Hi Everyone, As the title says, i’m a complete beginner to home brewing so looking for some much needed advice and tips to help me on the way. I have a “Kit” on order which is basically a fermentation bucket, pressure barrel and all other accessories required. Also have a Youngs American Pal Ale on order which i’m expecting to arrive in the next few days. I’m really excited and looking forward to starting my first brew so any help is greatly appreciated.
Welcome! We are more than willing to help! Ask away! A few questions out of curiosity: Is your kit extract based or are you diving into all-grain out the gate? Do you have a way/place to try and keep your fermenting beer cool - below 70... Or do you plan to use Kveik yeast and ferment warm?
Apologies, but most of that is chinese to me, however i planned to store it in my garage which is pretty cool but not cold after the fermentation process. The kit is extract based, thought i would ease myself into it first before progressing onto raw ingredients. Hope that helps?
Welcome. We're a bit like the car guys were, attempting to troubleshoot the car from descriptions, but we'll help when we can.
Easing in is good! You may never stray from extract kits and that is fine! - it all makes great beer! As for the garage, keep track of the ambient temperature during the season's you plan to use it. That way you have a good idea what fermentation temps will roughly be...
For what it is worth, I bought and read a book called "How To Brew" by Palmer. It goes into great detail later in the book on every subject you can think of, but starts out walking you through your first brew, using a kit likely similar to yours. Now I've got a little (very little...) experience, the book is a good reference for the odd details that are now becoming "important". (By that, I mean Interesting To Me. None of it is really important to make a decent beer from a kit). The kit will likely have instructions; follow them carefully and you will end up with excellent beer. Or muddle through it all and end up with merely great beer ;-). It is cooking, not chemistry, and if you keep things sanitary it will be just fine.
This book is a must for new home brewers that are interested in making good beer. For about half the price of a 5 gallon extract batch you'll get all the information you'll need to brew great beer for years to come.
Good advice and thanks. The extract kit actually arrived yesterday and yes, it did come with instructions which i must admit, appear very straight forward and easy enough to follow. Now i’m just waiting for the equipment to arrive as i ordered from two different suppliers. After trawling through many websites and reading as much as can, one single trend pops out every time. Cleanliness and steralisation of everything, before, during and after the brewing.
Unfortunately not, i’m fromn the other side of the pond, we kick footballs where i come from, but know of the guy you’re talking about.
You got it. The three most important steps in brewing are, sanitize sanitize and sanitize You can't sanitize something if it isn't clean.
The next most important thing for the new brewer is patience! The yeast will do what they do on their own schedule. The hardest thing to do is to be patient, and leave it be for a solid two weeks after pitching the yeast.
The wait is over, my equipment has arrived so now it’s time to get started. Last night i mixed up a batch of sanitiser/steraliser and put everything in the fermentation bucket to soak overnight. This morning i will rinse everything and get set up for my first brew. Strangely, the fermentation bucket lid didn’t come with a hole to take the airlock and bung so need to sort that out first. One point i need help with is that the intended position i will do the fermentation in is reading 18 degrees, monitored over the last 3 days. My IPA kit indicates a fermentation temp range of 18 - 22 degrees, obviously i’m at the lower end of the range, will this be OK? Will i just get a slower fermentation?
If the ambient temp in the room/place you plan to ferment is 18 degrees then once the yeast start they will generate heat - enough that you will actually end up well over 22 degrees. What is the max recommended temp of your yeast? If you ferment too warm you will create a lot of off flavors. It is USUALLY best to keep your yeast at the low end of their temp range (if you are going for a clean profile from the yeast). You may want to attempt a "swamp cooler" of sorts to keep the temps down within range. - Unless you have another way of controlling temps.
The instructions don’t actually specify a max temperature, they only give a range of 188 - 22 degrees as being ideal.
