Best tip when making the switch to all-grain

Whats your best tip for someone who is making the switch to all grain? I've got everything I need to take the plunge but I'm looking for any helpful information.
Cheers!

Remember to control your mash temps. Making the same beer with different temps will change the body of it.

Make sure the thermometer you use to determine your mash temperature is accurate. Look at your crushed grain, any whole grain will not give up any sugars but too much flour will give you trouble when you try to lauter unless you BIAB.

RM-MN said:

Make sure the thermometer you use to determine your mash temperature is accurate.

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This is a great tip. Took me two or three batches before I realized my thermometer wasn't as accurate as I had thought.

I also just tell first timers to have a great time and not stress too much about it.:fro:

It's not hard to do. When you have the boil down from extract, it's just a matter of pre-heating your mash tun with boiling water and heating the strike water to the proper temperature. BeerSmith has a calculator that I use to tell what strike temperature to use to hit target temperature. I keep boiling water to raise mash temp if needed.

All the above. Plus I think doing partial mashes, or at least keeping some DME around, is a great idea at first. Get a refractometer to take a pre-boil reading and add some more fermentables if you missed your mark. Also, if you get some iodine you can easily do a conversion test before you sparge/mash out. Accurate temps and a proper crush are a must!

Have fun when you're brewing beer! Don't get too hung up on all of the technical aspects of brewing. It's supposed to be fun. You'll make mistakes but you'll still make beer. I enjoy every brewing session and every beer made (some more than others).
Get an accurate thermometer is the best advice I can give you. Secondly, mill your own grain. Everything else will take care of itself.

After temps and gravity readings, accurate volume measurement is a big deal. Mark a stick at half-gallon or quart increments (or liters if you swing that way) as the water sits in your boil pot. I put this off and eyeballed for too long, and had some pretty radical goofs when it came to boiloff and strike volumes in my batches.

Doesn't hurt to correct volumes for heat expansion, either: room temp volume is 97% of volume at mash temps, and 96% of volume at boiling.

-Rich

Buy a digital thermometer

Great tips. If you want to retain as much knowledge about your brew day and what you are doing as possible, teach your significant other or a friend what you are doing while you are doing it... and the reasons for doing so as much as possible. Teaching others stimulates the brain to a higher degree than just following a spread sheet of procedures and allows for much greater retention. Works for just about anything...

My advice is to upgrade your boil kettle to handle the volume of an all grain full boil (for example, 10g pot for a 5.5 gallon batch). Get a good chiller to be able to chill that much wort. Then one more time, run yourself an extract batch as you have. Why? Dealing with the increased volume of wort is a pretty big part of the AG learning curve. It can be nice to get that hurdle overwith prior to dealing with the mash.

Kirch3333 said:

Whats your best tip for someone who is making the switch to all grain? I've got everything I need to take the plunge but I'm looking for any helpful information.
Cheers!

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Batch sparge

Denny said:

Batch sparge

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Yep!

GO BIG!
Brew 10 gal batches and your time investment will be the same or better than extract!

Thanks guys! Plan on making the leap on my next batch!

This may be outside the box but the best thing you can do is brew with someone or talk to someone who has done it before.

If you cant brew with someone. Try calling someone who is willing to help you. There are plenty of us, including me. Just let someone know.

- brew EdWort's Haus Pale.

- Trust the math (of a good mash water calculator).

- Pre-heat your mash tun by adding ~10°F hotter water than desired mash temp and let is cool to the dough-in temp.

- Batch sparge.



Remember, the mash is only a small portion of making a good beer and it is surprisingly forgiving or elastic in nature. Pitching proper amounts of healthy yeast and controlling fermentation temperature will have a much greater impact on flavor than hitting every mash/sparge temperature by 0.1°F.

MT

Beersmith, accurate thermometer, and to a lesser degree refractometer.

Also if you get beersmith you dont have to worry about preheating the mash tun. Just tell it what you are using (10 gallon cooler?) and what the ambient temperature is whereever it has been stored prior to brewing. You also input a grain temperature. Then Beersmith spits out the temperature your strike water needs to be to hit the correct mash temperature. It is super easy and hasnt failed me yet.

Don't worry about accuracy as much as consistency. I have no idea if my thermometer is accurate, but I do know I like the results of mashing at it reading 152-154*F. I don't know if I'm actually measuring out 4 gallons of strike water in my Ale Pail, but I do know I end up with about 50 bottles when all is said and done. I hardly even bother taking gravity readings anymore for most batches, since my efficiency hovers around 75% +/- 3%.

Just get to know your equipment, and your brewdays will tend to be rather enjoyable.

Keep you hlt filled with hot water. Having hot water on hand throughout brewing process is great. Helps you raise mash temps if necessary and having it on hand during cleanup really speeds up process.