So, about a year ago I made my first attempt at home brewing. I tried a 1 gallon batch of a coffee stout. I made lots of mistakes despite all the reading up I did ahead of time. I think it takes a time through the process to come up with the right. In the end I got 10 bottles of less than stellar stout.
Since then I have purchased more equipment so I can do a 5 gallon brew instead of 1 gallon. It's a lot of work for 1 gallon of beer. I finally am doing my second attempt, this time a 5 gallon batch of a Bone Dry Irish Stout and it's an extract brew instead of an all grain. Would love to do all grain, but let's start out a bit easier for now then probably move into BIAB.
So far, everything is going great. Got a nice big burner with a propane tank for cooking. Got a nice copper coil wort chiller and lot's of other goodies. The cooking went great and was able to cool everything down using the chiller in about 15 to 20 minutes. Got it aerated and pitched the yeast. After 12 hours it was starting to ferment. By 24 there was a really good layer of krausen on top and lot's of activity showing in the airlock. When I did this the first time I only got a little bit of initial activity then it was pretty much done. I took an original gravity reading this time as well. Didn't do that last time, so I have no idea what I got for a conversion, but I know it was bad.
This time I have an original gravity reading of 1.051 and I am fermenting between 64-70 F. It's whatever the basement temperature is.
Does anybody have any idea what I should expect for a conversion if all goes well on this brew?
Definitely planning to do another batch very soon this time. Not gonna wait a year again between batches.