Beer Batch #1

Well, last night JP, J & R and I brewed our first batch of beer. It went well, I thought, but certainly some things to keep in mind for next time. We followed the directions from Beercraft, with a couple changes that J & R suggested.

First, the water from the hose down at Headquarters definitely had some particulates in it, and maybe was a little off in color. We got water from the tap instead, but that was a pain because it was a long walk, and the sink doesn't allow you to fill the gallon pitcher. So, we did it by quart, filling the gallon, then walked the gallon to the kettle. Tedious. So, for next time I think making an attachment for the hose that allows a 0.2 micron filter would be great. This would assure particulate and micro-free water. This would also solve the second problem, which was we did not have a way to create sterile water to add to the fermenter to bring it up to 5 gallons.

Second, the directions were not clear, but J & R helped with the temperatures and whatnot. Basically add the grain bag at room temperature, bring it up to the specified temperature (154F in this case) then turn off the burner and let it cool over the time listed.

Speaking of the grain bag, next time we either need to move it a bit, or we have to have a way to keep it off the bottom of the kettle. It burned through, made a hole, and some grain leaked out. We scooped it out with a big scooping spoon that J & R provided, so I don't think it will completely screw up the batch, but it would be nice to not have that happen again.

Next time a spatula or something to get all of the malt extract out of the bucket would be nice too.

Cooling the kettle after we were done with the 60 minutes of boiling was a challenge. The large kettle did not fit down into the keg bucket we had filled with ice. Putting it into the 5 gallon plastic primary fermenter bucket didn't help either. The plastic was a great insulator. We finally gave up since it was 1 in the morning. The solution was to put plastic wrap over the stopper to completely seal it, and we added the yeast in the morning after it had cooled down to room temperature.

So, the 5 gallon fermenter is on the shelf down at Headquarters. In 6 days we'll move it to a 5 gallon glass carboy as the second fermenter. I think the seond batch we'll do the Kolsch to see if we can address some of the issues we had. If that works, the later batches will be 10 gallons. The kettle can handle it, other than plastic buckets, we have all the equipment, and it really is not twice the work to get twice the beer.