First all grain brew 115th dream hopbursted IPA. I have questions.

Hey,

So im trying to step up to all grain brewing. I love hoppy beers so my first all grain brew is going to be 115th dream hopbursted IPA that i got from northernbrewer.com

(http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewi...115th-dream-hopbursted-ipa-all-grain-kit.html)

Im planning on making a mlt out of a 10gal rubbermaid cooler using one of the many great tutorials on the forum. I have also been doing a lot of research but i wanted to start a thread to make sure i know what im doing before brew day comes.

Ive selected the Wyeast 1056 American Ale option and will be doing a yeast starter.

From looking at the kit i have 17lbs of grain. At a 1.5qt/lb water to grain ratio that would be 6.375 (say 6.5) gallons of water.

My questions come in with the mash process. So im thinking that i put the grains in the mash tun, and pour over 6.5 gallons of 165degF water which should give me a final temp of between 150-155 (recipe calls for 152). Stir that up for about 10 mins and then close the lid and let it sit for an hour. After that drain off a couple quarts and pour back into the mash tun until the wort runs clear. Drain off until there is about an inch of wort over the grain bed and pour in about 2.5 of sparge water. I dont know what temp the sparge water should be. says mashout at 170 should this be my sparge water temp? I was using the ********.xls and i should end up with 6.25ish gallons of wort which should leave me with about 5.25 gallons after boil off.

Does this sound right? am i missing anything? I just realized that my brew kettle is way undersized and i have to find a bigger one cheap but thats a different problem.

Thanks for the help

Go lower. I would should for 150 for 75 minutes. With a beer that big 75% attenuation will still leave a lot of residual sugar and mask your hops. You're going to want to produce as ferment-able a wort as possible to showcase that hop bursting.

I always put my strike water into my mash tun first then stir in the grains. helps to avoid dough balls. Also when batch sparging you can drain your tun all the way. Your sparge water should heat the grain bed to near 170. This stops conversion and helps aid in rinsing the sugars from the mash.

+1 on mashing at 150 and 75 minutes.

I suggest you increase the strike water to 2.0 gallons per lb of grain. See John Palmer's book. I found with my initial batches, I underestimated the absorption of water in the grain, and was left short. You want at least 7.0 + gal of wort before the boil. I do closer to 8.0, so set your quantity of sparge water accordingly. I want 6.0 gallons after the boil so I can leave 0.5 gallons with the hot breakup and hops in the kettle and put close to 5.5 in the fermentor. When you rack to a keg or bottle you will lose another 0.25 to 0.5 to trub. I try to finish with 5.0 gallons in my kegs. The above works for me and I'm getting good results.

IPAMeister said:

I suggest you increase the strike water to 2.0 gallons per lb of grain.

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I don't have palmers book but perhaps you meant 2.0 qts/lb. even that seems a little thin but if it's working for you then cheers!

holy hops. awesome

bcryan said:

holy hops. awesome

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I forgot to mention that i also got 2oz of cascade leaf hops to dry hop in the secondary. lol

If you haven't bought the cooler yet, consider the coleman xtreme. They are cheap and have a descending floor to the spigot for awesome efficiency. Plus, 52qts or bigger is good to have if you want to get into bigger batches or larger grain bills.

lastsecondapex said:

If you haven't bought the cooler yet, consider the coleman xtreme. They are cheap and have a descending floor to the spigot for awesome efficiency. Plus, 52qts or bigger is good to have if you want to get into bigger batches or larger grain bills.

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I havent bought the cooler yet. Planning on doing it this week. My thought was that if i went too big my grain bed wouldnt be tall enough to be an effective filter. if i got the coleman extreme 62qt would that be too big for a normal 5 gallon batch? or should i drop to the 50qt version (looks to be a bit more square which i think would help with uniform drainage.)

rjschroed said:

I always put my strike water into my mash tun first then stir in the grains. helps to avoid dough balls. Also when batch sparging you can drain your tun all the way. Your sparge water should heat the grain bed to near 170. This stops conversion and helps aid in rinsing the sugars from the mash.

+1 on mashing at 150 and 75 minutes.

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I use a 10 gallon Igloo cooler, and have for years! I agree with putting the strike water in the cooler first! A couple of reasons- one, you can add hotter water (in the high 170s) and let it cool. This will preheat the MLT. That's very important in a cooler. You'll lose a ton of heat, especially in the winter time, from the strike water into the cooler. After the temperature of the water lowers (about 15 minutes), check it and stir it up. If it's too low, pull some out and heat it up. If it's too high, stir some more until you're at your strike temperature.

Then stirring well, add the grain. This helps avoid doughballs. If you add the grain first, you'll have a doughball mess. (Ask me how I know this! )

Check the temperature in several places, and if it's different, keep stirring. It might take about 10 minutes for the temperature to be equalized throughout.

pdc7897 said:

I havent bought the cooler yet. Planning on doing it this week. My thought was that if i went too big my grain bed wouldnt be tall enough to be an effective filter. if i got the coleman extreme 62qt would that be too big for a normal 5 gallon batch? or should i drop to the 50qt version (looks to be a bit more square which i think would help with uniform drainage.)

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I have a 54qt and my extraction and efficiency is great for both 5 &10 gallon batches

rjschroed said:

I don't have palmers book but perhaps you meant 2.0 qts/lb. even that seems a little thin but if it's working for you then cheers!

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+1 to thin mash. Not sure why folks insist on mashing thick (MLT size issues, perhaps -- MLT too small to mash thin). Since I've moved to thin mashes -- 1.9 to 2qts/lb -- and rice hulls in every batch (to keep the mash temp consistent throughout the MLT), I've had (a) an easier time with runoff, (b) better efficiency (80-90% on my system on normal (1.060 and lower) beers), and (c) more consistent attenuation from batch to batch.

I know folks like to mash thick -- but thin mashes seem much easier to deal with and provide higher quality wort.

YMMV, of course.