Batch #1 Post #2

So this beer seemed to go pretty good as I brewed it. I wish I kept better track of the exact temperatures and times of everything, but I'll lay out in genera what I did.

The water I used was store bought spring water from Meijer. The kind that comes in big jugs. I don't think there's anything in particular wrong with Urbana water, but I decided better safe than sorry.

- Took the yeast out of the fridge a few hours before to let it warm up.
- Brought the water up to 150-155 degrees.
- Took it off the heat and steeped the grains in 2.5 gallons of water starting at about 155 degrees for about 15 minutes. (meanwhile I placed the LME in some hot water to make it pour better)
- Brought the temperature back up, and then dissolved in the LME.
- Brought the batch up to a boil, and added half of the hops and let boil for 30 minutes
- Added the crushed coriander and bitter orange peel for 15 minutes
- Added the last half of the Amarillo hops for flavor for 5 minutes.
- Removed from heat and cooled in a ice-water bath. Got it down to about 80 degrees in about 15 minutes.
- Poured 3 gallons of water into my fermenter and then added the batch.
- Pitched the yeast.

Note: I didn't strain the beer before putting it in the fermenter, so the orange peel, coriander, and remains from the hop pellets went into the fermenter.

The biggest problem I had in brewing was that I forgot to shake up the water that I added afterwards. You need to aerate it usually and I didn't do that. So after about 24 hours I didn't notice any signs of fermentation, and upon realizing my mistake I opened the fermenter up and mixed it real well. It seemed to go fine from there.


Fermentation

I let it ferment for about 7 days, but then I started to get concerned that the spice and hop sediment would start to give the wort a bad taste. So I racked it to a secondary fermenter. In hindsight, after reading up on it (www.howtobrew.com), I realized that I aerated the beer too much when moving it (I used the spigot and just poured it through the tubing into the other fermenter). I also think that I ended up racking it too soon. There was still a fair amount of fermentation going on inside (if I recall, probably bubbling every 15 seconds or so).

After another week in the secondary fermenter, I bottled the beer. The process is pretty simple here, you just boil some water and dissolve some priming sugar in it, then mix that in with the beer and bottle it.