I did my first two batches B2B. A couple of observations and comments:
Having written procedures other than the containing recipe is a must. I am writing them now from my notes and will continue to tweak them.
If you are using LME, submerging the container in the kettle water with tongs will get all of the LME into your kettle and out of the bottle.
Buying timers will make hop additions much easier. I bought two duel timers.
Making yeast starters is easy and worth it.
I’m still looking for an easier way to pour my cooled wort into the glass carboy. My kettle has a ball valve but when I opened it, there was sludge coming out so I poured it out from the top which worked much better but very difficult to do because of the weight.
The most important thing I learned is to cool my wort down to 60-62. For me it’s easier to keep a warm room than a cool one.
I really had a lot of fun doing this. I wish I would have started this a long time ago. Well it’s on to my next project. Building my draft system. I am more nervous about the kegging procedure than bottling. So many things to put together and more things to get wrong. LOL. Thanks for everyone’s advice and commentary. It makes it much more easier to learn about this wonderful craft.
I could but I really wanted to use the kettle spigot. I wish it was an inch higher. I might try using it on the next batch. My kettle is an 8 gallon Bayou Classic.
Sorry, late to this thread, I buy nylon paint strainer bags [ Walmart, hardware store, paint store] usually come in pairs, after batch has cooled I open spigot and run batch thru sanitized strainer bag into fermenter, and leave the heavy stuff behind on the bottom of kettle. Those bags are pretty fine mesh, they clean up well, [I run them thru the wash machine] and reuse them all the time. They catch most everything, just sanitize them with Starsan just before use. Cheap too.
How exactly do you guys run the wort through the paint strainer bags?
On my last brew, I used a muslin bag for my hop pellet addition. I still had break material and some hop material that made it through the bag to filter out of my wort before going in the carboy. I have a funnel with the little removable filter screen in it. I was able to keep most of the stuff out (since this was only a one hop brew) but am curious about your processes.
Basically what I did was open up my valve with the kettle right above the funnel and let it flow. Towards the end I had to close the valve and remove some of the material with a sanitized spoon, then open it again. Wasn’t an awful lot of work but I know I could improve a bit.
When I do it I hook a sanitized hose to my spigot and run the other end into the bag. I use buckets so I don’t have the constraints of the small opening of a carboy. Once the kettle is empty I take my brew spoon and gently push the bag up from underneath to squeeze as much out as I can a couple of times. I still get what little bit of stuff can push through the holes but it isn’t much.
To the OP about his #2 (heh): I usually just throw a little hot water in the extract bottles, recap and shake the hell out of them to get all the stuff out rather than dipping the whole thing. Might be easier for next time.
I just let it all go into the fermenter. Never worried about filtering it out. I do use the paint strainer bags in a hop spider during the boil though so I minimize the hop material at the bottom.
