to get the pitch temp below 100 degrees.

 - Once below 100 degrees, put the wort into the primary, then add water to bring to 5.5 gallons. 

 - After mixing the cold water into the wort and taking a temp reading (should ideally be 70 degrees) shake the carboy around.  Then take gravity reading.

 - Using the aquarium air pump aerate the wort for 5 minutes.

 - Sanitize the yeast packet and scissors, cut the corner of the package and pitch the yeast.

 - Add 1 tablespoon of cheap ass vodka to the airlock.

I’ve made a quick and dirty checklist for brewing day. For you experienced home brewers out there please feel free to hack this up and add (or take way) whatever you want. I have also put in some questions.  You’ll also notice I’m missing times on when to add hop pellets and such.  That will be added on the next version of the checklist.

Before brewing day (Friday)
- Activate liquid yeast before I go to work, which is around 7am. Northern Brewers instructions claim that it’s best to
activate the yeast at least 24 hours before brewing time. Why this is exactly? I will learn over time.

On brewing day (Saturday)
- Collect and heat 1.5 gallons of drinking water in the brew kettle
Question: Is bottled drinking water ok right out of the bottle or is something else need to be done?

- Crush specialty grains with a rolling pin. Crush in a large freezer ziplock bag
Question: How will I know when I’ve crushed the grains enough?

- Steep the grains, Pour the crushed grains into the supplied mesh bag, and tie a knot to close. Add the bag full of grain to the water in the kettle and steep like a tea bag as the water continues to heat. Remove the bag and discard after 15 minutes or before the water reaches 170F.

- Bring water to a boil and add fermentables. Once boiling, turn off the heat and remove the kettle from the burner. Add ingredients and stir to dissolve.

- Boil the wort for 60 minutes and add boil additions as stated
Question: Do I constantly have to be stirring the wort or do I just leave it alone? When I add additions do I just drop them in or do I stir them in?

- Cool the wort as quickly as possible. In my case I bought a wort chiller.
Question: Even though I’m using a wort chiller should I still fill the sink up ice to make the tempeture drop even quicker?

- While wort is chilling, sanitize the fermenting equipment

- Fill the primary fermenter with 3 gallons of cold water. Follow that up with the cooled wort. Add as much water in the end as you have to, to get to 5 gallons.

- Take a hydrometer reading. Also on this step the instructions I have tell me to ensure that the wort is completely stirred and blended homogeneously
Question: How I do that?

- Aerate the wort. Gently swirl the fermenter to slosh the wort around. Make sure the fermenter never leaves the ground
Question: Is there a better and effective way to do this?

- Pitch the yeast

- Seal the fermenter. Add 1 tablespoon of water to the sanitized airlock.

Please don’t mind the mess while I try to figure out what layout I want for this site. I figured since I was going to brew this weekend that I wanted to get at least something up but this layout now is fighting me.