What a story! I think you need to change your faucet! :-0
The spacing of the coils on your cooler may need to be adjusted to be closer together, so that more of the chiller is in contact with the wort. When you do a partial boil in a big kettle, it doesn’t leave much contact area for the chiller. Did you mark your BK in 1/2 gallon increments as suggested? Did you have to top off during the 1 hour boil? Speaking of that, you probably should have added your first LME after you added your steeped grain tea to the BK. Then bring to boil; then pitch your bittering hops and start the 1 hour timer.

That thick gooey mess was the hot/cold break at the bottom of your kettle. That’s normal. However, you need to work on your transfer method a bit. Sounds like you left considerable wort in your kettle. How much wort did you get into your carboy before topping off to 5.5 gallons? Did you take a starting gravity with your hydrometer?

Not sure what the NB instructions suggest, but you could leave this in your primary for 2 weeks and then bottle, or leave it in the primary for a week, then rack to a secondary for another week, and then bottle.

As always, email me if you have any specific questions. All in all, it sounds like it went pretty well, given the challenges. I think you should consider doing a full wort boil next time. I can provide you with a recipe .. just buy the stuff and follow directions as you did with the NB kit.

Cheers

Glad you had fun Dave. Sounds like you got through everything pretty well. I’ve soaked myself with the chiller hose several times myself. The sticky mess was likely your trub, as Bill suggests. Also, might want to keep an eye on the carboy in the closet…some higher gravity beers can have very active fermentations that cause krausen to blow out of the air lock. Not sure if there’s anything of value in the closet, but I’ve walked into my laundry room to find stout sprayed all over the ceiling and a puddle on the floor. It’s rare, but it happens.

Also, why the water and ice packs? Are you trying to keep it at a very cool temp? Most ales ferment just fine between 68-72 degrees.

Got it. We don’t have that problem here in Minnesota. I had to turn on the heat the other day.

Yo, Dave,

To your questions first:

Marking your BK is a good way to keep track of how much you have inside, which is always good to know, no matter what type of brewing you’re doing. Some of the really fancy BKs have a site glass on the side of the kettle, with calibrated markings. However, you don’t have to be that fancy. I think I mentioned once how I marked my kettle. You need to have visible markings on the inside and outside. A black magic marker is okay for the *outside*. What I did with my BK was to put in 2 gallons of water using a 1 gal. jug. I then used a *pencil* to mark the water level *inside* the BK. I then added a 1/2 gallon and made another mark. Add another 1/2 gallon and make another mark (now you’re at 3 gallons in the BK). Continue to do this up to 6.5 gallons. Make sure that you use a soft lead pencil to make the marks. They won’t be permanent, but they will be easy to see once you dump all that water out. Okay, now you have dumped your kettle, and you have marks on the inside from 2 gal. to 6.5 gal., in 1/2 gal. increments. Lay your BK on is side so that the pencil marks are all lined up on the bottom (didn’ tell you to try to keep them all in a row, but it helps to do so) I set my BK on a nice soft piece of 2 x 4 wood. I then got a small SS screw and a *small* hammer and made little indentations at each of the marks (the inside of the BK will have indentations, while the outside will have little bumps. They don’t have to be big, just big enough so you can clearly see them. When you’ve got them all in, you can use the magic marker on the outside to label them. You will now have a permanent reference to BK contents. Some guys use one of their mixing spoons and put notches in the spoon handle to do the same thing. They put in the water as I described, and then stick in the spoon handle, and put a mark on it. When done, they make the marks on the spoon handle permanent with a little saw cut or something. I like just being able to look inside and see the level, but to each his own.

Uh … Dave … there should have been a lot more than 1 1/2 gallons in the BK during your 1 hour boil. Generally, it goes like this: Do your steep, and add that water and the rinse water to the BK, which should already have 1.5 to 2 gallons in it. Add your first LME (liquid malt). Add water until you get to 3 to 4 gallons in your BK (your NB instructions probably stated 3 gallons, but you will lose a gallon of water easily to evaporation during the 60 min. boil, so start with 4, and you’ll boil down to 3) For a partial boil as you were doing, you should not let the volume go below 3 gallons. If you do, you’re SG will go way up, and your hop efficiency will go way down. I fear that you had far too little water in your kettle, which is proved by the fact that you said you had to add 3.5 to 4 gallons to get to 5.5. That means you only had 1.5 to 2 gallons left in your BK. If you started with 3 gallons, and boiled off a gallon during the 60 minutes, that would account for it. Keep another pot of hot water on the stove to top off with, or else allow for the boil off by starting with a higher volume. You do have an 8 gallon BK, so take advantage of that space!

The 2 month figure from NB is an optimal figure. I don’t know if they break it down for you. Here are 3 choices to chose from :

1) leave in primary for 2 weeks, checking SG the last 3 days to be sure it is NOT changing .. should be down around 1.015 – 1.020 for that brew, I would think. If you get the same reading 3 days in a row, it is *done* fermenting. You can then rack to your bottling bucket (with your priming solution already in the bottling bucket!) and then bottle. You then put the bottles in a 70 deg room, and let them sit. You could try one after 2 weeks of carbonation in the bottle, but it should improve during the next month of just sitting in the bottle. That’s where the 2 months comes in.

2) Leave in primary 1 week, then rack to secondary fermentor. Some fermentation will continue in the secondary and you will have a chance to leave more trub and most of the yeast cake in your primary, giving you a start on a clearer beer. After 1 or 2 weeks in the secondary, proceed with racking to your bottling bucket (after insuring your fermentation has stopped by getting 3 consecutive same readings).

3) Leave in your primary 2 weeks .. it will be done fermenting by then. Rack to your secondary for another 2 to 4 weeks. The last week you can put your secondary somewhere that’s cool/cold (outside in an unheated garage .. spare fridge .. whatever). This is called cold crashing, and will precipitate out any remaining floaties, giving your a pretty clear (for a stout) beer. Next, rack to your bottling bucket and proceed as mentioned before.

Don’t know if you did a gravity reading before pitching your yeast. You should have, but don’t sweat it if you didn’t. Its usually at that time that I sneak a taste of the wort, which will give me some idea of where its headed. As you do your final gravity readings, trying to get 3 of the same reading, you can sneak a small taste then too. I have a wine theif that I use for my hydrometer. After I get a reading, I fill 1/2 shot glass and put the rest back into the fermentor.

I forgot to mention this in my first post. You said, regarding the Whirl Flock tablet: “I don’t think this is needed in my pot, it’s so damn big.” Size of pot doesn’t matter! You need a fining agent, either Irish Moss, or a Whirl Flock tablet, to help clear your beer. There are other methods of clearing in the secondary by using things like gelatin, but that’s not the path for you at this time. Stick with the Whirlflock tabs. I find them better than Irish Moss, though the basic ingredient is the same in both.

You now just have to have patience … let the yeast do their thing. Even though it sounds like you started with a super concentrated wort, into which you had to add a lot of water, you should still get pretty good results.

As for the full wort boil IPA recipe, let me look to see what I have. I will want to make it as easy as I can, yet be a memorable brew. Heck, you could just up the amount of hops in my recently brewed ESB and come up with a decent IPA. My ESB is approx. 45 IBU. BJCP Guidelines for an American style IPA are 40 to 70 IBUs .. just as an example.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting, get a new faucet upon which you can attach your chiller/adapter! It will make life so much easier. You can also get a valved adapter for your hose, so that you can regulate the water flow right at the wort chiller, instead of having to run back to where ever the hose bib is.

Cheers!

Hah and the faucet, well I think I’ll just keep the one I have. I’m not handy and well I don’t mind running the hose from outside. It’s not due to get really cold in Virginia Beach for a while yet.

that day was so fun..thanks for inviting us over to experience your first brewing creation!

Bill, don’t forget that this is an extract kit so i’m sure that Dave was just following the directions, which is pretty common for a kit. I will say that the more volume you boil the better off your beer will be, however the instructions for the kit are just fine.

Dave,
If you want to tweak your recipes as far as water volume, ingredients, etc. I highly recommend brewing software. There are several to choose from but I prefer beertools at http://www.beertools.com

I also have promash but rarely use it because of the shitty interface (IMO) the beertools interface is second to none!

CHEERS!