Yet another "my first all-grain" thread

[schristian619]

So today was my first all-grain attempt. I chose to do Ed Worts Haus ale. Everything seemed easy enough. My only mishaps and/or questions are:

-I accidently put the grain and water in the wrong cooler for my mash and had to transfer it to the correct one with the false bottom. I don't see this causing too big of a problem. I added a little boiling water to compensate for the loss of heat in the transfer and since the new cooler hadn't been heated yet.

-I was fly sparging with a rotating sparge arm from midwest. I had enough water coming through so that it would rotate, but as slowly as possible. Still, it only took 30-40 mins to go through the 4.5 gals in the HLT. How do I make this last longer? Do I need to?

-I used 3.5 gals for my mash and 4.5 gals for my sparge. I had roughly 6.5-7 gals pre-boil. I forgot to mark my spoon, but I base my estimate on the previous water mark in my kettle from doing 6-6.5 gal boils of extract. After my 60 min boil, I only ended up with 4.5 gals of wort. Why? So I decided to top it off to 5.25. Although this may not have been the best thing to do, I did, and after mixing, I had a OG of 1.057(just about where I should have been according to beersmith).

-As far as efficiency, I entered my info into beersmith and got about 76%. If this is correct, that seems [petty good for my first time. How do I know if this is right?

-Is there a way to get info for fly sparging on beersmith? I didn't see anything.

I know this is a long post, but thanks for any input

[WBC]

You did fine. 76% is great. Try to keep the fermentation at 66F if you have the resources.

[ajf]

Originally Posted by schristian619

So today was my first all-grain attempt. I chose to do Ed Worts Haus ale. Everything seemed easy enough.

Congrats. You picked a good and very popular recipe.

Originally Posted by schristian619

-I accidently put the grain and water in the wrong cooler for my mash and had to transfer it to the correct one with the false bottom. I don't see this causing too big of a problem. I added a little boiling water to compensate for the loss of heat in the transfer and since the new cooler hadn't been heated yet.

Don't do that again! That's about the only stupid thing I've never done.

Originally Posted by schristian619

-I was fly sparging with a rotating sparge arm from midwest. I had enough water coming through so that it would rotate, but as slowly as possible. Still, it only took 30-40 mins to go through the 4.5 gals in the HLT. How do I make this last longer? Do I need to?

At the start of the sparge, you can add water through the sparge arm faster than you are draining. Once the grain bed is fully covered with water, there is no need for the sparge arm to spin, so you can throttle it back a bit (or even turn it off for a while). The sparge time depends on the rate of flow from the MLT, not the rate of flow through the sparge arm, so if you need to, you can extend the sparge time by adjusting the flow into the kettle. As the level in the HLT drops, the flow through the sparge arm also drops. I find that I need about an extra 2 - 2.5g sparge water to account for dead space in the HLT, and the amount of undrained wort in the MLT when I finish the sparge.

Originally Posted by schristian619

-I used 3.5 gals for my mash and 4.5 gals for my sparge. I had roughly 6.5-7 gals pre-boil. I forgot to mark my spoon, but I base my estimate on the previous water mark in my kettle from doing 6-6.5 gal boils of extract. After my 60 min boil, I only ended up with 4.5 gals of wort. Why? So I decided to top it off to 5.25. Although this may not have been the best thing to do, I did, and after mixing, I had a OG of 1.057(just about where I should have been according to beersmith).

I would suspect you had less in your kettle than you thought.. Mark up the spoon for the next batch.

Originally Posted by schristian619

-As far as efficiency, I entered my info into beersmith and got about 76%. If this is correct, that seems [petty good for my first time. How do I know if this is right?

Check that you entered the right info into beersmith. If you did this, and your volumes and weights were accurate, then the efficiency will be correct. 76% is great for a first attempt, but certainly not impossible.

-a.

[Brett0424]

Using one cooler for a mash tun and one for a lauter tun is no problem. People have been brewing with separate mash and lauter tuns for a loong time.

Your sparge rate wasn't too fast, heck you got 76% your first time. The fastest you should ever take it is a quart per minute and you were well below that. Besides, the flow rate isn't determined by your sparge arm, that's just used to keep up with the drain rate at the bottom of the lauter tun. Next time try sparging with your full boil volume though. That way you'll maintain the water level above the grain bed the whole time.

Evaporation rate varies from kettle to kettle. If you're using a converted keg with a huge amount of surface area relative to the volume then boiling off 2 gallons is not unheard of at all.

The way to tell if your efficiency is right is to just calculate it yourself:
-Estimate 37 gravity pounds per pound of base malt.
-Estimate 34 gravity points per pound of crystal malt.
-Divide the total gravity points by the batch size.
-Divide your actual OG over this number.

For example.
(10 lbs base malt)x(37)=370
(.5 lb crystal)x(34)=17
17+370=387
387/5.25=74
57/74=77%

[schristian619]

Thanks for the responses. I know I shouldnt have transfered the mash, but I had no way of filtering out the grain if I had left it. This won't happen again, I can assure you. I glad to hear that my sparge wasn't too slow, but I will be sure to use more water next time. This was also only my second time using a propane burner(I used to do full boils on my gas range, but it took too long to get to boiling). So I may have boiled off more than I am used to. I'll shoot for a loarger pre-boil amout next time. All in all, I think it went ok though. I used safale us-05 since notty is too hard to find right now, and it is happily fermenting away(It actually started last night, I don't think I ever had a batch start so early with liquid yeast even with a starter!) Anyway, thanks again, I couldnt of even attempted this if it wasn't for all the people here!