Straight into AG?

Hi everyone, Been lurking on this forum for a couple of weeks now and it's been very helpful! :thumb:

I have recently been given a beer kit (Woodforde's Headcracker) and that has been bubbling away nicely in the bucket, bottling this weekend so fingers crossed it's good! Would of had 2 weeks in primary and will give it 2 weeks in the bottle with a little sugar.

I came across some kit on the cheap that should allow me to do a AG brew:

Bucket boiler (25l with headroom) - two kettle elements and a strainer
6gal stainless steel pot - debating to use the boiler bucket or this?
Mash tun (25l with headroom) - bucket with thick foam insulation surrounding, plastic/pipework false bottom
Standard 5gal fermenters
Copper immersion chiller
general kit (siphons, paddle, hydrometer, etc.)

I'm open to other suggestions but i'm currently planning on brewing Townes IPA http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=482
5500g Pale Malt
220g Wheat Malt
73g Cascade (6.8%) 90 mins
27g Cascade (6.8%) 15 mins
With the addition of a whirlfloc (or similar) tablet added at 15min
I'm assuming the recipe was intended as a 5 gallon final volume batch.

My main worry at the moment is what water to use, my tap water is relatively soft (Kent - Medway area) with Ca @ 97.2PPm and CaCO3 @ 243ppm (i cannot find the Mg values unfortunately on southern waters website....). I believe soft water will favor the light hoppy beer but i am still unsure of chlorine treatment, and if it would be easier just to go buy some Tesco Ashbeck for my first brew as it seems to be a popular bottled water choice?

Would appreciate some general advise, am i diving in way too deep for my second brew? should i just give it a go and see how it turns out? and any advise on the water front?

Sorry for the boring and long first post but i have been going round in circles with the reading recently...

Thanks for any advise and input :smile:

Welcome to the forum, looks like you have been busy reading and seem to have a good understanding of AG brewing. I would just go for it, I don't think it's too soon, I did two kits before turning to AG brewing and have learned so much from actually going through the process. You will learn what's best for you as you go along. As for the water, if it tastes ok straight from the tap, then it will be ok for a brew. I use tap water, I live in a very hard water area and it still makes good beer. I am 5 AG brews in to this now, and just starting to look at how to improve my processes and ingredients including water. Get that beer brewed and see what it's like, I bet it turns ok great so long as you follow basic principles and sanitisation. I too have learnt most of what I know from this forum :thumb:

Good luck and let us know how you get on

Jas

Hey, if you can get that kit on the cheap don't pass the opportunity. I recon you'd kick yourself a few brews down the line otherwise. You can always put it to one side and do another kit or two to familiarise with the basics. I've used tap and ashbeck and a mix of the two, all with good results.

TomsBrew said:

My main worry at the moment is what water to use, my tap water is relatively soft (Kent - Medway area) with Ca @ 97.2PPm and CaCO3 @ 243ppm (i cannot find the Mg values unfortunately on southern waters website....). I believe soft water will favor the light hoppy beer but i am still unsure of chlorine treatment, and if it would be easier just to go buy some Tesco Ashbeck for my first brew as it seems to be a popular bottled water choice?

Would appreciate some general advise, am i diving in way too deep for my second brew? should i just give it a go and see how it turns out? and any advise on the water front?

Sorry for the boring and long first post but i have been going round in circles with the reading recently...

Thanks for any advise and input :smile:

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Welcome Tomsbrew - I'm in Medway too, and you will find the high carbonate level in the water isn't conducive to brewing light hoppy beers.
It may be not worth worrying about too much for your first AG brew, as you'll still make good beer, but take a look at the water treatment sticky here (I use CRS to reduce the carbonate):

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=64822

Chlorine is easily removed with half a campden tablet.

Let us know how it goes, and give me a shout if you fancy a local bottle swap!

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Welcome to the forum.
The recipe looks good although I would swap the hop additions round and put the 27g in for the full boil (75g for 90 mins will add a lot of bitterness). Also you can reduce the boil time to 60mins. I used to boil for 90 mins but now go with 60 without any issues and it saves on power usage.
For the water I tend to pre boil the mash liquor for 15 mins and add a campden tablet (I do live in a different area though).

Good luck with the brew

ps. if you want I can send through a simple DIY guide to AG brewing in a kitchen, just pm me your email address if interested.

Like Dan says a bit of CRS in your brewing water should sort out the issues.. handy you have a local so can give some guidance.. I agree with the above go for it, you obviously have an interest in it and for your first AG brew just get the processes down if it worries you..water treatment and what not will be fine tuning. Honestly once you go AG you will not look back.

One thing I would say about your kit however, I never brewed a kit like that (or a woodford one) but it is a light barley wine so it may take a little bit of conditioning to be drinkable.. at 7% it could take a few months to smooth out..

Thanks for all the replies and advice:thumb:!

Waterwise i will purchase some campden tablets and use that for the batch. Dan do you think its worth me adding some CRS (i will not have the kit to test the water prior to this), if so how much do you think is a suitable amount with us being in the same water supply area?
Also i may take you up on that offer if any of my brews turn out acceptable :drunk:! Would be a good way to compare brews.

Dads do you think this will be too bitter? i was aiming for a relatively high IBU (60+) and hoppy beer, USA West coast style as i have not acquired a taste for it and its something a little different. I may use one of the online calculators to predict the IBU based on the boil times. will also boil for 60 mins as it will definitely save some power and time.


Covrich, thanks for the advise on my first brew! i will give it a go two weeks after bottling but will prepare myself to a further month or so of waiting :thumb:

I did a brew with 100g of Goldings hops, which are a similar AA to cascade, and it came out very bitter. I think less bitterness is the way to go for a first attempt then at least it will be drinkable and you can increase the hops in future brews if you need to.
ps. I don't use any brewing software, all seat of the pants brewing :)

TomsBrew said:

Thanks for all the replies and advice:thumb:!

Waterwise i will purchase some campden tablets and use that for the batch. Dan do you think its worth me adding some CRS (i will not have the kit to test the water prior to this), if so how much do you think is a suitable amount with us being in the same water supply area?
Also i may take you up on that offer if any of my brews turn out acceptable :drunk:! Would be a good way to compare brews.

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I'd definitely use the 1/2 campden tablet, but in all honesty I wouldn't worry about the CRS on your first brew, and concentrate on nailing down the process. You can use it in a future brew and see if you think it makes any difference, learning about the effect of different ingredients/additives as you go. Other factors will have a much bigger impact on the finished beer, not least of which (at the moment anyway) will be the temp of your fermenter - do you have any temp control, or somewhere cool at least to put it?
Having said that I use a test kit to check the carbonate every now and again, and readings seem to be steady around 190ppm of late, but I think our water, here in Wainscott at least, can come from either the river or ground sources, or maybe both, so this could change over the course of the year, affecting the carbonate level.
So I use 35ml of CRS to treat 38L of water (for pale ales), to bring the carbonate level down to approx. 20ppm.
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Thought i would let everyone know how i got on :thumb:

I picked up the materials from another store, unfortunately they only had pre-bagged grains and not self serve style (my local store looks better imo). The guy at the store strongly advised me to use bottled water and not tap water, i wimped out and used bottled water but the next one will have to be tap otherwise i will never learn the difference.

Mash tun IMO very impressive thermally and didn't drop any noticeable amount, less than 1c on the thermometer (although i might go digital in the future). My mash temp was a little lower than i was aiming for as the initial drop from the grains was larger than i expected ( I preheated the tun so it was grain heat losses), 65-7c was the target i got 64c.

I need to also improve on the calculating my losses as i ended up with only 19l post boil instead of the 23l i was aiming for. My OG was much higher than the target 1045 i got 1061, its going to have some kick! Whilst i should be able to better gauge my losses going forward, is it ok to add bottled water before primary to reduce the gravity?

My final mess up was completely forgetting to aerate the wort. I remembered about 2 hours after pitching the yeast and used a sterilized paddle to try and get some oxygen into the wort, i am hoping this wont have to much of a negative effect (i cant imagine it being a big issue as the yeast was probably still re-hydrating)?

Anyways just another thanks to everyone for all the help and advise :thumb: some pictures of my ghetto setup i used.


Sorry if these mess up loadspeeds, i could not find a spoiler hide option!


Also any tips on cleaning my bucket boiler would be much appreciated! i don't want to scratch the plastic with a scouring brush...

Sounds like it went pretty well. You can dilute at any stage. As for forgetting to aerate and doing it soon after pitching - I've done that before, and I don't the beer suffered for it.

For future reference the hop schedule for a West Coast American IPA would look radically different. As Dads_Ale mentioned the hop timing should be changed. West Coast styles are not bitter but are overly hop flavorful. It was missing an aroma/whirlpool/dry hop.

I like to use a very high AA hop for bittering. I usually use Warrior that's sold in 1/2 ounce (14.2 g) packages for this. For the rest (I often use one hop type these days) I use another high AA hop (10%+) and use high doses (2+ ounce/56.7 g) at 15-21 mins and 5-7 mins as well as giving it a high dose (~4 ounces/113.4 g) in both a whirlpool/hop stand and dry hop.

I typically shoot for 100 IBUs as these taste like the commercial beers that run 55-70 IBUs and are not bitter. Quite frankly I wonder if the IBUs are calculated properly.

Some people like to forgo the later additions in the boil in place of the flavor and aroma additions and just use a whirlpool/hop stand and dry hop.

The only way to know if your water will work well is to get a water report. Your water may do ok as is but it likely won't be at its best.

If I had no clue as to what my water was like I'd use all RO water and build it up to what I wanted with salts.

BrewersFriend has a nice water calculator among others:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/

TomsBrew said:

Thought i would let everyone know how i got on :thumb:

I picked up the materials from another store, unfortunately they only had pre-bagged grains and not self serve style (my local store looks better imo).

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Nice one Tom - looks like it went well and as others have mentioned you could have diluted the brew down to get to your target volume/OG.

Are you using dry yeast? If so there's no need to aerate the wort, just rehydrate the yeast in water and chuck it in as it already has everything it needs.

Can you tell me where the local shop is that has self serve style grains? I thought the only shop around was the one in Maidstone which seems much more geared up for kits than AG to me. So I buy online, but would like to support a local retailer if we have one??

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dan125 said:

Are you using dry yeast? If so there's no need to aerate the wort, just rehydrate the yeast in water and chuck it in as it already has everything it needs.

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I know this will cause debate but whilst I know Danstar at least have mentioned you don't need too but I still would personally recommend it myself or at least I wouldn't tell people to stop doing it because it is good solid practice.

I think it will only help the yeast health and make the cells of the yeast stronger by ensuring they do.

Too many people have stuck fermentation by lack of pitching and aeration using dry yeasts I think for the sake of a few vigorous stirs to ensure you have a very healthy initial phase to the fermentation I would still always do it.

Covrich said:

I know this will cause debate but whilst I know Danstar at least have mentioned you don't need too but I still would personally recommend it myself or at least I wouldn't tell people to stop doing it because it is good solid practice.

I think it will only help the yeast health and make the cells of the yeast stronger by ensuring they do.

Too many people have stuck fermentation by lack of pitching and aeration using dry yeasts I think for the sake of a few vigorous stirs to ensure you have a very healthy initial phase to the fermentation I would still always do it.

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I wasn't trying to encourage bad practice, just that if you forgot to aerate wort when using dry yeast it shouldn't make any difference. I agree that under pitching could be a problem but personally have never had a stuck brew using 1 pack of dry yeast for brews below 1.050 & 2 packs for brews above.

I can't remember the exact science behind it now, but have definitely read a few sources that say its not necessary. Something to do with yeast needing oxygen to produce lipids when in the growth phase, and that dry yeast already has the lipids so cut out this stage altogether???

I might have it totally wrong though and just been lucky.
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Iain, that's good to know as ideally i did want a slightly weaker beer will leave this one now though :)

Rodwha, i have to admit i did rush into this recipe i hope it turns out good even though it may not be exactly what i was aiming for! I will have to give dry hopping and a proper American IPA a go in the future however i think i will have a go at another style first (this time do some more research)!

On that note does i have seen the book "brewing classic styles" recommended, what do you guys think? it sounds like it will be a good basis to get some tried and tested beers brewed before moving onto more adventurous types?

My brother has a RO setup for his fishtanks so i could quite easily get some RO water, i have seen people mention that it is quite hard to get the correct balance of minerals from pure RO water? have yo any experience in brewing from pure RO water? if so how hard is it?

Thanks Dan for the information, i have been using dry yeast but thinking about making a stir plate out of some spare PC components i have lying around and trying to make my own yeast starter for a future batch. Really like the technical side of things so i need to ensure i'm not doing too much to early... but from videos is don't seem to hard (famous last words).

The homebrew store isn't exactly "local" its in Faversham but its not too far away and seems like a nice place, link is below (i am hoping im allowed to post this):
http://www.homebrewkent.co.uk/

Also have a practically unused aquarium air pump i can use for aerating the wort once i order some new tubing and air stone, there is no real risk of over aeration unless your using O2 i believe? Do you think its worth me using this method over rocking or paddling the wort?

Sorry for the slightly rushed post :-?
and thanks again everyone! :thumb:

TomsBrew said:

...
On that note does i have seen the book "brewing classic styles" recommended, what do you guys think? it sounds like it will be a good basis to get some tried and tested beers brewed before moving onto more adventurous types?
...

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Yep, it's a good book and provides a lot of info. To be honest though , although I bought it with the very best intentions, I've not done more than flick through it in the 6mo or so of owning it... Unlike my copy of Randy Mosher's 'Radical Brewing'. For me, BCS is a good reference, not a great read & RB is better for inspiration.

Ps: enjoy the world of all grain! That's how I started (still only 9 brews in tbh), so I'd not really have a clue how to do an extract or kit brew... (it's clibit's fault)

TomsBrew said:

On that note does i have seen the book "brewing classic styles" recommended, what do you guys think? it sounds like it will be a good basis to get some tried and tested beers brewed before moving onto more adventurous types?

My brother has a RO setup for his fishtanks so i could quite easily get some RO water, i have seen people mention that it is quite hard to get the correct balance of minerals from pure RO water? have yo any experience in brewing from pure RO water? if so how hard is it?

Thanks Dan for the information, i have been using dry yeast but thinking about making a stir plate out of some spare PC components i have lying around and trying to make my own yeast starter for a future batch. Really like the technical side of things so i need to ensure i'm not doing too much to early... but from videos is don't seem to hard (famous last words).

The homebrew store isn't exactly "local" its in Faversham but its not too far away and seems like a nice place, link is below (i am hoping im allowed to post this):
http://www.homebrewkent.co.uk/

Also have a practically unused aquarium air pump i can use for aerating the wort once i order some new tubing and air stone, there is no real risk of over aeration unless your using O2 i believe? Do you think its worth me using this method over rocking or paddling the wort?

Sorry for the slightly rushed post :-?
and thanks again everyone! :thumb:

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Can't comment on the book as I don't have it, but it can't hurt to do a few tried & tested recipes that you like the look of. I find they can also be good starting points or inspiration for new recipes too.

Interesting about the RO water as I've been thinking of using this myself, but I would try it 50/50 with tap water first (still adding some CRS & salts probably)

A stir plate would be cool but isn't necessary to make a yeast starter. I think @MyQul started a thread about this topic a while ago - and iirc although a stir plate speeds things up, the same results are achieved in a little extra time with just the occasional swirling of the starter to get some oxygen in & I've never had a problem without a stir plate.

Cheers for the link - shame the site is down at the mo, but I've seen them before. I'll pay them a visit when I'm next down that way.

If you have the aquarium pump you may as well use it, although I think most folks use a filter in the air line to keep nasties out of the wort.

dan125 said:

Can't comment on the book as I don't have it, but it can't hurt to do a few tried & tested recipes that you like the look of. I find they can also be good starting points or inspiration for new recipes too.

Interesting about the RO water as I've been thinking of using this myself, but I would try it 50/50 with tap water first (still adding some CRS & salts probably)

A stir plate would be cool but isn't necessary to make a yeast starter. I think @MyQul started a thread about this topic a while ago - and iirc although a stir plate speeds things up, the same results are achieved in a little extra time with just the occasional swirling of the starter to get some oxygen in & I've never had a problem without a stir plate.

Cheers for the link - shame the site is down at the mo, but I've seen them before. I'll pay them a visit when I'm next down that way.

If you have the aquarium pump you may as well use it, although I think most folks use a filter in the air line to keep nasties out of the wort.

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:thumb:

Yup I don't bother with a stir plate, just give the bottle a shake every so often.. They say keep it in a place you will see it often to remind you. When I cultured up from a commercial bottle my first step up was in a 500ml coke bottle on my desk so I kept shaking it every other hour it worked great.. People did ask "what the hell is that" though