Fruits Of My Labor

After adding the hops and setting the timer for 60 minutes I settled down to do some cleaning up and preparing the fermenter. I chilled about 2 gallons of water in the fridge, because the sink was going to be a little busy with chilling the wort down and I didn't want to chill it, then risk bacteria while I was trying to fill the fermenter up with cold water.















This was the first chance to use the wort chiller I bought from BrewsterBrown. I wasn't sure how well it was going to work since it was pretty small diameter and didn't have a large number of coils. I have budget and I know i can't afford a bigger wortchiller. Plus, I didn't want to go all out to early in this hobby. After an hour, I plopped the pot into the sink, put the chiller in and hooked it up and turned it on. I could immediately feel warm water coming out of the hose. I set a sanitized thermometer in it and prepped the water, fermenter, airlock, and yeast while I was waiting. It cooled to under 100F in under 15 minutes.

I poured the wort in, making sure to splash , used a large spoon to stir it up, added more cold water and took a SG reading. Since I had sanitized the hydrometer I just twirled it and left it in the pail. I use the refractometer to my wines anyway. The reading was around 1.042 and the Brix was 10. I added the London Ale yeast and set it in the living room. Hopefully it won't have crazy fermentation but I might just prepare a blow-off tube just in case. Unfortunately, I leave for work at 10:30pm and if it's going to go nuts I'd rather it do it while I'm home and not while I'm at work.

This should sit for about a week then I rack it to the secondary until it clears or two weeks I think. Then bottle and wait 2 weeks. It should be just in time for the BBQ I'm wanting to have in late August.