About to switch

My fiancé and I are making the switch to all grain. Any tips to help us along the war would be helpful. Just made our mash tun today

I guess if you have the funds for a 3v, go for it. I have been doing biab since I went AG grain and I have no complaints. Don't have the money or the room for all that equipment. Biab has been perfect for my needs and has turned out some great brews. I highly recommend it.

For the first couple batches, aim a few degrees high on the temperature, it is much easier to cool down a little bit w/ cool water or a couple ice cubes than it is to add heat. Preheat the cooler MT by adding mash water 10-15 degrees hotter than strike temp and let the cooler absorb heat for 10-15 minutes, then either stir to cool or add a touch of cool water to hit strike temp. After stirring in the grains, wait a few minutes for the mash temp to stabilize, immediately after doughing in the temp will be falsely high as the grain has not fully absorbed all the heat yet.

Dont toss your spent grain. Instead make bread, dog biscuits, or any thing else people have done on this forum. It's fun and the ladies love it! Haha

Make sure you have a plan written out, and have a plan b for most steps in case things don't go as planned, and take your time so you don't stress. I did my 4th AG last night and had terrible efficiency due to the size of the beer I was making (20+ lbs of grain for a 5 gallon batch). Have some DME on hand incase you don't get the efficiency you expect, I did not and will have a much weaker than expected beer (even though 7.5% abv isn't really weak)

wilserbrewer said:

For the first couple batches, aim a few degrees high on the temperature, it is much easier to cool down a little bit w/ cool water or a couple ice cubes than it is to add heat. Preheat the cooler MT by adding mash water 10-15 degrees hotter than strike temp and let the cooler absorb heat for 10-15 minutes, then either stir to cool or add a touch of cool water to hit strike temp. After stirring in the grains, wait a few minutes for the mash temp to stabilize, immediately after doughing in the temp will be falsely high as the grain has not fully absorbed all the heat yet.

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All of this I can't stress enough.

Also, take a pre-boil gravity reading ASAP and if you have to adjust for temp, do so. Best to know where you are before you start the boil, hop additions, etc. If your preboil is low (your software should tell you where it needs to be) add extract later in the boil (last 30 mins.)

Also keep an eye on volumes. Mark your mash paddle/spoon to measure volumes in the kettle on the fly. If you're low going into the boil, run some more sparge water thru the grains but not too hot (160ish) until you get up to volume. Then check gravity and decide if you need extract or are fine with it.

Also, check your crush and plan efficiency to be low (high 60's to 70%). If you overshoot you can water it down and have more beer...or just have a bigger beer.

Brewing software makes life so much simpler. With Beersmith I put in my equipment profile and it calculates heat loss to the equipment for me. All my temps and volumes are super accurate and recipe composition could not be simpler.

bbrim said:

Brewing software makes life so much simpler. With Beersmith I put in my equipment profile and it calculates heat loss to the equipment for me. All my temps and volumes are super accurate and recipe composition could not be simpler.

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Ah yes, since your sparging you'll likely absorb 0.19g/lb. of grain in the mash process and most kettles boil off around 1g/hr. Also make your batches 5.25-5.5g. if possible to account for trub loss and dead space.

Thanks every one were going to do our first AG in a few days these tips are very helpfull