Brewing All Grain with my Bottling Bucket. . .

Brewed my first All Grain this past weekend, I went for a SMaSH brew (2 Row + Fuggles).

HUGE THANK YOU to Deathbrewer and DRoyLenz for their stove-top all grain methods - my method is a slight variation on that.

Here's a quick overview of what I did -

- Brew in a Bag (AHS jumbo nylon bag)
- I mashed in my BK on the stove, and with a towel wrapped around it, temps held nice and steady.
- Heated up sparge water
- Once mash was done, I lifted out my bag and placed it in my bottling bucket.
- Poured my wort over the grains, and opened up the spigot. Pulled out my "first runnings" and cycled those.
- Added my sparge water. Cycled the wort a few more times, before finally pouring it back into my BK.

Turns out all grain was a simple as that. I ran my recipe though beer calculus and came up 1 point higher on my OG than anticipated at 75% efficiency, so not bad at all.

If anyone sees any problems with my methods, please let me know - always looking to improve.

Thanks again to the entire forum - going this far would not have been possible at all without HBT!

That's good that you found a way to recirculate, but I don't think you should continue recirculating once you add the sparge water. Use that clean water to "push" the sugary wort through the spigot. Still, at 75% efficiency I can't really fault your methods. Nice work!

It was a move I sort of just did on the spot, without really thinking too much about it. In the future Ill probably skip that.

This also turned out to be my first no-chill batch, by accident. As my boil was coming to an end I realized I had completely forgotten about ice (I use my sink), so I just went for a no-chill brew. Its chugging away happily in the fermenter right now, so guess everything went well.

Wow, great! I'm glad it went well for you. I like the idea of using the bottling bucket to recirculate, but I agree, you should only have to do that for a couple of liters out of your first runnings, and with the fine mesh on the grain bag (if you used a paint strainer like I do) then I'm not even sure it's necessary. I'm definitely going to try this next time I brew. I'd be interested to see if there is a noticable difference in clarity between my first few liters while recirculating, and after I'm done.

Great job! Let us know how the brew turns out!

What is the size of your brew kettle? What water to grain ratio did you use, and how much grain did you mash? Was this a 5 gallon batch or a smaller batch? If 5 gallons, you must have a larger brew kettle than 5g or have done a low gravity beer.

Also I'm curious how you and DRoyLenz are sparging your grain bag. You seem to say you held it over your bottling bucket and poured the hot sparge water over it. Did you have an assistant that held the grain bag open at the top of the bucket? Even with an assistant it seems dangerous to me and I would worry about spilling hot water on them.

I'm using the dunk sparge technique from DeathBrewer where you just put the sparge water in a pot or bucket and plop the grain bag into it for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

This was a 2.5g brew as I cannot bring more to a boil on my electric stove. 6lb of grain in the mash.

I did a mix of the pouring and dunking - propped the bag open on the bottling bucket, and poured my wort over, then poured my sparge water. Then did some "tea bag" type motions. Wasn't particularly dangerous, then again, it was only a 2.5g batch

corvax13 said:

This was a 2.5g brew as I cannot bring more to a boil on my electric stove. 6lb of grain in the mash.

I did a mix of the pouring and dunking - propped the bag open on the bottling bucket, and poured my wort over, then poured my sparge water. Then did some "tea bag" type motions. Wasn't particularly dangerous, then again, it was only a 2.5g batch

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Yeah, this is pretty much exactly the approach I did. Just poured the sparge water over my grains (the opening of the grain bag was wrapped over the lip of the kettle) then let it sit, occasionally stirring. No danger. Well, at least no more danger than it takes in pouring hot liquid from one container to another.

Your tubing might leach some stuff into your brew, but I doubt it would amount to anything worse than breathing in a subway.

You can also take another bucket and drill a lot of holes in the bottom, then put that bucket into your bottling bucket instead of using the grain bag, but I'd guess cleanup gets a little easier with just the grain bag, and I'm sure the grain bag would take less room to store...

GrizlyGarou said:

Your tubing might leach some stuff into your brew, but I doubt it would amount to anything worse than breathing in a subway.

You can also take another bucket and drill a lot of holes in the bottom, then put that bucket into your bottling bucket instead of using the grain bag, but I'd guess cleanup gets a little easier with just the grain bag, and I'm sure the grain bag would take less room to store...

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What tubing are you talking about? I don't use any tubing in my process. And it didn't sounds like corvax did either.

DRoyLenz said:

What tubing are you talking about? I don't use any tubing in my process. And it didn't sounds like corvax did either.

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The tubing I incorrectly assumed was being used, apparently. I pictured a bottling bucket with tubing coming off the spigot in my head. No tubing, or tubing rated for the 170 degree wort that's going to be running through it, would be no issue at all.

I assume we all know what happens when we assume.

Well, actually I did use tubing, and no, I dont think it was rated for hot transfers - something I completely overlooked. However, it was only about 6 inches worth as I used it mainly so that I could aim properly, so I'm not too worried it will have serious effects on my beer.

"Brewing All Grain with my Bottling Bucket. . . "

Not a big deal, but I believe it is best not to use the same equipment for the mash, as well as the finished beer. The mash contains all sorts of "nasties" that could infect the finish product. Rather than use your bottling bucket, perhaps find an additional HDPE bucket to hold your runnings.

wilserbrewer, could you explain a little further?

I was under the impression that as long as I cleaned everything and sanitized afterward, the bottling bucket should be in good shape. Please note that I am not using for the full mash, the wort is only in contact with it for about 20 minutes or so as I sparge.

I think either way the next step in my equipment upgrade will be to get a 5g cooler.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and pointing out my errors - brewing is definitely a trial and error kinda hobbie.