re: Homebrewing: Official Recipe Thread (All-Grain & Extract)

This is an attempt to help new home brewers.

FIRST TRY

I did an American Amber home brew kit for my first brew:

The instructioons that came with the kit were very good.

The following were notes I made that the instructions did not cover.

buy a long stainless steel spoon
buy bottle brush
buy large funnel
buy turkey baster or wine thief
put dry rugs down on tile floors. Area can get slippery.
secondary fermentation is a waste of time.
need about 50 brown and not twist off.
cooling wort before pitching yeast takes a long time.
measure OG before putting in carboy.
yeast is very active the first couple of days
plug and air cap kept getting pushed out of carboy
I drilled larger holes in cap. This seemed to work.
You may want to use a tube and water vessel set up.
Put priming sugar in before bottling. Mix well.

Use priming sugar calculator

Priming sugar calculator

This beer turned out OK but I would not do again. It was a good learner.

SECOND TRY

My second attempt was a partial mash which turned out very good.

This is the recipe I used, kind of like a Blue Moon.

Belgian wit partial mash recipe

It took a long time to cool wort after boil. Put pot in ice water in sink.
Read yeast instructions before starting. Some require 3 hours prep.
Put rags or rubber mat in sink when cooling wort.

I really liked this beer. Family enjoyed also.

THIRD TRY

Working on full grain right now. Will follow this post with more notes if anyone cares.