Hi Dave,

Regarding transfering your wort from the BK to your fermentor. Since it will be chilled to at least under 100 deg., you won’t have to buy special food grade, heat resistant tubing. As sickpuppy suggested, get a hose barb and attach it to your valve. Now, here’s a bit of a tip. If you just open the valve and let ‘er rip. you’re going to transfer a lot of Trub (hot break and cold break and grain sediment as well as disintegrated hop pellets) into your fermentor. You don’t want to do that. Remember I told you to swirl your chiller in the BK to speed cooling. When its cooled, use your long spoon to “whirlpool” the wort in your BK. Get it going around as fast as you can. When you’ve accomplished that, pull your spoon out, and put the lid on, and let it sit for about 20 min. This “whirlpooling” will concentrate all (or most) of the Trub in the center of the BK, and away from the valve opening. Now you need to transfer to your carboy. Put a large funnel into the carboy opening. Put a grain bag in the bottom of the funnel. You will use this as a strainer. Now aim your transfer hose to the center of the funnel, and just open the ball valve. If you get things going too fast, you’ll disturb the trub in the center of the BK. Now, some guys don’t whirlpool. They just put a funnel in their carboy, line it with a grain bag, and then lift and dump the contents of their BK into the funnel. This is faster, but maybe not as cool … and besides, you’re likely to spill some of that sweet wort on the floor, and that stuff will leave a sticky mess unless you get it cleaned up quickly.

Once you’ve got strained wort transfered to your carboy, top it off to 5.5 gal with cool water, take your temp. measurement, then take your gravity measurement (with sanitized instruments), and then you’re ready to pitch.

Don’t know when you’ll be starting your brew day, but I’ll leave my cell phone on, and if you feel the need, give me a buzz .. you have my number.

Cheers!

Yes … just make sure that its ’secured’ some how, as it will want to flop around and shoot scalding hot water every where! There are some guys that recirculate their chiller water, using a pump, and a couple containers. They use ice in the 1st container (with water of course) and an immersion pump to pump the super chilled water thru the wort chiller. Usually they start with just plain tap water, then shift to the chilled water once they his a certain temperature, so that they can drive it down real fast. You’ll find that it will drop from 200 deg. to 120 in a few minutes, but from there it takes longer. Again, depends on how cold your cold water from the faucet is. Mine is 54 deg., which is adequate. I did seriously consider building myself an ice recirculator. Its more “green”, because you don’t waste so much water. I think you have enough to be thinking about right now, so don’t sweat the “green” aspects until you progress a bit .. I know Al Gore will probably curse me for that, but that lard ass uses more energy in his mansion in a day than I use in my home in 2 years .. but, let’s not go there. Anyway, Yeah, just let the hot water go down the drain, unless you want to run it off into a few 5 gallon buckets and then use it to wash your car or the kitchen floor, or something … jusk kidding!

One other thought…I think the second batch of water poured over your already steeped grains isn’t really doing much for you. In my opinion, more trouble and time than it’s worth. Steeping isn’t the same as mashing…two different chemical processes happening there. Steeping is basically just making a batch of tea. The specialty grains are just adding a marginal amount of color and flavor to the end product, but the extract is what’s really doing the work for you (in the color, flavor and fermentable departments). That’s a different story when you’re doing all-grain. Mashing/lautering is the process of extracting fermentables from the grains using hot water to creat your wort.

I think once you get through a few extract batches, you’ll probably want to step up to all-grain, as you immediately notice a night and day difference between the taste of the end product. The extracts I’ve used have always given the beer a slightly caramelized flavor that you don’t get in all-grain (thanks to the manufacturing process of making extract syrup).

According to John Palmer:

“You should not aerate when the wort is hot, or even warm. Aeration of hot wort will cause the oxygen to chemically bind to various wort compounds. Over time, these compounds will break down, freeing atomic oxygen back into the beer where it can oxidize the alcohols and hop compounds producing off-flavors and aromas like wet cardboard or sherry-like flavors. The generally accepted temperature cutoff for preventing hot wort oxidation is 80°F.”

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-9-3.html

And regarding steeping grains…looking at Dave’s list of 1.5 pounds of specialty grains, these malts are only intended to add flavor and color, nearly nothing from a fermentable standpoint. They are kilned, and therefore incapable of providing the right enzymatic reaction to produce fermentable sugar. Base malts, like 2- and 6-row pale, are typically the standard workhorse for most beers, and provide nearly all the fermentable sugars necessary for a proper OG in an all-grain batch. This is why you never see base malts included in extract recipe kits…there’s no use for them. In other words, you can pour a second pot of water over the already dead specialty grains for marginal levels of flavor or color, but you’re not getting any sugar out of it.

Woah I leave for one night and I have all of this =) Thanks for all the information guys. It’s very important to me to hear from you about your brewing adventures because when it comes to a lot of it I’m in the dark.

This might be a very dumb question but here goes, when I activate the yeast, do I put it back into the fridge or leave it out?

Also, when you activate the yeast , leave it out. If you place it back in the fridge you will put the yeast cells to sleep and it won’t do any good.

Ok so for one of the more important steps in the process

- 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

I have lopophor, say i was going to fill a 5 gallon bucker with water, how much lopophor do I put in the 5 gallon bucket. Same with the fermentor. Say I fill it all the way up, how much lopophor do I use?

I don’t have one step but I have something like it that I got with my kit. Hell maybe it is One step but it’s white powder in a bag. How much do I put in a 1/2 gallon of water? and how would you use it? Just dip the items in?

Thanks bud, I just want to sure sure I get everything. Any idea about the Lopophor?

Hi Dave,

The correct amount of Iodophor is 1 fluid oz. in 5 gallons of water. If you are going to fill (i.e., more than 5 gallons, you might add 1/4 oz. more).

For One Step, the amount is 1 TBS (tablespoon) per 1 gallon of water. So, for your 1/2 gallon, use 1/2 tablespoon. Usually, a measuring spoon set comes with a Tablespoon, 1/2 tablespoon, teaspoon, half teaspoon and 1/4 teaspoon. Should be easy for you to figure out your amount with the 1 TBS per gallon info.

And NO, don’t put your smack pack back into the fridge after you smack it. Keep it at room temp (70 deg) and it should be blown up like a balloon in 5 hours.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Sorry for the 3rd post here Dave but just ran across what Nothern Brewer recommends which makes it easy for you:

BTF Iodophor
Contains no chlorine. A powerful and economical iodine based sanitizer. Requires just 1 minute of contact time to sanitize. Dilute solutions are prepared by mixing one capful with 2 1/2 gallons of cold water.