I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback and it is much appreciated. I will definitely be implementing some of these techniques in my next batch and hopefully implement all of them eventually.
It seems fermentation temp control was a popular theme with everyone. What kind of refrigeration are people using? I would need to find something that I can put in my apartment and doesn’t take up too much space. Do the mini fridges fit buckets/carboys?
Also, with regards to doing full boils, is it possible to do this on a regular gas stove? I saw someone mentioned getting a separate propane burner, but again i’m not sure I can swing this in the apartment. This leads to the question on what a good size kettle is for a 5 gallon batch? And is there a good kettle to have for full grain brewing?
I thought it was really interesting that with the exception of doing a yeast starter no one really mentioned ingredients at all.
Doing a full boil for a 5 gallon batch on a stove probably isn’t going to work. That’s what prevented me from moving up to all grain until just recently. You need to be able to boil around 7 gallons of wort, give or take and that’s difficult to pull off on a stove. Probably impossible on an electric range and not much easier even if you have gas. I have a 10 gallon brewpot and it works great for 5 gallon batches but I’m boiling on a Bayou burner outside. I don’t think I could get that sucker to a boil easily on my stove.
Just out of curiosity I put 7 gallons of water in the brew pot on my gas stove and cranked up the heat. After over an hour I still didn’t have a boil although it was getting close.
I have to echo hamiltont’s recommendation to take good notes. I have the occasional issue with my beers, and good notes help me to figure out what I could’ve done better.
I use a store bought kegerator for ferment in. Most mini fridges don’t have a large enough level area on the bottom to support the carboy/bucket.
I can do a full boil on my stove by splitting the wort into two pots about 4 gallons on the big burner and 2-1/2 on the next biggest burner. Once I get both pots to boil I can combine and easily maintain a good boil. I believe this is refered to as texas two step.
Just using a single burner I can get NEAR a boil okay but I just can’t get it ACTUALLY to a boil for a very long time.
My progression was:
Extract/grain partial boils on the stove with dry yeast
Cooled wort with ice bath/cold water while stirring
Started using liquid yeast
Moved to partial mash and partial boil with liquid yeast
Moved to all-grain, got a wort chiller, did full boils outside
Started using 6.5 gallon carboys for primary instead of bucket
Stopped doing secondaries so often
Started buying hops in bulk
Started kegging (bottling was about to make me quit brewing, as often anyway…)
I actually digressed and started using more dry yeast because it’s cheaper and there are some decent ones out there (US-05, S-04, etc). I can’t afford $6 for liquid yeast right now as money is tight.
O.K. I looked for this answer on the forum, but I couldn’t find it. So here it goes…This question seems really trivial but I don’t want to waste anything. I recently picked up equipment to brew 10 gallon batches. Is it as simple as doubling everything in a 5 gallon recipe? Including 2 packets of Wyeast Activator? Any insight would be most helpful, Thanks.
Yes, you can simply double everything. That means doubling the amount of yeast too. So if you’re asking “do I pitch two smack packs into my starter instead of one?” the answer is no, you can almost always use one pack and build a larger starter. If you aren’t making starters, 10 gallons of stardard-gravity ale requires about 4 smack packs, a lager would need 8 packs, etc. http://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.htm
I started doing extract, partial boils and pitching dry yeast. Then saving yeast and making starters. After 6 batches of decent beer, each batch got better, i was able to score a mash tun and a kettle for $40 and made the jump to all grain 2 weeks ago. As everyone has said, going AG isnt as complicated and scary as it might seem. The only thing was since we were doing full boils we built a 50’, 3/8" copper immersion chiller for $55. For the OP, I think the best thing to do would be to get fermentation under control. Making starters, pitching enough yeast, and controlling temperature will have the greatest effect on their beer. Reading up on saving/reusing yeast is also a great way to save money.
