Brewing Up a Storm: Primary Fermentation

So the preparation is complete. Time to mix it up. 

I am using Cooper's Indian Pale Ale, 500g of  Light Spray Malt and 450g of Honey. The honey is to replace 300g of Brewer's Sugar (dextrose).

First thing to do is to fill up your sink with hot water and put the can in upside-down. I put the honey in as well. This is the get them all nice and runny to make it easier to pour. That takes about ten minutes. I watched the end of the rugby which was fantastic. 

Pour all of the ingredients into the fermenter. Then add 2 litres of boiling water. Mix it all up with big spoon. The smell at this point is fantastic, you get all that beery goodness.

Fill up the fermenter to 20 litres with cold water.

At this point we need to check the temperature as we want it to be between 21C and 27C. Do this by adding hot or cold water up to 23 litres.

Finally add the yeast by sprinkling it evenly over the top of your wort. Putting the lid on immediately. 

That's it, beer made starting to ferment. You can really smell the yeast getting going.

You need to put your fermenter somewhere that it will stay between 21C and 27C. If the temperature gets outside of this range fermentation can stop all together. Some yeasts can tolerate a wider range of temperatures.

I put mine in my hot-press. This is not easy, get help :) 23 litres of anything is heavy.

Final thing to do is to measure the specific gravity or SG of your wort. This first measurement is know as the original gravity or OG. Beer normally starts around the 1040 mark. I was a bit worried that my honey/sugar switch but I was not too far off the mark.

The amount of hot water at the beginning is not arbitrary. Basically 2 litres of boiling water plus 20 litres of cold water gives you just about the right temperature for the yeast which you add at the end. In colder areas the ratio changes. I had to add a lot of hot water at the end to get my temperatures up.

A week to wait now, then it will be time to check if it's ready for bottling.