First All Grain prep help

Well all the hard work of assembling my AG kit is done. Here is a rundown -

40 qt rect cooler with copper manifold and bulkhead
1/2 barrel converted keggle with bulkhead
1/4 barrel (7.75 gal) converted water pot or 30 qt turkey fryer aluminum pot
25 ft 3/8 copper immersion wort chiller
55,000 btu high pressure Bayou classic burner

My first recipe is attached at bottom. The only instructions I have is:
Infusion 154F 60 mins 10 min mashout batch sparge

Per the sticky on this board, I plan to use 1.25 quarts per pound of grain.
I was going to figure sparge water based on how much more I will need for a 6.5 gallon pre-boil volume

Mash water = 10.25 * 1.25 qts = 12.8 qts = 3.2 gallons - 20% absorbed = 2.6 gallons wort
Sparge Water = 6.5 gal - 2.6 gal = 3.9 gallons

I plan to pour some hot water in to preheat tun. I will bring strike water to 157 and pour in to cooler and let drop to 154, then add grains. (please comment on strike water temp, because I think I need to compensate for grains reducing the temp below 154 and do not know how to calculate proper temp)

I will then let sit for 60 min. Ok, don't know how to work the mashout 10 min part....please help.

QUESTIONS
1) Please comment on my plan
2) Strike water temp?(to end up at 154 in cooler after grain is added)
3) Mashout? (how to?, necessary?)
4) "what to do if you don't hit those targets"
5) Do I need to monitor pH and/or gravities - if so whats procedure?
6) any good ways to track/calculate this stuff without software?

Thanks for your comments!

Craig

RECIPE
========================
Flat Ass Tired

Brew Type: All Grain
Style: American Amber Ale
Batch Size: 5.00 gal Assistant Brewer: Beer Wench
Boil Volume: 6.5 gal Boil Time: 90 min

Ingredients
6.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3 SRM) Grain 58.5 %
2.00 lb Amber Malt (22 SRM) Grain 19.5 % (home toasted Pale Malt)
1.00 lb Munich Malt (9 SRM) Grain 9.8 %
0.50 lb Biscuit Malt (23 SRM) Grain 4.9 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.25 lb Special Roast (50 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.75 oz Northern Brewer [8.5%] (60 min) Hops 22.8 IBU *
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (30 min) Hops 7.6 IBU
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (15 min) Hops 4.9 IBU
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (5 min) Hops 2.0 IBU
American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [Starter 1000 ml]

* Due to hop shortage I am using 1oz Challenger instead of the Northern

Beer Profile Estimated Original Gravity: 1.058 SG (1.045-1.056 SG)
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.014 SG (1.010-1.015 SG)
Estimated Color: 12 SRM (11-18 SRM) Color [Color]
Bitterness: 37.2 IBU (20.0-40.0 IBU) Alpha Acid Units: 2.4 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 5.7 % (4.5-5.7 %)

It looks like you are ready....use these tools on the internet to help you figure out mash temp and amount of strike and sparge water needed. I use a batch sparge method.

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/sparge.html
http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php

Also watch this video series with chris knight...i have watched these 20 times before my first AG and i followed his technique exactly and i nailed my OG

Good luck on your first all grain adventure. Your plan looks pretty good. Some things that have worked for me: Do preheat your mash tun with hot water. To mash at 154 with 10.25 lbs of grain requires a strike temp of 167. If you dont hit 154 by a degree or two you can always drain off and heat up a portion of the mash to raise temps, or add cool water to reduce the temp. Mash out by sparging with 170 degree water. Id heat up more sparge water than you think you need just so you dont run out before collecting the required amount for the boil. Plus it is nice to have hot water available for clean up. You measure specific gravity with a hydrometer. It measures the sugar content of your wort after the boil/cool down just before pitching yeast. It is not absolutely required, but I would say a necessary piece of equipment for all grain brewing. I wouldnt worry so much about ph right now.

Nanobru said:

You measure specific gravity with a hydrometer. It measures the sugar content of your wort after the boil/cool down just before pitching yeast. It is not absolutely required, but I would say a necessary piece of equipment for all grain brewing. I wouldnt worry so much about ph right now.

Click to expand...

Guess I shouldn't have asked procedure for hydrometer...have always used it but had heard of people taking gravity readings during brewing for something.

As far as pH, I was planning on using a big water machine to fill 5 gallon jugs. My home water has a softener on it and I don't know if certain faucets are on it or not.

I wouldn't worry terribly about ph on the first brew. And not really about what the gravity runnings are while you're draining either. In my opinion, make yourself a list, shoot for a specific volume in your brew kettle, and enjoy it.

That said, do take about a 1 cup sample of the first runnings, the final runnings, and your total pre-boil gravity. Those sorts of things are going to give you a good baseline of what your system is efficiency wise.

+1 on preheating the mashtun and making more sparge water than you predict needing. the first time using equipment you never know for sure how the grain absorption and dead space in the lautertun are going to add up. make sure your thermometer(s) are accurate and you have a good timer for the mash/hop additions. your first AG often takes a long time make sure you have plenty of homebrews and something to eat if the fridge, I always make a few sandwiches the day before.

kmlavoy said:

I wouldn't worry terribly about ph on the first brew. And not really about what the gravity runnings are while you're draining either. In my opinion, make yourself a list, shoot for a specific volume in your brew kettle, and enjoy it.

That said, do take about a 1 cup sample of the first runnings, the final runnings, and your total pre-boil gravity. Those sorts of things are going to give you a good baseline of what your system is efficiency wise.

Click to expand...

I am very interested in this. When you say first runnings, do you mean after the mash has set for 60 minutes, take the first cup when doing your vorlauf? And would final runnings be just before the mash is done draining? (or while draining your sparge?)

Now after getting those numbers, how do I calculate the efficiency?

See my post here.

Brewing software is essential. I use Promash some people use Beersmith. It is a very good investment.

You multiply the amount of gallons you collected pre boil by the way.

It certainly appears that you have done your homework and you're ready to go. Let us know how it turns out!

You do have a good plan, now relax and just do it. I was still looking like the three stooges on my third AG. On the fourth things started to fall in place. (I have done seven so far - I think.) So take this with a grain of salt, but at least the memories are very fresh.
First thing, have the plan written out, Get a good control of your volumes, easiest way is to mark your stirring spoon with gals set to your boil pot.
Do not loose count of your input water. I use a 2qt pitcher and I can loose count between 2-3 1/2 gallons. No I have not had a beer but my mind tends to wander.
I tend to take gravity readings right after I finish volofing(sp?) and my collections. Don't worry about it on your first couple of batches.
DON'T PANIC.
But it is very handy to look back at and learn from.
Last suggestion. Write down notes all the time, the more you write down the better it is to go back and make improvements.
Now just go out and do it, I'm pretty anal in planning but the plan always is destroyed in the first contact with the enemy. This board is great on helping people deal with a bad brew day, trust me on this I know that for a fact.

Anyone have any comments on a fermentation schedule for this one? Secondary?

There are people who like to secondary and some that don't but I have had good success. I say 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary at least and the 3 in bottles. Then you will be good to go.

Choguy03 said:

There are people who like to secondary and some that don't but I have had good success. I say 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary at least and the 3 in bottles. Then you will be good to go.

Click to expand...

Is this just your standard fermentation schedule? Seems like a long time. Would it be ok to do 1 week/1 week?

Craig

Yeah, but why rush something that could be so good? If anything you should keep it in the primary for two weeks, maybe 10 days at least. But the longer in secondary the more clear the beer. The choice is up to you.

kmlavoy said:

That said, do take about a 1 cup sample of the first runnings, the final runnings, and your total pre-boil gravity. Those sorts of things are going to give you a good baseline of what your system is efficiency wise.

Click to expand...

I would like to know some basic measurements I can take while brewing my first batch to measure my efficiency. Oh, and don't worry, I am not being anal...I will be relaxing and having a homebrew. I just so happen to be a freak that likes to do calculations and know the numbers behind the process.

I downloaded Beersmith and just jumped in...love it. Like the idea of really knowing my system so that once I get better I can make my own recipes and know exactly what I will get from my system.

So, what/when do I measure and do I just correct SG readings with the temp corrections or cool them down to 60 deg?(pain)

Here's my steps...please note where I should measure.
- Hold at 154 60 min
- Add 1.9 gal @ 170 to stop enzyme activity and replace water absorbed
- Vorlauf until clear and run off into brew pot (Is this my first runnings to get an SG on?)
- Add 4.07 gal sparge water at 170
- Vorlauf until clear and run off into brew pot (Is this my second runnings to get SG on?)
- Take SG for Pre-boil amount?
- Perform boil, take final SG

Thanks!

cbird01 - Are your fly sparging or batch?
Some good things to ID and plug into beersmith, Determine your dead space. This is how much water is left in the mash tun after you drain say 2 gallons of water. Now in reality double that for beersmith. (unless you want to wait 30 minutes for all the water to soak through your bed.
If you batch sparge I would recommend not doing the mash out, collect your first draw/runnings and start heating that as you do TWO equal size batch sparges.

The only things you need to collect for efficiency are your SG of your wort pre-boil and the total volume of wort collected. If you use those two numbers, that should give you your efficiency.

Kauai_Kahuna said:

cbird01 - Are your fly sparging or batch?
Some good things to ID and plug into beersmith, Determine your dead space. This is how much water is left in the mash tun after you drain say 2 gallons of water. Now in reality double that for beersmith. (unless you want to wait 30 minutes for all the water to soak through your bed.
If you batch sparge I would recommend not doing the mash out, collect your first draw/runnings and start heating that as you do TWO equal size batch sparges.

Click to expand...

I am doing batch sparges.

So you think I should just do two sparge of roughly 3 gallons each? Just curious as to why....increase efficiency?

cbird01 said:

So you think I should just do two sparge of roughly 3 gallons each? Just curious as to why....increase efficiency?

Click to expand...

The first runnings usually start getting heated right away so there is no real need for a mashout, if your bed is at 150F or higher. I can usually pull 2 gals on my first run, then I use two separate batch sparges of 2 1/2 gallons of around 180F to get to my pre-boil volume.

Kauai_Kahuna said:

The first runnings usually start getting heated right away so there is no real need for a mashout, if your bed is at 150F or higher. I can usually pull 2 gals on my first run, then I use two separate batch sparges of 2 1/2 gallons of around 180F to get to my pre-boil volume.

Click to expand...

Guess I do not understand some of the concepts. I do not know what the purpose of a mashout is. What is the relation with the first runnings getting heated right away. Also, seems like there isn't much difference between the mashout and the first of 2 batch sparges other than a lower volume.

Craig <---------noob AG

A mash out raises the grain bed temp so enzyme activity ceases. The hotter you are the more unfermentable sugars you are left with so hitting 170ish stops that. A mash out is adding 2 quarts of boiling to the grain bed, but two equal sparges accomplish the same thing as a mashout and help you rinse the sugars into your wort. This is what gives you good efficiency....plus crush, plus mash pH, plus hitting your temps....the list goes on, but you get the idea.

Brew day complete!

It was a mixed bag on brew day. Feels good to get it under my belt, but I definitely had some complications. Was proud that I hit my mash temp on the nose! (I pre-heated but still came up short on my strike temp, so I ran off a gallon, boiled it and added back to tun to bring up the temp to strike temp - mash target was right on 154 after adding grain)

First up...Beersmith seems to have given me too much water. I should have caught it, because rule of thumb lose 1 gal per hour. It told me to have a boil volume of 7.89 gal. It WAS a 90 minute boil and I had a post-mash volume of 7 gallon out of the tun. Beersmith Mash schedule was 14 qts mash, plus 6 gallons sparge water(I split into two 3 gallon batches). Had to add 0.9 gal to get my 7.9gal boil volume. Ended up with 6.5 gallons after boil completed. Was confused as I needed 5.5 gallons post boil! So, I removed my hop bag and cranked up the regulator and went from rolling boil to rigorous boil. Boiled for an extra hour to boil down to 5.5 gallons. Of course it was 11PM now and I didn't check soon enough and boiled down to 5 gal on accident. Added 0.5 gallons of fresh water and started cooling down.

Second up...Well a 1/2 barrel keggle with 5.5 gallons wort is apparently not a good match for a store purchased immersion chiller that is designed to have more coils on the top for the hotter wort. I couldn't get about 6 of the coils layers into the wort due to the low level of wort with the big boil keggle. The wort level was just too low. THUS..took me damn near 40 minutes to cool down to 75. In retrospect, I should have transferred to my 30 qt turkey fryer and chilled (but pride took over, cause then I could not use my brand new bulkhead I installed in the keggle!) Bad move for my 11:30 PM brain. Not only that, I had to insert the whole immersion chiller into the keggle and one of the fittings leaked a little into the wort until I tightened the clamp.

Third....Almost NO Hot or cold break at all!!! Not sure if it was the additional hour boil at a vigorous pace (not rolling) and/or the slow chilling with a very non-effective immersion chiller working at 1/2 capacity.

Fourth - Ended up at just 5 gallons into fermenter. I usually top off to 5.5 to allow for losses.

Results - Ended up with 65% efficiency into boiler and 69% brewhouse efficiency (1.051 out of 1.055)

QUESTIONS:

Are the volumes I am getting correct? With my equipment inputted into Brewsmith, it tells me to have pre-boil volume of 7.89 for a 5.5 gallon batch, 90 minute boil. {Settings - 10 gal/9lb plastic mash tun, 14%/hour evap (1 gal/hour), lost to trub and chiller 0.5 gal, cooling % loss is 4%, lauter tun deadspace 0.25 gal} Mash volume seems right at 1.25 qt/lg grain...told me to use 6 gallons of sparge water. Not sure why it computes so much for the boil. Changing my boil time to 60 minute drops it to 7.25 gal pre-boil.


Why do you think I had no hot/cold break and what is this going to do to my beer? Should I do anything to compensate?


Should I modify my immersion chiller design(smash down so there is not space between the 1 or 2 bottom coils and the majority of the rest of coils on top) or just forget about my nifty bulkhead and chill in my turkey fryer and siphon into fermentor(or funnel)?


Any words of wisdom?

Next one should go smoother with this noob experience under my belt...

Craig
Flagstaff, AZ

I wouldn't squish my chiller. I would maybe make it wider so that it is about 2 inches away from the walls of you kettle. Space the coils as far apart as needed so that they cover all of the wort surface. I built my coil with my old brewpot. I could cool a 4 gallon boil to 70f in less than 20 minutes. When I switched to my new brewpot (with a much slimmer taller geometry) It takes about 35 minutes to get the same results. I haven't modified it yet because I'm afraid I might kink or break. As far as hot-break and cold-break. I've noticed a significant cold break before. I don't really know what a hot-break is. I generally just pour everything from my brew-pot into my fermenter. Then when fermentation is done (4-7) days. I transfer the beer off the trub into a secondary for as long as you want really. I haven't been using secondary for very long due to the fact that I've read that my plastic buckets can cause oxidation. But, 1-2 weeks can do wonders for the clarity and flavor of your brew.

Mashing is really a pain in the ass sometimes. Sometimes you get terrible efficiency and you don't know why. Sometimes you get awesome efficiency and you don't know why. I've decided that if I hit the volumes dead on everything else goes nearly as planned.

Not sure how making it wider will help. The coils will still be above the liquid level.

Actually, if you make the coils wider they will have farther to travel around in a circle. Hence, less coils. Which, IMHO, would lead me to assume that it would also make it more shallow. But, I may be mistaken. The more area of the wort you contact with the chiller, the better.

dp69_2001 said:

Actually, if you make the coils wider they will have farther to travel around in a circle. Hence, less coils. Which, IMHO, would lead me to assume that it would also make it more shallow. But, I may be mistaken.

Click to expand...

Ok, I see where you are going now. It is more of like unwinding the coils and reshaping them. Guess I would just have to straighten each curve just a bit from the top of the coil working all the way down to the bottom.

Yeah, I was worried about unwinding mine too. A really great resource for building chillers is http://www.howtobrew.com/appendices/appendixC.html
and http://www.allaboutbeer.com/homebrew/equip/chiller.html

I think I'd just build a new one if I had the extra $.

Yep...definitely no extra cash here. Think I will repost a question about it in equipment forum.

Nic epost. This is helpful to my issues with all grain