Grand Malt - first brew

Today we started our first batch of homebrew!

• 3kg of canned wort
• 3.5lt of boiled water to mix the wort
• 2 1/2 bottles (4lt) of fridge water
• 9 bottles (13.5lt) of bottle water
• =23lt fermenting in our back room

We had the ingredients to start in January after bring them over with us after Christmas, but hadn't been able to find a vessel to brew in, so luckily Jim and Net brought a proper fermentation bin over with them last week.

We decided to start off using a kit, rather than from scratch. We have the ingredients, courtesy of Fabs and Sam, for a brew from scratch, so that will be next time!

First task was to sterilise every thing we were going to use. So we boiled and then cooled some tap water and put this into the fermentation bin along with two teaspoons of Cleaner Steriliser. The instructions were to either immerse, or douse with water for 5-10 minutes. We couldn't immerse the whole fermentation bin, so had to use our bottle cleaner to douse the inside with water and keep it wet. Similarly with our metal mixing stick (which in a previous life was one-half of a pair of BBQ tongs - could not find a long plastic spoon anywhere!). We could immerse the thermometer and the air lock though.

We rinsed the sterilising solution off using tap water that we had boiled and then cooled (this allowed the chlorine to evaporate off).  Once the fermentation lid was sterilised and rinsed we used this as a surface to put other implements on.

After sterilisation we started the wort off by placing the two tins in warm water. This was to make the syrup a little less syrup-y and therefore easier to pour. This was then mixed with 3.5lt of boiling (bottled) water. We could improve our timing here, as we found we were standing around waiting for the water to boil in the kettle (we had to boil it once and then refill).

So now we have our wort in and our boiling water in. We used a bit of the water from the second kettle full to swish around the tins and get the last dregs into the fermentation bin. This was all taking place in the kitchen, so then we transfered the fermentation bin to the back room which is where it is going to brew as this is the coldest room in the apartment.

Once there we added bottled water up to 23lt. The last few bottles came from the fridge as the mixture needed to be between 18-25C before the yeast can be added. Because we didn't check the temperature early enough, our ratio of fridge water to standing bottle water was too low, and so our mixture wasn't cool enough when we reached 23lt to add the yeast. To cool it down we turned the air con on in the room and wrapped a damp towel around the fermentation bin.

Finally it got down to temperature and so we sprinkled the yeast on top and then stirred it a bit to get it oxygenated. Lid on and air lock (with two glugs of Smirnoff Blue Vodka) attached.

The air con has now been turned off in the room and we have a remote thermometer in there which is reading the ambient temperature as being 19.1C which is bang on (should be between 18-20C).

• TOP TIP for next time - we're going to buy a really large saucepan, so that we can boil up larger amounts of water in one go - rather than being restricted to the size of our kettle.
• TOP TIP for next time - keeping an eye out for a long (40cm) plastic spoon that could be used for mixing.
• TOP TIP for next time - we only added 2 1/2 bottles from the fridge, but this needs to be higher. At least four we think.
• TOP TIP for next time - have the water bottles lined up ready with their plastic seals off already.