another all grain first timer

well, i did it yesterday! it was my first AG brew! thanks to all of you here. i have been lurking and learning 'till ready to give it a go.
10 days ago i did a partial mash Hefe. yesterday i set up an ag hefe mash and bottled the PM batch. so my mash was 90 mins, only because i had a bunch to do in the mean time. mash went from 155* down to 150*.

batch sparge in 3 parts worked flawlessly. got 72% efficiency (i think). i reverse engineered the #'s in the recipator to find it. i did have to add 1lb of wheat LME to get my SG up. SG is 1.053 now. i put the wort right onto the yeast cake of the PM batch. this morning it is fermenting so fast it looks like it's boiling! the beer is actually swirling in the fermenter! :rockin:
my first runnings did have what looked like a couple small pieces of bread coagulated in it after it came to a boil(near boil over). i vorlaufed, but maybe not well enough. i did strain most of it out. is that a problem? or just foam from the start of the boil?
thanks again to all you that have helped others here, i was learning right along with them!

oh yeah, the wife made bread with the spent grains too. good stuff!

You might end up with a small amount of grain in the boil kettle after sparging. Using a strainer does help but don't worry if you got a bit in there. Once the fermentation stops it will all settle to the bottom.

If you are worried about too much sediment just rack to secondary after fermentation is done and let it clarify for several weeks until it looks clear enough. Also throw in some irish moss or whirfloc tablets into your brew session to coagulate the junk floating around in the kettle. Your beer will be clearer in the end.

When you start to boil you'll see all kinds of foamy proteins float to the top, especially after hop additions. This too is perfectly normal.

Grats on the AG, welcome to the club

thanks for the info on the floaties. i won't worry too much now. i did add Irish Moss for the last 15 mins of the boil. of course it was probably 4 years old. that's how long it's been since i brewed. i figured to rack to a secondary, since this should ferment out very quick. can't wait to see how it comes out.

i did the PM brew to compare with the AG version.

you know...if you add DME...to the brew to cover mistakes,...you will never learn what needs to be imrroved in your process....just takes it as it comes, and your beer will be a lot better. just roll with it, it will still be good beer, ut learn whats making the holes on the recipes.


Great beer brewing session though, and welcome to AG brewing.

Sherpa FE said:

you know...if you add DME...to the brew to cover mistakes,...you will never learn what needs to be imrroved in your process....

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that makes sense. it was mostly not having any idea what my efficiency was going to be. next one will be straight up grain! thanks.

how did you do the 3 part boil?

ekjohns said:

how did you do the 3 part boil?

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it was a 3 part sparge, all into 1 boil pot.
edit: I did heat up the first runnings while the second load of water was sparging, but it came to a boil in <10 mins and i just added it into the sparge.

Welcome to AG. I get the same effect sometimes when I use Irish Moss and Pelletized hops usually during the cooling of the wort. It will settle and your beer will be fine.