After sourcing almost everything for the last year roughly, we finally did our first brew on Dec. 15th. We brewed @stikks Vanilla Cream Ale to start off.
We only had one major issue, our false bottom wasn't sitting level, therefore letting grains get past and clog our pump took about 30~40 mins to get no grains through it.
We ended up getting 1.052/1.053 OG, FG 1.008 for the past 3~ days. We forgot to add Honey at flame out, also used dry yeast as we didn't make a yeast starter ahead of time. We had the equipment but didn't think we'd be brewing as early as we did.
During fermentation, we gradually increased the temperature from 62f to 72f.
Our counterflow wort chiller, didn't work as well as we'd thought, especially up here in Canada when our ground water is cold. probably hooked it up wrong? Not sure on that one, may do some testing with just some hot water and see if we can get it to chill properly..
We also didn't have an oxygen tank/regulator to aerate the wort, luckily fermentation still took off. We also still need to get Co2, hopefully somewhere will be open near us to get it filled so we can dump and cold crash.
We only had one major issue, our false bottom wasn't sitting level, therefore letting grains get past and clog our pump took about 30~40 mins to get no grains through it.
We ended up getting 1.052/1.053 OG, FG 1.008 for the past 3~ days. We forgot to add Honey at flame out, also used dry yeast as we didn't make a yeast starter ahead of time. We had the equipment but didn't think we'd be brewing as early as we did.
During fermentation, we gradually increased the temperature from 62f to 72f.
Our counterflow wort chiller, didn't work as well as we'd thought, especially up here in Canada when our ground water is cold. probably hooked it up wrong? Not sure on that one, may do some testing with just some hot water and see if we can get it to chill properly..
We also didn't have an oxygen tank/regulator to aerate the wort, luckily fermentation still took off. We also still need to get Co2, hopefully somewhere will be open near us to get it filled so we can dump and cold crash.