Hello brewcommune

[Rezzin]

Congrats on finishing brew #1. Here's to many more!

[JonGoku]

Alright, here is what I think is my hot break. Can anyone confirm or deny this for me? Please keep in mind this is my groggy rambling at about 4AM, 6 hours after starting. If you click on the "watch in high quality" link at the bottom right of the YouTube window and maybe enlarge you should be able to see it better.

What I think was my hot break.

Brew Update: Airlock is bubbling!

[dhempy]

That doesn't look like a classic hot break to me (at least as I understand it). Hot break for me is when the rolling boil gets going and the whole top of the wort gets covered by a coarser set of bubbles that just keeps rising and rising. There are many ways to knock it down ... stirring, skimming off, spraying with a water bottle. The Hot Break will float hops such that they will stick to the sides of your pot so it is best to start additions after the hot break happens. Also, the hot break will act as an insulator which can lead to boil overs. You'll definatel know it once you see it (and you have a boil-over happen).

Dan

[backyard brewer]

That looks like just after the hot break. Just before the hot break, the foam will try to climb out of the pot. A spray bottle of cold water and a quick hand on the burner control will usually keep it from boiling over. All of the sudden the foam will collapse and the boil should look like what you filmed. That transition is "the hot break".

From that point forward, the boiling wort may try to foam over at each hop addition.

[brew captain]

That looks pretty normal to me...

Relax and soon you will be able to have a nice homebrew!!


Cheers!

[JonGoku]

After steeping the specialty grains at around 170F I got the wort going to a good boil before turning off the burner and adding the extract. Adding the extract though lowered the temperature back to sub-boil and as I stated earlier I added in my first hops as soon as I had stirred in the extract and turned the burner back on. I think this was a mistake as I stated earlier and should have waited for a good boil or "rolling boil" to start before adding the first hops and beginning the "hour boil".

For the first 15min after adding the extract to help encourage a boil I kept the pot covered except during occasional stirring. I never experienced much more foam then you see there in the clip. This could be because the pot was covered, however I kind of doubt it.

[backyard brewer]

After steeping the specialty grains at around 170F I got the wort going to a good boil before turning off the burner and adding the extract. Adding the extract though lowered the temperature back to sub-boil and as I stated earlier I added in my first hops as soon as I had stirred in the extract and turned the burner back on. I think this was a mistake as I stated earlier and should have waited for a good boil or "rolling boil" to start before adding the first hops and beginning the "hour boil".

For the first 15min after adding the extract to help encourage a boil I kept the pot covered except during occasional stirring. I never experienced much more foam then you see there in the clip. This could be because the pot was covered, however I kind of doubt it.

Nope, a covered pot will usually cause a boil over or an increased hot break. You probably didn't get it hot enough, but I wouldn't worry about a thing. You'll end up with a little chill haze but no flavor issues. It's best not to cover the pot during the boil but perfectly acceptable to do so to get to a boil. Keeping it covered can contribute a cooked vegetable flavor to the beer as DMS cannot escape.

[JonGoku]

Nope, a covered pot will usually cause a boil over or an increased hot break. You probably didn't get it hot enough, but I wouldn't worry about a thing. You'll end up with a little chill haze but no flavor issues. It's best not to cover the pot during the boil but perfectly acceptable to do so to get to a boil. Keeping it covered can contribute a cooked vegetable flavor to the beer as DMS cannot escape.

Thanks for the reassurance on the flavor side. In the interest of improvement, future brews, and I guess how-to-brew in general I have a theoretical question. If you are using unhopped extract, and do not add any hops, would boiling your wort by itself cause any changes to flavor? (assume evaporated water is replaced and a constant volume is maintained). If I understand correctly now, the hot break should occur even without hops present and only helps "clear" the wort, therefore it would not matter when you added your first hops compared to the extract even if it was "preboil" (assume >170F), right as the wort began to boil, or even 15, 20, 30, or more minutes after the boil began. The flavor and aromas would develop the exact same regardless of the starting time as long as the intervals and termination times were kept the same.

[backyard brewer]

No, boiling unhopped wort will still create different flavors from caramelization and melenoiden reactions.

[jward]

I've also got a 5lb CO2 tank specifically for this task (and powering my jockey box) that I can re-pressurize from my 20 lb tank.

How do you do this?

[jward]

Being able to rack your beer under pressure with co2 is the one advantage that I've seen to using a carboy over buckets. I do wonder if it would be possible to do this with a bucket and a tight fitting lid, though...

With a bucket lids high surface area low pressures create lots of force on the lid and tends to blow the lid off. One thing I tried is to start a siphon using one of the 12V diaphram pumps used on RVs. They can lift liquid 6ft. It worked ok. I used an ordinary racking cane attacked to keg out QD and the pump pulling from a gas in QD.

[dhempy]

I've also got a 5lb CO2 tank specifically for this task (and powering my jockey box) that I can re-pressurize from my 20 lb tank.

How do you do this?

I have a high pressure tube that came with my regulators (remember that I have 4 separate regs on my kegerator is I have one extra HP Tube). I bought some adapters to be able to connect both bottles up. So I Warm up my big tank, chill the small one (freezer) and connect. I leave the end at the small bottle cracked and bleed some CO2 into the line to purge it before final tightening and transfer. Then I hold the big tank upside down, open the valve, open the small tank's vale, wait for pressure equalization) and then shut everything off. Turning the large tank upside down is my attempt to transfer some of the liquid CO2 from bottle to bottle as the pick up is at the top of the tank (or so I've been told). I've done this about 5 or 6 times ... it works well enough to save me trips to the welding shop. I don't get full pressure but I'm certainly getting more use out of my 20lb tank.

Dan

[JonGoku]

I have a question about fermenting temperature and where best to measure it.

My current set up is in a closet in my garage, and consists of a 6 gallon fermentation bucket sitting in a cooler full of water. The picture below is pretty much it, however I wrapped the bucket with some thin thermal insulation and covered the cooler with towels after taking the picture/video (sorry video wasn't worth uploading).

Fermentation Setup.jpg (148.79 KiB) Viewed 1574 times

My question is, is the reading from the thermometer floating in the water a fairly accurate reading? I think I read elsewhere in the forums that fermentation actually creates some heat and therefore the temperature inside the fermenter could be warmer then outside.

I have been trying to maintain a 70F temp but with the recent cold spells I'm sitting at 65~67F from the temperature readings of the water in the cooler.

Edit: Added picture. (Flickr failed me, but the forum's attachment method worked great.)

[Rezzin]

There's no real way w/o something like a thermowell to check the internal temp but if the WATER temp is 65-67 then I think you'll be ok. I've noticed anywhere from 6-10d temperature increase inside the carboy (depending on where in the fermentation I'm at). I think the temperature difference is not as much when using a water bath so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Even if you fermented the beer at 65-67 that's great! I prefer fermenting at the lower end of the yeast temp range personally. Fermenting higher might produce some fruitier notes but it also helps ensure your beer finishes closer to it's target ABV. Since you're using extract, I think it might actually better that your fermenting slightly on the warmer side.

My first batch got into the high 70's and maybe even low 80's if I remember and it was still drinkable. Not as good as the beers I brew now but good enough to get me stoked and hooked on homebrewing

I say keep it in the bath in your garage at it's current temp and when things start to slow down (maybe 5 days from when you pitched?), you can bring it into the house where it's warmer (if you can make sure you can keep the temps under 70) to finish up.

Edit: If I had to guess - if the water ambient temp was 70, and you were at the peak of fermentation, the beer may have fermented at around 75-76 depending on how vigorous it was?

[JonGoku]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm a little confused though with this sentence.

Fermenting higher might produce some fruitier notes but it also helps ensure your beer finishes closer to it's target ABV. Since you're using extract, I think it might actually better that your fermenting slightly on the warmer side.

Are you saying that my I'm fermenting on the warmer side already, or that I SHOULD ferment warmer? Given the WATER temp is 65~67F.

I originally was assuming the water bath temp = wort temp and so thinking to maintain a 70F fermenation process, I was adding warm water to the bath to try and keep the bath (and wort) at 70F. After learning of increased tempture inside the fermentation chamber I stopped adding warm water to the bath as I assumed by keeping the bath at 70F I was essentially keeping the wort at a higher temp then desired. 75F or more.

I say keep it in the bath in your garage at it's current temp and when things start to slow down (maybe 5 days from when you pitched?), you can bring it into the house where it's warmer (if you can make sure you can keep the temps under 70) to finish up.

This also confused me as I assume from your explanation that in the garage with a bath temp of 65-67F I may already be at or above 70F.