T-Minus 2 hours

akira7799 · 01-29-2006, 04:01 PM

Hey All,

I'm performing my first all grain today and wanted to thank everyone for their support and help.

I'll be brewing a Karmeliet Tripel from Beer Captured.

It calls for:
13 lbs. Belgian Pils
1 lbs Belgian Wheat Malt (which I forgot to buy and do not have)
.5 lbs. Belgian Aromatic
.25 lbs. Flaked Oats
.75 lbs. clear candy sugar
.75 malto dextrin

Challenger for bittering

Styrian Goldings for Flavor

Czech Saaz and Styrian Goldings for aroma

90 Minute Mash at 152

90 minute boil.

Update Later,
Dave

anthrobe · 01-29-2006, 04:33 PM

Good luck

**david_42** · 01-29-2006, 09:04 PM

Lack o'wheat won't change the outcome too much. The candi and the yeast are much more important.

Keep us posted.

djmd · 01-29-2006, 09:35 PM

What are ya fermenting it with?

akira7799 · 01-30-2006, 08:12 AM

Well!

It's done. Yeast has been pitched. I'll check and look for the airlock bubbles tomorrow. Let me "Tarantino" this day for everyone. I'm going to bed after this post at about 3:45am 1/30.

I get up at 10:00am 1/29 and come onto the board to look for some words of wisdom and encouragement. I start typing and realize "Bleep, blip bleep bleep the bleep at the homebrew store yesterday". I get some breakfast in me and decide that it won't be an "authentic tripel" without barley, oats and wheat.

So, I start looking online for available and open stores in the Pittsburgh region on a Sunday. Low and behold, the city of football fame has no available home brew stores that are open on the day of rest (go figure). So I start looking around at other cities and towns in Pennsylvania. I finally found an open store...in Philly 4 and a half hours on the other side of the freakin' state.

After my instate dreams were bitterly crushed I started to look at other states. By this time, it's approaching 12:30 and my luck is starting to turn around. First, I looked at West Virginia without success. Then, Ohio. What? An open store? Really? You close at 3:00. No prob. I'll be there in 2 hours.

I eagerly make my way to the car for the 2 hour drive to Northfield, OH. Key in ignition. Car won't turn over. At this point in time I'm really starting to ponder whether or not to even brew today. It seems like God, the Beer Gods, and every other cosmic force are against me. But I fuss with some spark wires under the hood and get the car running at about 12:50.

I get to Leeners in OH at 2:30 without incident (I sped a bit). I pay the $1.49 for the wheat malt and head back to Pittsburgh for the first all-grain. Stop at a gas station and get a Dr. Pepper and bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos for $1.79. I also paid $2.30 EACH WAY in turnpike tolls and $3.00 to get back into PA. It was a half a tank of gas so we'll round that to $12.00. Grand total for the trip! (Drumroll please) $22.88. I can honestly say that is and will be the MOST EXPENSIVE bag of wheat malt I'll ever handle.

Get back to Pittsburgh at 4:30 and eat dinner. Start cleaning equipment at 6:00. Start the mash at 7:00. Here's where the long night starts. I mashed with more water than I was supposed to. 5.25 instead of 4.25. The conversion went fine, but I ran into problems with the lauter. See, when I recirculated for about 20 minutes and settled the grain bed, I didn't settle the grain bed ENOUGH. So, when I started to lauter I got TONS of grain in the boil kettle. In order to get the grains out I filtered the wort. So, a 90 minute mash + 150 minutes lauter = 4 hours of PAIN.

So, at 11:30pm the mash had been collected. Sitting pretty in the kettle. I started the burner and it got boiling by midnight. The additions went smoothly and cooling went just as well. The new wort chiller cooled the wort in about 10 minutes. At the end of the cooling I'm collecting the wort and realized that I had boiled FAR too much mash. Instead of boiling for 90 minutes and letting 1.5 gallons evaporate, ending up with 5.5, I must have collected closer to 8.5 and ended UP with 7 gallons. Long story short, the O.G. was 1.072 instead of 1.082. Still VERY good for not boiling long enough.

What lessons have I learned today?
1. Double check your recipe list at the home brew store. Grain on Sundays can be expensive.
2. Don't start to brew after 6:00pm. Nights can get very long.
3. When recirculating and lautering, make sure the grain bed is fully entact and compressed before you begin. Grain is the brew kettle is hard to get out.
4. Make sure you measure or KNOW how much mash you have collected. You screw up your O.G. if you don't.

Thanks for everyone's help. Even though today was semi-disasterous, you all made it a lot easier for me.

Thanks again,
Dave

**Dude** · 01-30-2006, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by akira7799

What lessons have I learned today?
1. Double check your recipe list at the home brew store. Grain on Sundays can be expensive.
2. Don't start to brew after 6:00pm. Nights can get very long.
3. When recirculating and lautering, make sure the grain bed is fully entact and compressed before you begin. Grain is the brew kettle is hard to get out.
4. Make sure you measure or KNOW how much mash you have collected. You screw up your O.G. if you don't.

Wow! Some day you had!

I'm with you on not starting after 6, except it is more like 2 for me. If it is that late, its gonna be a REALLY long day.

Otherwise, glad your brew session went "pretty" good at least! It only gets easier....

Alx Rains · 01-30-2006, 09:05 AM

This had better be a terrific beer mate, personally I only brew in the early am cos it gets too hot . good luck

Rhoobarb · 01-30-2006, 05:03 PM

Holy crap! What a day/evening you had! This beer has to turn out good, what with all the effort you put into it!

I normally like to start early in the morning. I did my first-ever evening brew last Friday night, but I had no place to be Saturday. I also did all the prep work - sanitizing, measuring grains and water, cracking grain, etc. the night before. Began at 6:30pm and finished at 2:30am!

Congrats on your 1st AG!

**Baron von BeeGee** · 01-30-2006, 05:17 PM

Dang, that's quite a day! Well, what doesn't kill you...

Not brewing after 6pm was the first rule I made and broke. Sometimes I just have to knock one out on a weekday due to a busy weekend. I get all my grains cracked, equipment sanitized, and proverbial ducks in a row the night before and I can be done and cleaned up before the news. Took me a few runs to get it down, though!

**Walker** · 01-30-2006, 05:22 PM

I guess I'm the midnight flyer here. I NEVER start until about 9pm. Granted, I don't do AG, but a 9pm start time for extract+grain usually keeps me up til about 1am.

I hope your beer turns out to be EXCELLENT.

-walker