My first all-grain brew, with pictures!

Hi guys,

You've all been so helpful with the barrage of questions I've had over the past couple of weeks, I thought you might be interested in the results of my first-ever all-grain homebrew session. I brewed a recipe I actually made up myself. There's a local brewery that I really like, and I took a stab at replicating my favorite American Pale Ale beer of theirs. For those who are curious, the brewery is Broadhead, in Ottawa, and the beer I'm trying to copy is their Wildcard Ale. They periodically change up the hops (hence the "Wildcard"), and I loved it when they used ZYTHOS, so that's what I'm trying to reproduce.

They'd given me a couple of hints for the recipe, indicating that it's simply 2-row malt with some Vienna, and ZYTHOS hops for aroma. With that information, and everything I've learned form this forum (and Palmer's "How To Brew" and Papazian's "Complete Joy of Homebrewing"), I put together a recipe in Beersmith. Here's the recipe I came up with:

Batch size: 5 gallons
8 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row)
2 lbs. Vienna Malt
0.5 lbs. Carafoam (for head retention)
0.5 lbs. Aromatic malt
2 oz. Cascade @ 60 mins
1 oz. ZYTHOS @ 5 mins

The recipe is supposed to be an American Pale Ale. Originally, I'd designed it with 0.5 lbs of Caramel Crystal 120L instead of the Aromatic, which would have gotten me right on the money for colour, but when I went to brew today, I realized I don't actually have any Crystal 120. I did, however, have 0.5 lbs. of Aromatic, so I used that instead. Also, my original recipe called for 1.5 oz of Cascade for bittering, which would have gotten me exactly the right amount of IBUs, but the pellet pack was 2 oz, and I didn't feel like sealing up 0.5 oz of hops when I wasn't sure when I'd be able to use them again, so I just used the whole 2 oz. pack. With all that said, here's what the profile looked like in Beersmith:



So, I set up my new Barley Crusher, weighed out my grains, and milled them.






Using my Polar Express popcorn bucket to measure out the grains








How's my crush look? I just used the default factory setting on the Barley Crusher, with no adjustments whatsoever.

I heated my strike water to 180 F.


I poured it into my mash tun, then stirred and waited until it dropped to 167 F, then poured in my grains and stirred until it dropped to 156 F (that's my wife's hand, not mine!)




Then I wrapped my mash tun in an old sleeping bag and left it for an hour.



After an hour, the temperature had dropped to 150 F. I vorlaufed, drained into my boil kettle, then batch sparged with 4.5 gallons of water at 168 F for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and drained again.

Then, I added another gallon or so of bottled water to get up to 6.5 gallons and started boiling.



Once I boiled, I added the bittering hops, using my new "hop screen" from Chad Beauchamp, of Arbor Fabricating, whom I found through this forum. I went for the 300 micron screen, and it worked perfectly.



2 oz. of bittering hops (Cascade) @ 60 mins, and 1 oz. of aroma hops (ZYTHOS) @ 5 mins.



With 10 minutes left in the boil, I added my wort chiller to the pot to sanitize it. I had already filled a cooler with ice water and gotten it ready to start chilling.



It took 45 minutes to cool to 80 F. I aerated thoroughly with my paint mixer attachment on a drill, then I transferred it to a sanitized carboy. By the time I pitched the yeast, the wort had dropped to 72 F. My O.G. was 1.050 - pretty much right on target. I even got to use my new Brew Hauler straps when I brought the whole thing downstairs.



I'm a little concerned about all the sediment at the bottom of my carboy, but I'm hoping it won't be an issue. The hop screen contained the hop gunk, and the bazooka screen in my boil kettle kept out most of the residual grain matter, but there was still quite a bit of sediment in the carboy.



My volume looks a little low (4.5 gallons, maybe?), but I've decided not to risk compromising the batch by adding more water. I'm just going to proceed with what I've got, and hopefully it'll be drinkable!

I hope you've enjoyed this walkthrough of my first ever all-grain brew day. Thanks to all of you, I think I've avoided most of the major trip-ups.

Thoughts, comments?

Congrats! Looks and sounds pretty good...though I'd want to get it chilled quicker next time if possible.

No worries. That sediment will compact over time. Just break material. Looks great. Good job!

Great job! All grain is much more fun and easier on the wallet once you buy the equipment. Yes you do look a bit short, but who cares! You must have had low efficiency if you were a little more then a half gallon short and six points off, so perhaps you should look into the crush or your mashing/sparging process. Plus if you mashed at 156 F, you should have a somewhat high FG (less ABV) and good mouth feel, so it'll end up a nice session pale ale.

In the future, to save money, as bittering hop flavor doesn't come through, use a hop variety like Columbus or Horizon, as the alpha acids (the bittering compounds) are much higher in those varieties then Cascade (12-14% AA vs. 5 % AA) Cascades are typically aroma/flavor hops, if I'm correct. Plus the cohumulone levels are lower in those varities then Cascade, which would mean a slightly smoother bitterness. Tiny things like that you can pick up using BeerSmith and reading here!

Anyway looks great! Keep us posted

Great post, love the pictures. I am also new to AG makes me want to start another batch.

Well, 24 hours later, and this batch is going gangbusters. The airlock is bubbling almost constantly, to the point where there is actually some StarSan foam forming out the top of the airlock (the airlock is filled with StarSan). Here's a picture of the fermentation I took tonight:



The temperature on the carboy said 72 F, which worried me a little bit, so I moved it into my lagering freezer (set at 55 F). I know it'll take a day or so for the freezer to get the temperature of the batch down, but I'm hoping I'm not too late. Will cooling it within 24 hours of pitching the yeast still help reduce some off-flavors, or is the damage already done?

Awesome post! Makes me want to start doing AG.

I know it can be a ***** with the fryer having a timer on it. Look it up in these forums. U can remove it in five minutes and not worry Bout forgetting and have it shut off....great pics tho!!

congrats, cool pics, and it looks delicious!!

I like that "hop screen", I've been using mesh bags which are a pain to clean and I usually have 3 to clean at the end of the day.

Great pics, very inspiring.

Typically off flavors would developed in within 72 hours, so if you were fermenting at 85, I'd be a little worried, but 72 is ideal for some yeasts. In fact some ale yeasts will not work below 56-58 F so you may need to pull it out at some point. (not what she said! )

Thanks, bellmtbbq, I'll keep that in mind. I figured since fermentation itself is exothermic, it should generate about 5 degrees F of its own heat, so if the thermostat is set at 55, then the wort/beer itself should be right at 60 F, which as I understand it, is the sweet spot for ale yeasts.

I checked it again this morning, and holy moly! Last night's picture was apparently just the pre-show. I didn't take a picture (because it's sitting in my chest freezer and thus, harder to photograph), but this morning, about 2/3 of the head space is filled with frothy foam/krausen. The airlock is bubbling like crazy. I assumed the cooler temperature would calm the fermentation down, but it appears to be going very strongly. Maybe if I hadn't moved it to the fermentation chamber, it'd be even MORE active.

I'd love to replace the airlock with a blowoff tube, but the rubber stoppers I have will not stay "jammed" in the carboy mouth. The only reason the airlock seems to be staying put is because it's sitting directly on top, with no lateral forces acting on it. If I connect a blowoff tube, the "pull" from the tube itself causes the stopper to pop off the top of the carboy. How do other people keep the rubber stopper in place in your carboy? At the moment, I'm planning to stop by a Goodwill clothing shop to pick up a belt, then cut a slit in it and try and wrap it (top-to-bottom) around the carboy, with the stopper/airlock stem through the slit, to hold it in.

kombat said:

Thanks, bellmtbbq, I'll keep that in mind. I figured since fermentation itself is exothermic, it should generate about 5 degrees F of its own heat, so if the thermostat is set at 55, then the wort/beer itself should be right at 60 F, which as I understand it, is the sweet spot for ale yeasts.

I checked it again this morning, and holy moly! Last night's picture was apparently just the pre-show. I didn't take a picture (because it's sitting in my chest freezer and thus, harder to photograph), but this morning, about 2/3 of the head space is filled with frothy foam/krausen. The airlock is bubbling like crazy. I assumed the cooler temperature would calm the fermentation down, but it appears to be going very strongly. Maybe if I hadn't moved it to the fermentation chamber, it'd be even MORE active.

I'd love to replace the airlock with a blowoff tube, but the rubber stoppers I have will not stay "jammed" in the carboy mouth. The only reason the airlock seems to be staying put is because it's sitting directly on top, with no lateral forces acting on it. If I connect a blowoff tube, the "pull" from the tube itself causes the stopper to pop off the top of the carboy. How do other people keep the rubber stopper in place in your carboy? At the moment, I'm planning to stop by a Goodwill clothing shop to pick up a belt, then cut a slit in it and try and wrap it (top-to-bottom) around the carboy, with the stopper/airlock stem through the slit, to hold it in.

Click to expand...

Do NOT do that. You don't want to prevent that stopper from being able to come out under extreme pressure or your carboy can explode. Just get a piece of 1 inch OD or 1 1/4OD tubing from Home Depot and jam it right in the carboy opening until the fermentation calms down. The size depends on your carboy. It's not going to hurt anything if that stopper comes out because the fermentation will be going so vigorously that nothing will be able to get in.

Looks pretty successful for your first AG brewday!
How does that wort chiller work? I looked at the picture for a while, but couldn't quite figure it out.

Grannyknot said:

Looks pretty successful for your first AG brewday!
How does that wort chiller work? I looked at the picture for a while, but couldn't quite figure it out.

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It's a 2-stage. The part in the photo is just the "first stage." My chiller is 2 20-foot coils of copper, connected by a few feet of clear tubing. I stick one coil in the camping cooler filled with ice water (the photo), and the other coil goes in the wort (not shown). I connect one end up to my gardening hose, and the other end (the outlet) just lays on the ground. I turn on the faucet, and a slow flow of plain tap water goes through the whole contraption. It first goes through the coil sitting in ice water, to get nice and cold, then goes through the coil sitting in the hot wort, where it warms up significantly, taking heat away from the wort, then ends up just draining onto my driveway.

kombat said:

It's a 2-stage. The part in the photo is just the "first stage." My chiller is 2 20-foot coils of copper, connected by a few feet of clear tubing. I stick one coil in the camping cooler filled with ice water (the photo), and the other coil goes in the wort (not shown). I connect one end up to my gardening hose, and the other end (the outlet) just lays on the ground. I turn on the faucet, and a slow flow of plain tap water goes through the whole contraption. It first goes through the coil sitting in ice water, to get nice and cold, then goes through the coil sitting in the hot wort, where it warms up significantly, taking heat away from the wort, then ends up just draining onto my driveway.

Click to expand...

Cool. If you want to cut down on chill time, you might look into a plate chiller. Some brewers don't like them, but I can take my wort from 200 to 69 in about 12 minutes, and during the winter (when water coming to the house is really cold) it only takes about 8 minutes.

UPDATE: Kegging this brew tonight and will start force-carbing. I can't wait to taste it!