First All grain brainstorm

So after finishing my third extract batch I couldn't resist upgrading to all grain. Bought a 7 gal kettle, a burner, fashioned a fancy mash-tun. But I may hold out on the wort chiller for a little while longer if its not 100% necessary.
So all this being said, I want to start pretty big. I'm thinking some kind of really dark stout, but reasonably priced(40 or less). What options do I have? Sweet stout.....but beyond that one idk. I kinda want something middle of the road in intensity seeing as how my last two beers were sweet(blond honey ale and a blue moon clone) My experience with tasting stuff is really limited so Idk where to start. but I suppose it doesn't matter. I started out not liking bitter beer and my first batch has 4oz of hops <_< now I love the fruity flowery awesomeness. My only thing is I don't want anything with milk or fruit for this one.(porters also sound tempting)
I'd like to make something I can show off though. My first batch(sierra Nevada clone) was great for me, but the crowd hates it( I know not my problem but I feed off compliments and I need help drinking these kegs =P)

You could do a dry irish stout (like a guinness) or a robust porter, those aren't too big in price but should satisfy your yearning for a dark roastier beer.

Thundercougarfalconbird said:

My only thing is I don't want anything with milk or fruit for this one.

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Milk stouts do not contain milk, if that is what your are thinking.

A robust porter is probably what you are describing. Especially, the American type.

Batch cost savings really come from buying hops in bulk and yeast harvesting. If money is an issue (and of course it is), then look into those two things. Grains can be had for $15-$20 (you can lower this to $10-$15 with bulk buys but that can wait as it will take >10 batches to realize the savings from buying a grain mill). Saving $4-7 on hops per batch and $6 for a smack pack really add up. If you mail order, try the places with flat shipping charges and order two (or more) batches at a time. Crushed grain will keep in a fridge for weeks.

If you can return the 7 gal. pot and get a 10 gal. pot, you will have less stress. Otherwise, you will have to collect 6 gal, boil it to 4.5, and add 1 gal of water at pitching time. That is perfectly fine, but if you can, collecting 7 gal. and not adding water is preferable. Plus, your hot break activity won't be right at the rim.

The pot is 7.5gallons actually. 2 gallons of boil room(5 gallon pot) was more than enough for my 3 gallon partials so I figured 1.5 gallons in space wont be a noticeable difference. I've never suffered a boil over with that amount of space. I already freeze my yeasties and order multiple kits at a time at Austin home brew. Though the bulk hops will eventually become priority, I'm pretty content with my kits until I get a healthy handle on the finer aspects of all grain.
I went to the liquor store(sells single beers) and tired EVERYTHING they had last night. I really enjoyed the oatmeal stout I got so I may give that a shot, also the new Belgium 1554 Im sipping on now is damn good. Oh, and I got a dogfish head continuously hopped IPA...new favorite beer.

And yea I know they don't use milk idk why I said that, but they do contain lactose do they not? I'm not intolerant, just looking to start with something a little more classic I suppose.

So you haven't done a full boil yet in your new pot? You might want to try that before going full all grain - you might shift your priorities to a wort chiller. Cooling twice as much liquid as you've been boiling is not very fun.

I'm a big fan or brewing foreign export stouts. The recipe in Brewing Classic Styles makes a fantastic beer.

yea, its a real downer now. But I figure if it comes down to it an all grain setup is more important than a cooler

Skip the chiller... Just set it in a cool place with the lid on and come back in the morning. All that time settling makes a pretty trub-free fermenter, as well. That makes harvesting yeast much easier, not having to wash it. First next buy should be a mill. Get a Corona type and you'll be thrilled with the results. Don't let the roller mill crowd tell you they suck... They honestly have no clue.

yea, Ive been looking at mills bc having to order all premilled stuff makes me sad =P

A basic english mild can be a really good start because it has the flavor of a big beer, but is an easy drinker. I've found it was a good way to lure them into drinking stouts and porters. This is one I've brewed several times and its gone way too fast.
Orfy's Mild
7 lbs marris otter (2 row can be subbed)
1 1/2 lbs UK Medium Crystal
5 oz UK Chocolate Malt

Mash 156 @ 60 Mins

.85 oz Fuggles @ 45 (15 IBU)
.85 oz Fuggles @ 15 (8 IBU)

English Yeast

That's crazy talk from El Exorcisto. A mill will not directly help you make better beer. A chiller will.

I'll admit that I'm sympathetic, though - when I started brewing I was soooo concerned about making beer as cheaply as possible. A mill would have been a very tempting toy. Homebrewers are straight up greedy. We whine about losing 4oz of beer to a hydrometer sample. We hunt down malt prices that are 10 cents lower than our current supplier. And don't get me started on hop prices.

Nevertheless, I didn't enjoy my beer nearly as much until I started fixing my process, not my recipes. There's a pretty typical and accepted upgrade path that most homebrewers go through. Partial boil -> full boil -> full boil with chiller -> AG -> temp control

If I could do it again, I'd get temp control before anything else. No other upgrade has made such an enormous impact in the quality of my beers. But that's a hard thing to accept from a new brewer when there are always more ingredients to buy!

I'm going to support the no wort chiller until after all grain. I have chilled my last 2 batches @ 4 gallons in less than 30 minutes with the same plastic bucket I use for my swamp cooler. Just freeze a bunch of half full water and soda bottles the night before and keep that bad boy iced. Not saying wort chillers are useless, but all grain is next for me and I don't intend to get a WC.

kanzimonson said:

Nevertheless, I didn't enjoy my beer nearly as much until I started fixing my process, not my recipes. There's a pretty typical and accepted upgrade path that most homebrewers go through. Partial boil -> full boil -> full boil with chiller -> AG -> temp control

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I am currently on the last part of this updgrade path. I just have to convince my wife to let me place a chest freezer in the garage.

Personally, I wouldn't do a full boil without a wort chiller. Even with partial boils, I had a hard time getting the temp down in an ice bath.

And if you like hops at all, it's an easy decision to make.

Every time I've upgraded my chilling capabilities, my hoppy beers get better and better. I went from kitchen sink -> crazy ass device that I could submerge my kettle in and run cool water around the outside -> copper immersion chiller -> using an aquarium pump to run cold water through the IC -> whirlpool chiller with a march pump.

The Citra pale ale was the first hoppy beer that I made with the whirlpool chiller. It's wrapping up fermentation now and has such a complex hop aroma. I can't imagine how hopheads can make a no chill brew.

kanzimonson said:

That's crazy talk from El Exorcisto. A mill will not directly help you make better beer. A chiller will.

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I disagree. Check out the long and involved thread on no-chill brewing here on HBT. It's absolutely possible to produce clean, clear, and haze-free beer, without a chiller, using barely any more equipment than most extract brewers already own.

kanzimonson said:

If I could do it again, I'd get temp control before anything else. No other upgrade has made such an enormous impact in the quality of my beers. But that's a hard thing to accept from a new brewer when there are always more ingredients to buy!

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Totally agree here. Temperature control makes a big difference in quality.

kanzimonson has a difficult time believing anything not espoused by Jamil or Palmer... If you feel the same affliction, then by all means you should get a chiller, three Blichman pots to work with each with their own burner, a hopback, your own alpha acid lab, well... you get the idea.

Start brewing beer, then get the expensive toys. All grain beer is better in every conceivable way that extract, so get moving on it. A mill is a cheap tool that will put you farther towards doing it better.

If you like the hoppy taste, bitter or not, and you wan something to show off to friends or whatever, you can try a black IPA. I just brewed one and i have very high hopes for it. Really, just find an IPA recipe that you like and throw a half pound of Black Patent malt in there.
Also, as far as the wort chiller goes, I'd say it is a must. Obviously you can avoid getting one with ice baths and what it, but to save yourself the giant headache and money of getting an ice bath together, you can spend $28 and go to Home Depot and get all of the supplies to make your own in 20 minutes. It's really simple. Look up videos in YouTube. several people have videos on how to make them and they are really helpful!
Good luck!

El_Exorcisto said:

kanzimonson has a difficult time believing anything not espoused by Jamil or Palmer... If you feel the same affliction, then by all means you should get a chiller, three Blichman pots to work with each with their own burner, a hopback, your own alpha acid lab, well... you get the idea.

Start brewing beer, then get the expensive toys. All grain beer is better in every conceivable way that extract, so get moving on it. A mill is a cheap tool that will put you farther towards doing it better.

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George Fix wrote a lot of papers on how you should not brew a single batch until you have $5k of equipment. It's just fact.

kanzimonson said:

George Fix wrote a lot of papers on how you should not brew a single batch until you have $5k of equipment. It's just fact.

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Okay that's going a bit too far. However, you shouldn't get ahead of yourself. You ARE going to have to buy some more equipment. A 7.5 gallon kettle with all grain WILL cause problems with boilovers. A wort chiller IS a very worthwhile investment. A grain mill is nice to have but the mill at the LHBS is probably better than what you will get anyway. If it were me, I would get the chiller next. I waited 12 batches or so and when I got it I kicked myself for not getting it earlier. I would also get into kegging before I even thought about a mill, perhaps even before getting into all grain.

Well I got the 7.5 gallon kettle bc it came with a burner, a big thermometer and a baster(freezing yeast me thinks) for 60 bucks, and although boil-overs are a concern(1ish gallons of space is seriously not enough? none of my beers have even bubbled that much) its a big step up from my 5 gallon pot with no burner and no extra fun stuff.
I never done a full boil, those big pots are just crazy expensive. But my very first batch was kegged(I'm a perfectionist). I just finished a kegerator,brass fitted mashtun,hop spider, and about a billion other "little trips to lowes". My next investment will be a chiller for sure. But the choice was cool extract faster or switch to AG, one is obviously much more tempting.
By temp control do you mean during the boil or fermentation?(and if during a boil I'm curious as to what kind of equipment is used beyond the handy thermometer)

First: I boil 5 gal batches in a 7.5 gal kettle with little problem. If you turn off the heat right as your wort gets to about 211F and hold for 10-15 minutes, you'll coagulate a lot of the hot break material that actually leads to boilover problems. Although I've recently become a convert to fermcap-s, as it also helps with blowoff during fermentation and excessive foam formation during aeration (I aerate rather than oxygenate).

Second: without a chiller, there's a slight chance you'll get some DMS flavors in your beer as the beer falls through the DMS production temps (140-200), or more strictly speaking the SMM conversion temps or whatever. A slightly longer (90 minute) boil helps on that front. As it happens, I've boiled at 7 gallons to 5.5 gallons for my 90 minute boil quite frequently. In a 7.5 gallon pot, no less. That should be fine, although I have to admit that I absolutely adore my wort chiller.

Third: stout recipe:

9.5 # maris otter
1 # flaked oats (either from the hbs or instant oats, not quick or old-fashioned oats)
12 oz victory malt
12 oz 350 chocolate
8 oz crystal 80
8 oz roast barley

Mash @ 152F for 60 minutes. If you don't use instant oats, you'll need to do a cereal mash too.

90 minute boil.
Target OG 1.060 or thereabouts OG (post-boil).
about 10-12 AAU of EK Goldings @ 60 minutes

Ferment with WLP 002 or equivalent (I just use calale and heat it up a bit for some esters).

This is pretty much Jamil Zainasheff's award-winning oatmeal stout recipe. I'm very fond of it.

Fourth: For your first AG batch, grab some DME at the store. It's very likely (if you're like me and any of the other people I've spoken to) that your first batch will come out under gravity. Toss in some DME at the start of the boil to make up the difference.

Remember though: measuring gravity at 150F or whatever your wort runoff is will require adjustment- I thought I was WAY low my first batch, but that was because I forgot that I need to add about 0.015 to the measured gravity. Also remember that the runoff you're measuring is preboil gravity. Your actual OG will be higher, since you lose a gallon or so to the boil.

Even still, be ready to adjust with some DME. As a process suggestion, I also recommend that you pick a recipe that you'd like to drink a lot of. It's probably a good idea to plan on brewing the same thing four or five times in a row to work out the kinks in your process before moving on to more recipes.

If you're doing batch sparging, I've found that the best thing to do is adjust your mash thickness (provided your result mash thickness is between 1.25 and 2 qt/lb) to the point where you collect 50% of your preboil volume from the initial runnings and 25% from each of two sparges. That's where I get the most efficiency on my setup. I also got a lot more efficiency when I remembered to wait 15 minutes on the sparge itself (mix in the water, wait 15 minutes, run off) in order to dissolve more sugars. Between 10 and 15 minutes, this was a big deal. For the recipe above, I mash at about 1.5 qt/lb, which yields approx 3.3 gal of first runnings, leaving me to sparge twice with 1.8 gallons each time. But I'm sure that varies from setup to setup.

By temp control, we're talking about during fermentation. Ideally you're around 68 for the first 3-5 days, and then as things wind down you slowly ramp the temp up to maybe 72-74 to encourage the yeast to finish fermenting and cleanup after themselves.

When you're a new brewer, you say things like, "Eh, I like fruity esters - I don't mind fermenting at 72" or "Those guys on the forum don't know what they're talking about - my bread rises at 80 degrees just fine." At least, these are things that I said. But temp control makes an amazing difference - it really takes your focus away from "recipes make good beer" to "yeast makes good beer."

EDIT: Those temps I quoted are for ales.

Pfooti- that helps a ton, Im actually going to save a majority of your post in my notes
and kanzi- lol I just freeze and thaw my roomates by altering the house temperatures, I keep a thermometer on my carboy and I regulate temps pretty thoroughly. From my readings I've heard it makes a difference but I'm such a stickler that I've never NOT done it :rockin:

Nice. I guess regulating with the AC works well enough in the winter... when the summer comes along you might have to make some adjustments. That's good that you have the thermometer on the carboy - I knew a guy who swore his beers' temp control was fine (read: he had NO TEMP CONTROL) but he refused to check it with a thermometer... a case of "if I don't know about it, it's not a problem."

yea.any summer solutions beyond buying ANOTHER fridge?

Do yourself, and your future brews, a huge favor... Get/make/beg/borrow/steal a wort chiller of some kind.

I made my current chiller from 20' of 3/8" utility grade copper tubing, some high temp tolerant hose, clamps and a fitting to get it onto the sink faucet... Made a HUGE difference in cool-down temps for me. Especially since going to full batch size boils. Typically, I'm seeing ~15 minutes from boiling to under 65F with the chiller (using winter water temperatures). I figure about 18.5 feet of copper is actually in the wort to chill it down.

With extract brews, and partial boils, you can use ice in the actual wort to chill it down faster. Not really an option once you go full batch size boiling.

With a chiller, and the faster cool-down time frame, you seriously reduce the risk of any contamination for your brew. You can go from boil, into primary, in under ~20 minutes (depending on the water temp you're using)... Also doesn't matter if you remembered to make ice the day before.

As for making an all-grain brew for under $40... That can be pretty damned easy, depending on where you get your grain, and it's cost... My most expensive AG brew, to date, was an ESB I made, with purchased yeast ($8 for liquid up here) and it still only came to ~$27... I have a chocolate cream stout recipe that's under $33, with purchased yeast... Coming in at just under 9% ABV, it's a nice dark, hearty brew... Hell, you could make a Guinness FES clone for under $30... Depending on where you get your honey, you could even make a solid Braggot for not much more than $40 (depending on how strong you want to make it)...

Guess the point of that is you can make almost anything you would want (in a 5 gallon batch) for under $40 with all-grain brewing.

You need to make an oatmeal stout. Since you mentioned that you did not like bitter beers and your friends did not like your SN clone, an oatmeal stout might be right up your alley. Think of a smooth stout with a creamy mouthfeel. Ever tried Sam Smith's oatmeal stout? IMO my recipe is better or maybe its because it has not crossed any oceans.

ALso AG brewing can easily be done for less than $20 for your avg abv 5 gallon batch. Figure out what beers you like best and buy a sack of base grain in bulk.

Good Luck
Alan

My 2 pennies:

I'm new to all grain, myself. Brewed my first batch on Superbowl Sunday. It was a 5 gal Irish Dry Stout in a 7.5 gal kettle. No worries. 10 drops of Fermcap-S == no boil overs.

I've been doing partial mashes with a 7.5 turkey fryer and boilover is always a factor. I have to watch over it quite a bit with a spray bottle nearby. If you want to do a full boil it will be around 6.5 gallons to start with, not much head space left there.

My next batch will be with the keg I found on craigslist.