First All Grain Brew Tonight

Okay, so I'm preparing to do my first all grain brew tonight. I'll be (hopefully) brewing a brown ale; a recipe that I found here on this site. Here are the steps I'll be taking... Feel free to comment, suggest, yell, whatever.

I have a 13 lb. grain bill.

-Pre-heat my mash tun (cooler) for 5-10 mins with hot water.
-Heat my strike water to 168 degrees and add to the mash tun. With a 13 lb grain bill, I will be mashing with 4 gallons. (does this sound right?)
-Dough-in, stirring for several minutes. Hoping to reach a mash temp of 154 degrees.
-Mash for 60 mins. (simultaneously heating sparge water to 184 degrees)
-Vorlauf and then collect first runnings.
-Batch sparge for 10 mins. (plan to sparge with about 3.5 to 4 gallons)
-Collect 2nd runnings until I have about 6.5-7.0 gallons.

-This is where I will deviate a bit from my original plan. My stovetop can't bring a 10 gallon pot to a boil and I don't have a turkey fryer, so I'm going to split the pots evenly and bring them to a boil....3.5 gallons per pot, total of about 7 gallons. (I believe I will have double the amount of boil-off with two pots, correct?) Hoping to end up with 5-5.5 gallons.

- Boil 60 mins
- Add hops as scheduled
- Chill to 70 degrees
- Pour into fermentor and pitch yeast.

Am I missing anything? What should I expect?

any suggestions?

I'm guessing this is going to take me 5+ hours as this is my first attempt at all-grain.

My only real area of question is the temperature of my sparge water? I'm assuming the grains will be around 150 degrees after collecting the first runnings. I'm under the impression that the sparge temperature should be around 168-170 or so. I'm guessing I'll want to heat my sparge water to 184 or so to achieve the 170 sparge?

Help!

For 13 pounds of grain, 4 gallons is ok. I'd go with 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain, so I'd start with no less than 16.25 quarts. I'd actually go with a bit more water, but since this is your first you can have some extra hot and some extra cold water to adjust the temperature if you miss it so you can use the extra "room".

When you batch sparge, you want to measure your first runnings. So drain the MLT, and see how much you get out. If you put in 4 gallons, you should get out 2.4 gallons out (due to grain absorption). So, you'll need to sparge with 4.6 gallons of sparge water to make a 7 gallon boil. Break that into two additions- adding the first addition and stirring like mad then draining. Then repeating it. For the first sparge addition, you can use a calculator (there is a great one at greenbayrackers here: http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml For a grainbed of 152ish, and a sparge addition of 2.3 gallons, you'll want the first round of sparging to use 177 degree water. That should get your grain bed close to 168, give or take a couple of degrees. The second round can be at 168 to 170.

Since you're brewing in two pots, I'd suggest putting 1/2 of each runnings in each pot so the contents are approximately equal. That way you have a predictible result, and just split the hops in half too during the boil. And you will have a bigger boil off using two pots, so 7 gallons is a good place to start!

sounds like your on the right track. Couple things, if you are emptying the mash before adding any sparge water, your want should be around 170, you don't want your grain above this while sparging.

You are correct about the double boil off rate with 2 boils too

You may be surprised and need to sparge a 2nd time, I always did 2 batch sparges when I used that method, remember that grain is gonna soak up a lot of liquid.

Also, 4 gallons sounds a little thick for that much grain.

DirtyJersey said:

-Pre-heat my mash tun (cooler) for 5-10 mins with hot water.
-Heat my strike water to 168 degrees and add to the mash tun.

Click to expand...

One suggested deviation here. Instead of a separate preheat, heat your strike water to 180F, put it in your cooler and carefully tilt the cooler so the water hits the walls of the cooler on each side. Then close the lid and let it sit for 5 minutes. Open it, stir, read the temp. Keep stirring until it gets to 168F, then stir your grains in. This results in the most stable long term temp you can get where the cooler will not steal any additional heat.

Sparge water temp? 180-185F is fine, don't stress.

Split boil no problem, You'll probably lose about 2 gallons total. I'd start with a touch over 3.5 gallons per pot.

If you mash 13 pounds with 4 gallons, you should get about 2.5 gallons out on first runnings. You'd then sparge with 4.75 gallons. See how disproportionate the two runnings volumes are? It's not that big of a deal, but If this were my batch, I'd mash with 5.25 gallons (21qts). First runnings will be about 3.5 gallons. Now you'd sparge with another 3.75 and end up with 7.25 gallons preboil.

I agree with yooper, don't forget to really stir that sparge water in and don't forget to vorlauf prior to the second runnings also.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but it might help the original poster as well. I brewed my first all grain batch last saturday.

Equipment is 48 quart cooler converted to mash tun, 7.5 gal kettle and turkey fryer. I utilized the batch sparge method.

This is what I did... (13 lb grain bill, american IPA)
1. Heat 4 gallons of strike water @ 175*F
2. Dump in MT and allow it to get to 165*F, close lid to keep heat in
3. Add grain and stir. Take readings, should be at 152*F
4. Let mash sit for 60 minutes
5. Heat 2 gallons mash-out water to 210*F
6. Add mash-out water, mash should be raised to 170*F, stir and let sit 10min
8. While mash is resting for 10min heat 3 gallons of sparge water to 170*F
7. Vorlauf and then collect first runnings
8. Add 2nd sparge water, stir. Check temp, shouldn't be over 170*F.
9. Collect second runnings

This allowed me to get around 6.25 gallons pre boil, perfect volume for me.

MY QUESTION... Do I really need to do two seperate sparges? Can I use more water in my dough-in and then after 60min vorlauf that? Then use a single sparge and vorlauf that? That would make my life easier than heating up mash water, sparge water, sparge water and then 60min wort boil.

Thanks
justin

You can just batch sparge with it all at once.
I mash, take 2 vorlaufs, get first runnings
add all batch sparge water, stir like crazy, vorlauf twice, take 2nd runnings

head to the fire.

idigg said:

I don't want to hijack this thread, but it might help the original poster as well. I brewed my first all grain batch last saturday.

Equipment is 48 quart cooler converted to mash tun, 7.5 gal kettle and turkey fryer. I utilized the batch sparge method.

This is what I did... (13 lb grain bill, american IPA)
1. Heat 4 gallons of strike water @ 175*F
2. Dump in MT and allow it to get to 165*F, close lid to keep heat in
3. Add grain and stir. Take readings, should be at 152*F
4. Let mash sit for 60 minutes
5. Heat 2 gallons mash-out water to 210*F
6. Add mash-out water, mash should be raised to 170*F, stir and let sit 10min
8. While mash is resting for 10min heat 3 gallons of sparge water to 170*F
7. Vorlauf and then collect first runnings
8. Add 2nd sparge water, stir. Check temp, shouldn't be over 170*F.
9. Collect second runnings

This allowed me to get around 6.25 gallons pre boil, perfect volume for me.

MY QUESTION... Do I really need to do two seperate sparges? Can I use more water in my dough-in and then after 60min vorlauf that? Then use a single sparge and vorlauf that? That would make my life easier than heating up mash water, sparge water, sparge water and then 60min wort boil.

Thanks
justin

Click to expand...

Awesome, any easy way for me (horrible at math) to figure out water volume for a single batch sparge method? I have an excel spreadsheet I used, but its for doing multiple sparges. Thanks!

idigg said:

Awesome, any easy way for me (horrible at math) to figure out water volume for a single batch sparge method? I have an excel spreadsheet I used, but its for doing multiple sparges. Thanks!

Click to expand...

The easy way is to subtract your first runnings (from the mash) from your desired preboil volume.

If you need 6.5 gallons for the boil, and you get 2.5 gallons out of the mash, you know you need 4 gallons for the sparge.
It's really easy, if you don't want to use brewing software to figure it for you.

Just wanted to say congrats on your first all grain and wish you luck..

Thank you to all. I'm glad some of the super-experienced members (Yooper, Bobby M, and Humann Brewing) chimed in. All of you have put my mind to rest...
The fun begins in two hours...

You are going to be up for awhile eh? It's 4:50pm eastern time, and you haven't started? I took me 4.5 hours from start to finish for my first all grain I'm a noob though

Good luck

Oh yeah! i planned for 5 hours. I am sure it will be well past midnight by the time I am done and cleaned up.

So ... how did it go?

ultravista said:

So ... how did it go?

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Well, I had a blast! Gotta say that I found all grain to be very fun. It took a lot longer than I expected; close to 6 1/2 hours to be exact, but some of that was due to the limitations of my stove. My O.G. came in a bit higher than expected, but everything else went off without a hitch! I was most impressed with my cooler mash tun; it held 154 degrees for 60 mins without losing a single degree. I definitely gotta get an immersion chiller. That would have knocked off 45 mins of my time. Overall, I think it went well. It's been in primary for 11 days now. Can't wait to try it. Thank you all for helping me!