elizabeth99

Recipes 

Hey,
I am brand new and decided to jump in on an all grain 1 gallon beer. It's a mint chocolate dark beer. recipe amalgamated from 4 different recipes.

I used 16 cups of water and the 3 cups of grain at the start. Then I drained and boiled with hops, chocolate, and mint tea at various times. I filled up 1 gallon carboy about 1/3 of the way up with water, then added the wort.

I took the hydro reading after adding water and it was 1.000.

Did I add too much water? Should I have taken hydro reading before I added wort to water? Is adding water normal?

Should I just 'relax and have a homebrew'?

The spent grain is going to be made into sourdough bread tommorrow - so it won't be a waste!

buttcord

Recipes 

Did you crush the grain? What was your mash temp?

elizabeth99

Recipes 

Crushed with rolling pin. 200 F. (I think - took grains up to 200, then pulled and drained and boiled wort)

menerdari

Recipes 

I have to question the accuracy of your reading, distilled water is 1.000, even if your wort had a small amount of color to it then it has to be higher the 1.000

menerdari

Recipes 

200 deg is way too hot to mash. low to mid 150s is about right. above 170 will release tanins.

tally350z

Recipes 

What grains did you use. You mashed at 200*F? You probably killed all the Enzymes...

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Slainte-brew

Recipes 

Forget tannins, won't that hot just stop all enzymes and you'll get no conversion? Did you take a hydrometer reading? You might not have gotten any sugar out of the grains .

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WoodlandBrew

Recipes 

Unfortunately what you did is not going to make beer.

Crushing with a rolling pin is not going to expose much of the starch of the grain. Try crushing at your LHBS next time.
Your mash temperature was way to hot. You want to maintain 150 degrees for 60 minutes to convert the starch to sugar.
You might have an accurate reading of dissolved sugar at 1.000, which means you aren't going to get any beer from this batch.

Read the BIAB sticky if you want to try all grain:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

Extract is much harder to mess up. You might give that a go first.

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Yooper

Recipes 

Well, that's way too hot so you didn't get any sugar out of the grain. That's why your reading is the same as pure water.

Throw it out, and start over.

Next time, use a scale so you can weigh your grain. Make sure you use two-row malted barley, run your recipe by the forum so they can tell you if you have the right ingredients to convert.

Use 1.25- 2 quarts of water per pound of grain. Add the water to the grain when the water is 165 degrees, and stir well. You want to target a mash temperature of 150-155 for an hour. After an hour, lift out the grains and then pour 170 degree water over it up to your boil volume. If you want to end up with 1 gallon, you probably need to start with two gallons of liquid. Then start your boil, adding hops at the correct time.

That's all there is to it!

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Slainte-brew

Recipes 

Sorry, double post .

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