Thursday, August 23, 2007

Getting Started in Homebrewing - Chilling the Wort


Without having a good brewing setup at home, I needed to move the 3.5 gallons of wort to the laundry room to be chilled and incorporated with the reserved 1.5 gallons. I set the kettle on top of the washing machine, rigged up the wort chiller to the laundry basin, and began the chilling process. Surprisingly, for one of the hottest weeks of the year, it took barely 15 minutes to bring the wort down to around 70F-80F.




I then set a strainer over the top of the plastic fermenting bucket and vigorously poured the wort into the waiting 1.5 gallons of reserved water. I took a small sample for a hydrometer reading (1.050, by the way), then pitched the dry yeast from the supplied packet.

I then sealed the lid on top of the bucket and, covering the airlock hole, shook and rocked it around for about 30 seconds. Lastly, the airlock was put on and filled with vodka. Water can be, and is often, used in the airlock. Alcohol further provides for assurances for a sanitary environment, but in some opinions is hardly necessary.



That's it. I placed the bucket in area that wouldn't go above 75F and let it sit for a week.



Over the following week, the fermentation began. Check back again soon for more about the primary fermentation stage.

2 comments:

Adam said...

Can't wait to taste it :-) Make sure you sample it before adding priming sugar when you bottle.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate this as I still haven't gotten to brew yet. Other things keep gettin in the way. I have some whole hops and have been reading some on the brew process. Seems some people have different preferences, but it all helps I guess. Still need to find a damn welder to make my keggel. But I'm wondering, as I planned on using the keggel outside, it seems the big thing is contamination. If I bought all the stuff to brew outside, the wind could ruin things. Am I nuts? I got an electric stove in the kitchen and
burnt sugar on the stove surface ruins it.
@#$%&%$$!@@#@$
Eric