all grain beer

Can anybody give me any advice at all? Is it all grain plus hops and no dme or lme or what? I have a idea of what i wanna try just ya know. Where to start would be nice and what am i instore for?

Mike

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mux said:

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Ok now i really dont know. lol

When people say all grain they mean no LME/DME... there are still hops additions and whatnot. The LME/DME is grain that has been mashed for you then most of the water extracted saving you a step and some time. The downside is it also takes away many of your options.

Either way though you can make excellent beer. It is more a choice of how much time you want to spend brewing and how much more you want to learn about the process of brewing.

Not to be a dick, but there are a million threads on here to help you make the jump.

Make sure you've got the necessary equipment, grain, hops, yeast, and knock yourself out. You can keep it simple, or get as experimental as you wish.

Don't get too uptight and intimidated by AG, for the most part, you'll always end up with beer. Take good notes, try different things, and keep good sanitary habits.

"The LME/DME has essentially been mashed for you saving you a step and some time"
let me get this str8 i can use only grains and hops and sugar and yeast and be where i want to be without that sticky crap all over? Im sure im missing a step somewhere. Talk to me

The point of all grain, is that you EXTRACT your own fermentables (sugars) from a set amount of grain. You don't use LME or DME at all. You use a convertable malt, one that can also convert (change the starch to sugar) of other grains. That's called base malt- it is what replaces extract. Then in the recipe there are specialty grains that giv complexity and flavor, but can't convert themselves, that's what the basemalt helps do. And some grains don't convert at all, just provide colors and flavors.

Partial mash is where you convert some of your own fermentable sugars, but supplant the rest from extract.

If you look at my "Old Bog Road Brown Ale" recipe you can see how the same beer can be made with extract, as an all grain or as a partial mash, by converting the amount of extract to base malt, and using either 100% basemalt as an AG recipe, or a lesser percentage as an Partial Mash.

I suggest you read the section on beginning all grain brewing in How to Brew for a more thorough explanation. How To Brew Section 3 Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer

Lgaddy44 said:

Not to be a dick, but there are a million threads on here to help you make the jump.

Make sure you've got the necessary equipment, grain, hops, yeast, and knock yourself out. You can keep it simple, or get as experimental as you wish.

Don't get too uptight and intimidated by AG, for the most part, you'll always end up with beer. Take good notes, try different things, and keep good sanitary habits.

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Oh i got all kinds of ideas i just thought more complicated is all

Take some time and read How To Brew from front to back and all your questions will be answered. Knowledge is power! I'm not trying to pawn your question off, but I could never state it better than the author of How To Brew has.

Revvy said:

The point of all grain, is that you EXTRACT your own fermentables (sugars) from a set amount of grain. You don't use LME or DME at all. You use a convertable malt, one that can also convert (change the starch to sugar) of other grains. That's called base malt- it is what replaces extract. Then in the recipe there are specialty grains that giv complexity and flavor, but can't convert themselves, that's what the basemalt helps do. And some grains don't convert at all, just provide colors and flavors.

Partial mash is where you convert some of your own fermentable sugars, but supplant the rest from extract.

If you look at my "Old Bog Road Brown Ale" recipe you can see how the same beer can be made with extract, as an all grain or as a partial mash, by converting the amount of extract to base malt, and using either 100% basemalt as an AG recipe, or a lesser percentage as an Partial Mash.

I suggest you read the section on beginning all grain brewing in How to Brew for a more thorough explanation. How To Brew Section 3 Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer

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Ok now im just confused im off to read on a SATURDAY! Oh well

Senior member with 110 posts?Have you been using the wine or mead areas?

Not complicated at all really, just like baking a cake. Start with a proven recipe and get the process down, to get comfortable.

This forum has a wealth of knowledge, and once you read a handful of threads, you'll notice there are a generous few, that give quite a bit of input on brewing methods.

I've found that jumping into AG gave me more gratification in that I was actually learning something about the craft, not just boiling some extract and topping off. I'm not knocking extract, I've done a couple myself, and am confident that extract can produce good beer. I simply enjoy being a little more involved in the hobby.

It's not a bad idea to get some brewing software, such as Beersmith, if you don't already have it. It's a very good tool to get exposed to the different styles, ingredients, and effects that each can impart on your brew.

lylo said:

Senior member with 110 posts?Have you been using the wine or mead areas?

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No i dont drink wine and i dunno what mead even is?

Ok so i looked at a vids on youtube and im kinda like WTH! Looks complicated BUT i think i have figured out that 2 row or 6 row is base correct? And you build on that? If it were me guessing im guessing this is not something you can do on the stove? Well maybe a small batch but im lookung for 5 gallons atleast. So what i want to do is put grains in a cooler that i want then let set for some "time" in boiling water then empty into a boiling pot then boil again and add hops and sugar(dunno if to add sugar or not) and then pitch yeast when its time. Am i in the parkbark here?

One more question? Can i skip the whole igloo thing and just do it on the stove? Seems logical but what do i know. It would take two hours then right? If ok to do like that

search BIAB(brew in a bag). and brewing tv's latest episode also discusses this

2 row and 6 row are merely types of barley, suitable for animal feed OR suitable to be malted (good info to search for malting barley on Google). Once malted the grain is dried or kilned. If the temperature is kept low it will retain the enzymes that can convert the staches into sugars suitable for making beer. This happens in water that is in the range of 140 to 160 and preferably in a much smaller range like 152 to 155 and certainly not boiling. Once the starch is converted you have to separate the sweet wort from the grains and gather it in a pot where you do bring it to a boil and add the hops that give the beer bitterness and act as a preservative. Cool it to the proper range of temperature, put it into a fermentation vessel of some type, adding as much oxygen as you can and add yeast. Close it up with some way to let it vent and forget it for a couple to as much as 4 weeks and you have beer. Specifically, you have warm, flat beer. Remove it from the fermenter leaving the yeast and hops and protein (trub) behind, add the proper amount (carefully weighed) of sugar and put it in bottles for 3 to 6 weeks, chill it a couple days and you have a nice cold carbonated alcoholic beverage.

^^^^That was the condensed Cliff Notes version of "How to Brew". Read it here: www.howtobrew.com as it fills in lots of the blanks I left out.

Here is a link to the BIAB sticky in the All Grain section:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

Friend and I did a BIAB Heffe yesterday, 5 hours from first flame on the cooker to fermenter happy in the basement. That was a 90 minute mash, 60 minute boil. About 20 degrees out, so your mileage may vary, but 2 hours seems unlikely. Also, may want to consider your batch size (e.g. can your stove heat the volume of water needed for a 5 gallon batch- BIAB means that you heat your whole batch at once, plus absorption and boil-off volumes).