tips for my first all-grain

I'll be doing my first all-grain and had a few questions.

I plan on doing the recipe from this website http://singingboysbrewing.com/Witbier.html. I don't have brewing software just yet but have an excel sheet I picked up from somewhere. The only change to the recipe I planned was maybe adding .25 to a half pound of rolled oats.

The batch size is 5 gallons, now according to the excel sheet I have it says I should use 3.25 gallons of water for my strike water and 6 gallons of water for sparge water.

So do I put in the initial 3.25 gallons with my grain bill, mix it up, vorlauf and drain into kettle, then add my sparge water to the mash tun and repeat?

According to the excell sheet after this I should have collected 7.75 gallons and then need to boil down to 5.

does this sound about right to everyone? Or should I change things up?

My equipment is a 52 Qg coleman xtreme mash tun, a standard keg converted into a kettle, and a smaller keg converted into a kettle that looks to be just over 7 gallons. I also have the smaller pot that came with my original kit that I used to make extract kits. I imagine its about 3.5 gallon capacity or so.

How would you guys do this? Heat up all my water in the standard keg and use my 7 gallon keg as the kettle? If so I may be pushing the 7.75 gallon initial wort collection, or should I use the small keg and the pot to heat up my water and use the large keg for my wort kettle? Also any last minute pointers would be awesome.

Also if I make a starter how long does the starter need to sit before ready? Can I make one the day before and it's good or does it need to sit several days?

Oh also in place of the WLP 400 I'll be using Wyeast 3944.

Start by heating the 3.25 gal to 164 degrees, assuming you preheat your mash tun (add the hottest tap water you can muster into the tun to heat it up for 5-10 min) dump the water from the tun out and add your 164 degree water, 162 would be ideal, but over is better add the crushed grain and stir to make sure there are no doughballs. stir it down to 152 and close the lid for an hour, heat 1 gallon up to boiling and add to the tun and stir, this will raise the grainbed temp to stop conversion and compensate for absorption, let it rest another 10 min, Vorlauf until the runnings are clear, probably about a gallon and collect the first runnings. while doing that heat the remaining water to 170-ish and add to the tun after it has drained, let rest another 10 min and vorlauf again. I try to target 7 gallons and after an hour I have boiled down to 5.5, if doing a 90 min boil I collect to 7.75 to comp for the longer boil. From there on out its hop additions as usual, chill to pitching temp and ferment.

I guessed on volumes but 1 gal mashout should be close to the grain absorption for the recipe. if needed I can run it through software

Thanks for the advise....

azscoob said:

Start by heating the 3.25 gal to 164 degrees, assuming you preheat your mash tun (add the hottest tap water you can muster into the tun to heat it up for 5-10 min) dump the water from the tun out and add your 164 degree water, 162 would be ideal, but over is better add the crushed grain and stir to make sure there are no doughballs. stir it down to 152 and close the lid for an hour, heat 1 gallon up to boiling and add to the tun and stir, this will raise the grainbed temp to stop conversion and compensate for absorption, let it rest another 10 min, Vorlauf until the runnings are clear, probably about a gallon and collect the first runnings. while doing that heat the remaining water to 170-ish and add to the tun after it has drained, let rest another 10 min and vorlauf again. I try to target 7 gallons and after an hour I have boiled down to 5.5, if doing a 90 min boil I collect to 7.75 to comp for the longer boil. From there on out its hop additions as usual, chill to pitching temp and ferment.

I guessed on volumes but 1 gal mashout should be close to the grain absorption for the recipe. if needed I can run it through software

Click to expand...

Well,

This brew is cooling down now and getting ready to be tossed into the fermenter. So far it smells great. I did a few small changes to it though. I added 1/2 a pound of flaked oats, and instead of using candi sugar I used honey due to the price of candi sugar and the amount of honey that I had on hand.
Also I added 1/2 a pound of rice hulls to the mix as well.

I also peeled a few fresh clementines and through the peels in the boil for about 15 minutes. So far it smells friggin awesome and I can't wait to try the finished product.

If you are interested, this thread here is a great recipe for making your own candi sugar using sugar and DAP (di-ammonium phosphate, a yeast nutrient you can find at the brew store). The recipe is easy to make and it costs a LOT LESS than the candi sugar in the brew store! I have used it in a caramel amber ale recipe and it brought some great flavor to the beer.

I guess this is the Phoenix/Tucson thread, huh?

LaurieGator said:

If you are interested, this thread here is a great recipe for making your own candi sugar using sugar and DAP (di-ammonium phosphate, a yeast nutrient you can find at the brew store). The recipe is easy to make and it costs a LOT LESS than the candi sugar in the brew store! I have used it in a caramel amber ale recipe and it brought some great flavor to the beer.

I guess this is the Phoenix/Tucson thread, huh?

Click to expand...

Lol.. ya I guess it is. Cool thanks for the link. So for my first all-grain I've already made one rookie mistake. I couldn't find my little vile I usually put my wort in to take a hydrometer reading. So I put it right in the primary bucket knowing I shouldn't. turns out it had a crack in it and some water/starsan leaked into hydrometer. So I had to sanitize up my are and reach into the brew to get it out. Shouldn't do too much harm to it though hopefully. It would be sad if my first all-grain was my first dumper.