6/13/10 Munton's Pale Ale

For my very first home brew I decided to keep it simple and just do a full extract premade brew kit. It shouldn't have been hard right? Just boil some water, add some sugar and wort, air lock it off, wait, bottle, wait and then drink. In some ways it was that easy, in other ways it sure as hell wasn't.

And the largest lesson that I learned from this attempt is that it is a good idea to have the right equipment to do the job. And that just because you waltz into a supply store and buy a brewing kit and the extract kit doesn't mean that you will have everything you need to do the job.

What I had from the two kits:
Brew Kit:
25L plastic bucket
24L glass carboy
carboy brush
hand pump siphon and tube
sanitizer
hydrometer
plastic spoon

Extract Kit:
Munton's Pale Ale kit (for 23L)
Hopped Wort in a can
Dried yeast

I had also purchased a book on home brewing that provided a good intro and revised instructions as opposed to those that came with the extract kit.

Missing from the list above are a few things that I've since picked up, and a few more that I still need to... (I might have missed some things below. If I remember anything else I'll add them later)

First and foremost would be the electronic scale for measuring the dextrose to be added to the kit. Not having one I found somewhere on line that a cup of sugar weighs around 190g and used 5ish cups in placed of the 1kg that was needed... Looking back on the ABV it's a pretty solid fact that I didn't add nearly enough to the wort. But I was impatient and thought that I could get away from it. I managed to find one on sale for $14.

Next up was an easy fix, I didn't have anything that allowed an easy removal of some wort for testing the OG. This was remedied by a turkey baster.

A thermometer would have also been nice, that way when I rehydrated and pitched the yeast I would have been able to make sure that the water/wort was the right temperature. This is something that I'm still missing and have been using a candy thermometer as a bad replacement (it only goes down to 40c...)

Onto the brewing, I mixed some boiling water with the wort in the 25L plastic bucket and then added the dextrose. Not having access to a large pot to boil the water in I got an 18L bottle of spring water from the grocery store and then boiled 5L of tap water. I added everything and wondered why I had 24.5L instead of the 23L the kit should have been. I didn't realize that the kit was 1.5L itself and put me over the intended water amount. >.<

6/22/10

Bottling was pretty easy, and I don't really have anything special to mention about it. It took me about 3.5 – 4 hours to do, and even then I wasted (not really wasted) a bunch of time making sure that they were properly sanitized. I ended up leaving it in the bucket for 9 days. I wanted it out sooner, but time and lack of caps pushed it back later. Also due to all the extra water I added I ended up with 49.5 500ML Pet bottles. Which makes sense because of the 1.5L from the kit and 1.5 from the priming solution (See below).

Since I over watered and under sugared it the batch came out to a whopping 1.030 SG on the hydrometer. And with the FG of 1.008 the beer clocked in just under 3% at 2.88% ABV. At least, that was what it was at before I primed it with 1.5L of water and 10 tablespoons of dextrose... Once again having an electronic scale would have been handy. The beer came out weak and under carbed. But it still made for a refreshing beverage and maybe somewhat of a session beer.