Hi folks
I've just finished washing up after my first all-grain brew and thought I'd hash out my evening to anyone who cares to listen.
I built a mash tun from a 10g Lowes/Igloo cooler, along with the cooler conversion kit that Northern Brewer sell and a boil/mash screen from them too. First niggle was that the valve kit didn't seal up properly, but I added one of the washers from the original spigot and it works well enough. It leaks if I fill it up over about 6 gallons, but I'll sort that later.
On with the brew. I picked the Irish Red kit that Midwest do as I got it when they had 10% off and I was ordering some other stuff at the time.
The kit has 9lbs of 2-row, 12oz Crystal 40L, 4oz special B and 4oz roasted barley. I heated 4 gallons of strike water to 170F and put about 10 quarts into the tun. Temp before mash in read 166F, after mash in and a damn good stir of the whole lot it read 147F. I pulled out about 2 quarts of the liquid from above the grain bed, dumped it into a second pot and heated it back to 170F, put it back in the tun and stirred to stabilise everything. After doing this twice I hit my mash temperature of 152F, so I stuck the lid on and walked away.
I returned an hour later to find my sparge water had heated to 200F, so I mixed it with some cold water to get it to 175F. Started to vorlauf slowly, recycled the wort until it ran clear, then started running out into my kettle. I threw the bittering hops in at this point, the instructions recommend 1oz Cascade for this, but I chose the Fuggles to go in at this point. I batch sparged twice with 2 gallons of water each time, after the sparge the palatable sweetness had gone from the grains and I had about 6 gallons in my kettle, so on with the boil.
Got it rolling away reasonably fast (I have one of the turkey fryer bundles from Target) and after beating back the hot break I left it alone for a while. Added a whirlfloc tablet at 15 minutes remaining along with my immersion chiller, and the 1oz Cascade at 5 minutes.
At flame out, I cranked up the water to the chiller and stirred for about five minutes which got me down to 70F. Autosiphoned the wort into my fermenter, along with most of the break material and hops it seems. I tried out the double mesh strainer from NB, but I knocked it after transferring around 3.5 gallons and I think most of the crud fell through. At this point it was pretty late so I didn't have the patience to whirlpool and stand.
All said and done, I ended up with 5 gallons of wort into the fermenter, and my SG came out at 1.050 at 65F. Midwest reckon the SG should be between 1.042-1.046, so that seems pretty good to me. I pitched a rehydrated sachet of Munton's ale yeast (the cheapest and most cheerful option), stuck the lid on the fermenter and jammed an airlock in it.
A brief sip pre-pitch tasted pretty good, it's got a fairly notable dark bitterness from the Fuggles, but you can pick up the citrus side of the Cascade too. Hard to make much of the colour just yet as there's all manner of floating crud in it, but I hope that once it settles out it'll have a nice red hue. I've got some custom caps coming from BottleMark for this one, so hopefully it'll turn out drinkable.
Now for the hard part, the waiting...
I've just finished washing up after my first all-grain brew and thought I'd hash out my evening to anyone who cares to listen.
I built a mash tun from a 10g Lowes/Igloo cooler, along with the cooler conversion kit that Northern Brewer sell and a boil/mash screen from them too. First niggle was that the valve kit didn't seal up properly, but I added one of the washers from the original spigot and it works well enough. It leaks if I fill it up over about 6 gallons, but I'll sort that later.
On with the brew. I picked the Irish Red kit that Midwest do as I got it when they had 10% off and I was ordering some other stuff at the time.
The kit has 9lbs of 2-row, 12oz Crystal 40L, 4oz special B and 4oz roasted barley. I heated 4 gallons of strike water to 170F and put about 10 quarts into the tun. Temp before mash in read 166F, after mash in and a damn good stir of the whole lot it read 147F. I pulled out about 2 quarts of the liquid from above the grain bed, dumped it into a second pot and heated it back to 170F, put it back in the tun and stirred to stabilise everything. After doing this twice I hit my mash temperature of 152F, so I stuck the lid on and walked away.
I returned an hour later to find my sparge water had heated to 200F, so I mixed it with some cold water to get it to 175F. Started to vorlauf slowly, recycled the wort until it ran clear, then started running out into my kettle. I threw the bittering hops in at this point, the instructions recommend 1oz Cascade for this, but I chose the Fuggles to go in at this point. I batch sparged twice with 2 gallons of water each time, after the sparge the palatable sweetness had gone from the grains and I had about 6 gallons in my kettle, so on with the boil.
Got it rolling away reasonably fast (I have one of the turkey fryer bundles from Target) and after beating back the hot break I left it alone for a while. Added a whirlfloc tablet at 15 minutes remaining along with my immersion chiller, and the 1oz Cascade at 5 minutes.
At flame out, I cranked up the water to the chiller and stirred for about five minutes which got me down to 70F. Autosiphoned the wort into my fermenter, along with most of the break material and hops it seems. I tried out the double mesh strainer from NB, but I knocked it after transferring around 3.5 gallons and I think most of the crud fell through. At this point it was pretty late so I didn't have the patience to whirlpool and stand.
All said and done, I ended up with 5 gallons of wort into the fermenter, and my SG came out at 1.050 at 65F. Midwest reckon the SG should be between 1.042-1.046, so that seems pretty good to me. I pitched a rehydrated sachet of Munton's ale yeast (the cheapest and most cheerful option), stuck the lid on the fermenter and jammed an airlock in it.
A brief sip pre-pitch tasted pretty good, it's got a fairly notable dark bitterness from the Fuggles, but you can pick up the citrus side of the Cascade too. Hard to make much of the colour just yet as there's all manner of floating crud in it, but I hope that once it settles out it'll have a nice red hue. I've got some custom caps coming from BottleMark for this one, so hopefully it'll turn out drinkable.
Now for the hard part, the waiting...