Irish Red Ale Brewed
So yesterday (Saturday) I brewed my Irish Red. A lot of “firsts” with this brew. It was my first kit from MoreBeer, my first time doing a 3 gallon partial boil and my first time using live yeast. All-in-all it went very well and I really enjoyed it.
I started around 2PM, but got everything together earlier in the day. It took just under two hours to get everything done, but took longer to cool. Once I got everything in the fermenter I still had the wort at 90*F. So I had to wait a while to allow it to cool. I finally pitched the yeast when it was at 82*F. I would have liked it cooler, but it was getting late and I needed to finish cleaning up.
By the this morning it had started fermenting and by this evening there’s quite a head of foam on it. I have 5 gallons in the fermenter and it’s looking great. I have the fermenter in the garage and manged to get it cooled down to 66*F now. Hopefully I can keep the garage cool, in a few days we’ll be getting in to the low 80s…
The starting gravity was 1.054, the kit estimated it should be around 1.058, so that looks good. I’ll be able to bottle this batch with all glass bottles. My Dad has quite a few left over from when he brewed some beer quite a number of years back.
I have more pictures here: