All-Grain - Bee Cave Brewery Robust Porter - Page 22

**petep1980** · 10-03-2009, 02:35 PM

I am on my third version of this recipe. I am intending it to be my holiday ale.

So, I'm mashing in and I add 1/2# black patent. Whoops. Then I think....Oh hell, let's have some fun. I throw in 1/2# instant oatmeal, and I'm going to up the cascades to a full ounce at bittering.

The color will be close to a 50.0 so I call it now my Pitch Black American Oatmeal Stout.

Oh yeah, and I missed my mash in temp by 6°F!!!! Gotta love beersmith assuming your grains are 52°F.

I'm anticipating a much improved efficiency due to a newly engineered mash tun manifold, so I may skip the malto dextrine. I'm hoping for a 1.070+ beer.

Muahahaha!

**IXVolt** · 10-07-2009, 06:06 PM

Just racked this to secondary and added the Vanilla. My FG was only 1.015 @ 68deg F.

Reading through other posts, I guess my FG wasn't too far from others. I was hoping for closer to 1.010, but I may like the fuller bodied beer afterall.

I tasted the sample, and it was very very good. Lots of roasted notes with a tail of chocolate.

Trying to decide if I want to keg or bottle this batch... ????

HalfPint · 10-08-2009, 06:23 PM

Hey Ed,
How long was your boil?

**petep1980** · 10-09-2009, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IXVolt

Just racked this to secondary and added the Vanilla. My FG was only 1.015 @ 68deg F.

Reading through other posts, I guess my FG wasn't too far from others. I was hoping for closer to 1.010, but I may like the fuller bodied beer afterall.

I tasted the sample, and it was very very good. Lots of roasted notes with a tail of chocolate.

Trying to decide if I want to keg or bottle this batch... ????

What was your OG?

bigred · 10-09-2009, 05:37 PM

Right now I am an extract brewer because of my limited equipment and my knowledge. But in the past few weeks I have been reading and researching like crazy to build up the courage for an AG brew. I am getting very close and I think this will be my first AG attempt.

For starters, my equipment is a 7.5 gallon brew pot, and a 10 gallon mlt. I just downloaded the demo for beersmith and have been playing around with this recipe. I would just like you guys to review my plans before I begin.

I am going to use basically the same recipe, except without the black patent because my lhbs doesn't carry it. And I plan to use 1 extra lb of 2 row just to make up for my assumed lower efficiency. My big questions are involving the mash since I have never done one before.

So, here is what I got out of beersmith.

Add 18.14 qt water at 165.9
-hold mash at 154 for 60mins.(just to make sure I don't drop bellow 150)
batch sparge round 1: Sparge with .83 gal of 168 water
batch sparge round 2: Sparge with 3.63 gal of 168 water

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, I add 18.14 qts to the empty mlt, then add the grains, let it sit covered for 1 hour, then drain .83 gal out, and put it back in the mlt, and then drain out all of the liquid out, and add the 3.63, and drain that back out?

I have tried to read as much stuff as I can, and watch as many picture and video tutorials as I can but I just want to make sure that all my mash steps, amounts, and temps are right.

Thank you very much for any help.

Elaelap · 10-12-2009, 06:14 PM

Just bottled 5 gallons of this last weekend. My OG was kind of low, 1.056, finishing at 1.012. I did add 4 cups of cold steeped (starbucks breakfast blend) coffee to the primary. It tasted great out the primary, very chocolatly, deep rich body with a hint of coffee. I'll let you know the final verdict in a few weeks!

**petep1980** · 10-12-2009, 11:18 PM

I just put mine outside for some cold conditioning before bottling. Hey, why not try something new?

bigred · 10-13-2009, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigred

Right now I am an extract brewer because of my limited equipment and my knowledge. But in the past few weeks I have been reading and researching like crazy to build up the courage for an AG brew. I am getting very close and I think this will be my first AG attempt.

For starters, my equipment is a 7.5 gallon brew pot, and a 10 gallon mlt. I just downloaded the demo for beersmith and have been playing around with this recipe. I would just like you guys to review my plans before I begin.

I am going to use basically the same recipe, except without the black patent because my lhbs doesn't carry it. And I plan to use 1 extra lb of 2 row just to make up for my assumed lower efficiency. My big questions are involving the mash since I have never done one before.

So, here is what I got out of beersmith.

Add 18.14 qt water at 165.9
-hold mash at 154 for 60mins.(just to make sure I don't drop bellow 150)
batch sparge round 1: Sparge with .83 gal of 168 water
batch sparge round 2: Sparge with 3.63 gal of 168 water

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, I add 18.14 qts to the empty mlt, then add the grains, let it sit covered for 1 hour, then drain .83 gal out, and put it back in the mlt, and then drain out all of the liquid out, and add the 3.63, and drain that back out?

I have tried to read as much stuff as I can, and watch as many picture and video tutorials as I can but I just want to make sure that all my mash steps, amounts, and temps are right.

Thank you very much for any help.

Can anyone confirm or correct anything here?

Thanks

dmbnpj · 10-13-2009, 12:42 AM

What you should do, since you have the space in the 10 gallon mlt, is just do one batch sparge. Don't do a round 1 and round 2, just combine them into an entire batch sparge. So, yes add the 18.14 qts first with your grains and mash for one hour. Then drain that into your boil kettle after the hour, make sure you vorlauf first (check the wiki page). Then, add your 4.46 gallons of remaining water into your mash tun (stir like crazy). Cover and let that sit for about 15 minutes. Then, vorlauf again, and then drain that remaining bit into your boil kettle. That should leave you with about 6 or 7 gallons into the boil kettle before the boil. You will lose a gallon or so during the boil to evaporation.

Couple tips that have helped me:
1. Preheat your mash tun
2. Using your example, beersmith tells you to first add your 18.14 qts at 165.9 degrees. I would get your water closer to 200 degrees before adding it to your grains. I have found this helps me hit my mash temp around 154 degrees. You can always add a some ice cubes to cool it down, but heating it up takes more time.
3. Cover your mash tun with some blankets during the mash and during the 15 minute sparge.

No need to work up courage to do it. I jumped into AG after a few batches of extract brewing. Only done a few AG batches so far, but each one helps me learn something new. Just jump right into it. Oh, and plan on your AG brew day taking about 7-8 hours. Hope this helps.

bigred · 10-13-2009, 01:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmbnpj

What you should do, since you have the space in the 10 gallon mlt, is just do one batch sparge. Don't do a round 1 and round 2, just combine them into an entire batch sparge. So, yes add the 18.14 qts first with your grains and mash for one hour. Then drain that into your boil kettle after the hour, make sure you vorlauf first (check the wiki page). Then, add your 4.46 gallons of remaining water into your mash tun (stir like crazy). Cover and let that sit for about 15 minutes. Then, vorlauf again, and then drain that remaining bit into your boil kettle. That should leave you with about 6 or 7 gallons into the boil kettle before the boil. You will lose a gallon or so during the boil to evaporation.

Couple tips that have helped me:
1. Preheat your mash tun
2. Using your example, beersmith tells you to first add your 18.14 qts at 165.9 degrees. I would get your water closer to 200 degrees before adding it to your grains. I have found this helps me hit my mash temp around 154 degrees. You can always add a some ice cubes to cool it down, but heating it up takes more time.
3. Cover your mash tun with some blankets during the mash and during the 15 minute sparge.

No need to work up courage to do it. I jumped into AG after a few batches of extract brewing. Only done a few AG batches so far, but each one helps me learn something new. Just jump right into it. Oh, and plan on your AG brew day taking about 7-8 hours. Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for the reply, I have read about the vorlauf and I plan to do it, just didn't include it in the write up, and also plan on pre heating the mash tun. The single sparge sounds good and simple, so I think I will follow your advice. So far I have only done 1 canned kit, and 2 extract brews. All of them went smooth, but each time I think I could be doing better by doing all grain and I feel that I'm prepared to do it now, and looking forward to it.