FIRST all grain, Fun as hell

I finally made the leap to all grain this afternoon and everything went seamless. Better than my first extract. I did six extract brews and then decided to do this as an experiment to see if i could do it. I went into it really not knowing too much and not being very confident but it seemed easy enough. I got a turkey fryer on the cheap 48 qt Rubbermaid cooler with stainless braid and made a short IC (20'). So i jumped into it today and it couldn’t have gone smoother.

ESB:
Batch size 5.25gal
10lb maris otter pale malt
1lb crystal 60
Touch of chocolate malt for color
1oz fuggles 60min
1oz fuggles 30 min
1oz fuggles 5 min

Doughed in with 3.5 gal of water @ 170 (maybe a bit higher)
The cooler made some weird noises when I put the strike water in almost like ice cracking, no leaks though.
Added grains and hit 152-153 and held for an hour
After hour added1 gallon @ 190 to make half of my boil volume (it didn’t change
Collected 3.125 gallons on first runoff, planned on getting3 .25 but now I know)
The temp in the tun like I wanted to but no big deal voulourof(sp) only took a few quarts)
I sparged with 3.5 gallons @ 190 hit 170 on the dot) a qt extra to compensate for the loss i had in the first funoff (the funny thing is I am looking at my notes and I collected 3.75 gal on the sparge that’s more than I put in there, could be a mistake with my chicken scratch)
I collected my sweet wort in my bottling bucket and stupidly dumped it in the pot so if there really is something with HSA ill have it on this brew, haha on my sparge I started a siphon from the bucket then half way through waiting for it to go I realized the bottling bucket has a spigot, much better, ill remember for next time)
I planned on coming up with 6.5 gallons pre-boil but had 6.875, no big deal.
Fired up the burner came to boil in 10 minutes or so added my hops cracked a homebrew and kept a nice rolling boil for an hour.
Threw my chiller in with fifteen minutes left.
Took only about 15 minutes to chill down to pitching temps, could have been faster if remembered to make sure the water was flowing slower.
Siphoned the wort into the fermenter GOT EXACTLY 5.25 gallons @1.051
I put the recipe into beer smith guessing a 65% efficiency and it told me 1.051 and hit that perfectly I am happy with 65%
Shook like a mad man for a few minutes and pitched some re-hydrated dry yeast.

That was it couldn’t have been more easier. I doughed in at 3:15 and pitched at 7:15, almost on the dot.
Things I will do different next time definitely need a couple good thermometers so i can read by the degree instead of increments of ten (it was basically a guessing game). Preheat the mash tun a little higher I probably mashed more around 150 than 154 but couldn’t tell exactly. Try to stir grains while adding them instead of all at once, remember that even though I am not dealing with malt syrup sweet wort is very sticky, drink more homebrew during the boil, take neater notes, and that’s about it. All in all it was a great brew day I can’t wait to do it again. As I am finshing this post up I looked behind me about 2 hours later I got bubbles!

ANy suggestions or critiques of my method would definitly be welcomed.

Congrats on the AG !

Notes are improtant...put them in good handwriting or on the computer. Its easy to forget what you did a few weeks/months ago.

re: Strike water...You can add a bit of hot/boiling water to the cooler (and dump it before adding grain) This will prevent the cooler from absorbing the heat - and keep the mash temp a little more easy to reach.

Cheers.

tbulger,

I just finished making my mash lauter tun from a 12 gallon rubbermaid and you're making it unbearable to wait 3 weeks before my first all grain batch

Thanks for making it sound so easy, I'm looking forward to my first AG!

Yeah, I pre-heat my cooler too. Never add water over 170 degrees though. Coolers were designed to keep things cold, not hot.

Boiling water can ruin a cooler. 10 minutes with a gallon of 150 to 170 water will do wonders for you.

ahhhh!!!!!
I wanna go AG! :rockin:

Sounds great.

My only critique is you waited until the boil to pop a brew.

That should be step one IMO.

Congrats on the first AG! Mine wasn't that long ago, I remember how much fun I had too. I second (or third? can't remember) the pre-heating of the mash tun. My tap water is fairly hot so I fill it up almost to the top and let it sit while waiting for the sparge water to heat. Just before the sparge water gets to temp I crack the valve and drain it out. My dough-in temps have been bang on since I started doing this.

Edit: I should mention (since it's a fair amount of water) that I don't just run it down the sink. I collect it into a garbage can and use it for cleaning when I'm finished.

Yah i wanted to have a homebrew earlier but i had, thee buckets laying around two full of water/starsan two pots, cooler with one side up on a phone book, 3 and half gallons of 170-180 ina 16qt pot, lifintg that over to the cooler and up in the air, a small apartment kitchen and a small 10X10 deck, a new turkey fryer burner which scares me because i put it together, nothing could go wrong after the boil started so thats when is started drinking. Next time ill make sure to start earlier though

5 hours= a arilock activity every four seconds. Ive had a few!

Right on!

My first AG was with a grain bag a big big colender a big bowl and I mashed in my brewpot....worked out fine but it was a bit of a PITA...

Congrads!

Don't worry about the HSA stuff..If you pour from your mash tun and then boil, you boil out the O2 so no worries..I don't worry about HSA anyway.



Dan

Willsellout said:

Don't worry about the HSA stuff..If you pour from your mash tun and then boil, you boil out the O2 so no worries..I don't worry about HSA anyway.
Dan

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That's wrong. A chemical reaction occurs to bind the o2 with the wort that boiling can't remove it.

On the origional posters comment on chilling.... running the water faster through the chiller will cool faster due to a greater difference between the temperture of the chiller and the wort. This will make the chiller absorb heat faster, even though the chiller exit water will be colder.

Oh thanks for the advice about the chiller i used a spray nozzle to connect the in-tube to the laundry hookup so it flows pretty fast and when it wasnt comming out hot i thought i had read somehwere that slower water flow helped cool faster, so thanks for correcting me.

Ain't it great?

My cooler did the ice cracking thing the first few times too. She'll get broken in just like anything else...

Good notes.

They take me back to my first. Did you get any pics?

With a quick boil-to-pitch temperature change, did you have a lot of cold break trub?

The cracking noise is normal. I find that the least fun part of the process is dealing with the spent grains. Heavy, hot and sticky.

Now, only three days till the weekend, what are you brewing next?

NO pics i will have my girlfriend take some next time. Im not reaaly sure what the cold break is but i dont think so, i used muslin bags for the hops if thats why i didint see much. Right after i heard the cracking i thought the cooler was going to break apart. Every drop of water around it had me thinking there was a leak and my brew was done. I have read alot of posts about problems and never came across teh cracking cooler, seems like it would have come up before. My roomate wasnt too happy about the mash inside out apartment, i told him to take a whif of the cooler and he said he almost threw up, i LOVE the mash smell. I just put them in a trash bag, actually there still on my deck, ishould put them in the dumpster sometime soon.
As for the next recipe i gotta wait 10 days, only one primary i should get another, but then i would need two more secondarys, hmmm i did save some money with this recipe maybe....

I have a hard time comming up with what to brew next. Actually muncher ive been looking at your wit recipe for a while i need something good for the summer, did you use just a regular orange peel and what is corrinder seeds?

Yeah make sure to dump that old mash before the lactos start settling in. Now that is an awful curdled milk vomit poo smell. Takes only a few days at room temp.

tbulger said:

I have a hard time comming up with what to brew next. Actually muncher ive been looking at your wit recipe for a while i need something good for the summer, did you use just a regular orange peel and what is corrinder seeds?

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Here is what cold break looks like.


You can order Bitter Orange Zest and Coriander Seed from your home brew shop in 1 Oz packets for like $2.00.

Coriander seed is from the cilantro plant. Adds a nice zing to the beer. 3/4 Oz for a five gallon batch...crushed.

I put the strike water in the mash tun before I add my grain, and after the water drops to the required temp I stir the grain in well after dumping it all in. Does anyone else do it this way? I usually hit my mash temp right on the nose or only maybe two degrees off doing it this way, and I've had decent results.

I alternate between grain and strike water in 2 or 3 additions until it's all in the MT. I've hit my temps right on the money. Preheating the MT so thermal transfer is minimized helps.

i dumped all the water in first them my grains seemd to work fine, maybe a alitte on the low side but good enough

I think Willsellout is right to be skeptical about HSA. Basic Brewing Radio did a segment about that, and the experiment determined that HSA only occurs when the hot wort is beaten to death with an egg beater. It is more a problem for commercial brewers using pumping systems. I think the best advice is to try not to shake it up a bunch and relax.

Yah i wasnt too worried about HSA ill try to avoid it as much as possible in the future just because why not its easy enough to siphon and open the bottling spigot, easy enough.

My biggest reaction after doing my first AG batch was much the same: This Is Really Fun! I wanna do this again.

In fact, now I need to really guzzle the last of my extract batches to make room for some more AG's.

I really stressed over this for a couple of years. I didn't understand the whole mashing and sparging concept. I also didn't want to build my own mash tun. I solved the problem by (gasp) buying a cooler kit for my AG setup and then by asking questions here at this forum until I was steered to easy directions for mashing.

My first two batches went very smoothly and were just thoroughly enjoyable to do.

chillHayze said:

Yeah make sure to dump that old mash before the lactos start settling in. Now that is an awful curdled milk vomit poo smell. Takes only a few days at room temp.

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Man i made that mistake with my first brew, came home from school and work, the whole house smelled like an infected band-aid. ewwww

I still have not moved those grains, there outside anyways.

MY girlfriend bought me my brewing kit for christmas, i brewed my first extract in january and right away i knew i wanted to do more. I didnt expect to to make the jump over so quickly but ive read about everyones problems and suggestions all over this board that i figured as long i had the basics down i could do it. I just started drinking my first beer with speacialty grains and what a difference. With batch sparging it just is so easy, and with very limited knowledge it whould be easy for any one. It just intimidating when you read books like The complete joy and they tell you stop at the beginer section untill you get that prcoess under your belt and then the all grain sections are labeled ADVANCED BREWing techinques. Its realy not all that difficult.

I don't think all grain brewing is any more difficult than extract brewing given directions, it just takes more time and attention to detail.

AG can be easy. Or it can be involved. Never difficult. Difficult involves stress, which has no place in homebrewing.

Congrads. I am building my AG setup too. I can't wait. I also just received my Temp controller and and old fridge. Pretty soon i'll be brewing AG Lagers.

fiddup_is_a_middup said:

Congrads. I am building my AG setup too. I can't wait. I also just received my Temp controller and and old fridge. Pretty soon i'll be brewing AG Lagers.

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You never imagined how much better temp control will make your beer.