First time AG, need some advice

So this weekend I will be jumping on the AG bandwagon. I have all my equipment lined up for it but need a bit of advice..

I plan on batch sparging, but based on palmers writeup I will be using about 1.5x the amount of water that I use for making the sweet wort.

So do I basically use all of that liquid to start with and when everything lands in the fermenter just bring the liquid to proper level?

Do i need to concentrate the sweet wort before I add my hops to make sure the water level makes 5 gallons?

The last thing I want is to make a 5 gallon batch but have 6 or more gallons of wort and to loose those sugars down the drain.

Get a program like BeerSmith or ProMash. Both are around $22-25. You enter your grain bill, your boil pot's boil-off rate, and your desired brew method (AG w/batch sparge for you) and these programs tell you exactly how much water to use in the mash and in the sparge to end up with your desired OG and batch size.

If you end up with 6 gallons of wort (or whatever amount), couldn't you just boil before adding the hops the boil-off the excess?

Since you are controlling the water going into the mash and sparge it should be tough to go way over no?

I recognize software could make out more accurate, but would an extra 1/2 gallon be tough to boil-off, or ruin the recipe?

Awesome, thanks... looks like tonight I will be determining the boil off rate

If you have a common boil pot, do a search on this site and someone will have already calculated the boil off rate. BeerSmith also has average boil off rates for certain sized BKs, which work pretty well.

I have a Coors keggle (15.5 gallons), and it boils off a little under 1.5 gallons an hour during a standard BIAB day meant to yeild 5 gallons. For BIAB at an average 10lb grain bill, I usually have to start at about 8.5 gallons to hit my OG at a 5 gallon post-boil yeild.

Remember that the mash absorbs a certain % of the water too.

Anyway, you could go through the exercise of calculating all of this stuff yourself, cause it like 5th grade math and about 3-4 simple equations to remember, but I'd just assume let the software do it all for me.

Both ProMash and BeerSmith have like a 14-day free trial, so you could even get these calculations through the free trial, write em down, then tweak per your grain bill.

But back to your original question, if you end up with like 4.8 gallons and your OG is a little high, then yes, you can certainly add water to compensate, just like you do in extract brewing. Just worry more about hitting the recipe's OG rather than aiming for a certain wort volume.

I kind of have a Question that dovetails into this nicely, I just started taking AG myself. I tend to like Hoppy High test Alcohol beers so i put a lot of fermentable and i've gotten a good strain of yeast from a bottle of SNPA. so here is my question

6lb Golden Wheat Extract
4.5lb Dextrose
2lb crystal 50 2 row steeped for 40 min

roughly 6 oz of hops in the batch

I read the AG at 1.12......does that even sound right? An I swear I read it like 3 times. so maybe i'm being a nervous noob...but i need either a little reassurance or a training course on how to read this darn thing. aside from feeling like an Id10t when it comes to brewing .

Kyzarkit said:

If you end up with 6 gallons of wort (or whatever amount), couldn't you just boil before adding the hops the boil-off the excess?

Since you are controlling the water going into the mash and sparge it should be tough to go way over no?

I recognize software could make out more accurate, but would an extra 1/2 gallon be tough to boil-off, or ruin the recipe?

Click to expand...

I did my first AG two weeks ago, and I boiled off more before I started my 60 minute timer. I actually did a 90 min boil and when I hit my 60 min mark my water lvl was right where it needed to be.

I gotta be honest, I didn't really read up on AG, I just had a basic idea of how to do things, I didn't even take a pre boil SG.... All I know is that I ended up at my normal 5 gal mark, my OG was spot on, and two weeks later I'm at 1.012 with some awesome (but green) tasting beer. I'm letting it sit another week in the carboy but at this point, it tasted awesome!!

So yeah, I'm by far not an expert but I ended up with like 7.5 gallons at the end of my sparge and I cooked it down to 5. If I did it wrong I don't care, it tastes incredible!

Another software you could look at is Brewtarget. It's free, but I've been using it for all of my AG batches and they've turned out fine.

I'm not really a fan of sparging with extra water to get a higher efficiency. For me, an extra pound of grain is cheaper than burning through another hour of propane just to hit my OG. That's just me though. I usually shoot for 6.25-6.5 gallons of wort pre-boil, boil for about 70 minutes (I like a good hot break before adding any hops), then cool/pitch. I end up with anywhere between 4.8-5.2 gallons post-boil, but I usually have a fair amount of loss due to me using whole hops so much.

So a "good" starting baseline for you first batch could be:
-Shoot for 6.25 gallons pre-boil. Take your hydrometer reading from this and calculate your mash efficiency.
-Boil for an hour. Most people have a 1 gal/hr boil off rate, and you'll probably be pretty close to that if you aren't running your burner full blast.
-Measure your volume of wort after the boil, take another hydrometer reading for your OG and calculate your brewhouse efficiency.

AG really isn't that complicated once you understand what's really going on, and the best way to do that is to just do it.

DirtyGerman said:

I kind of have a Question that dovetails into this nicely, I just started taking AG myself. I tend to like Hoppy High test Alcohol beers so i put a lot of fermentable and i've gotten a good strain of yeast from a bottle of SNPA. so here is my question

6lb Golden Wheat Extract
4.5lb Dextrose
2lb crystal 50 2 row steeped for 40 min

roughly 6 oz of hops in the batch

I read the AG at 1.12......does that even sound right? An I swear I read it like 3 times. so maybe i'm being a nervous noob...but i need either a little reassurance or a training course on how to read this darn thing. aside from feeling like an Id10t when it comes to brewing .

Click to expand...

Actually, you're a bit off topic. AG = All grain. I think you're thinking of OG meaning "original gravity." But since you asked, 1.120 sounds way high for the amount of fermentables you listed. What was the recipie predicting? What probably happened is that you didn't get enough mixing when you added the top-off water and got a sample that was more wort than water. For an extract batch, it's almost impossible to miss your OG, so I'd just go with whatever the expected number was.

And to go even further OT, 4.5 lbs of sugar is a lot. Pure sugars can lead to a "cidery" or wine-like taste when used in excess. If you want to bump up the gravity, it's better to do it with extract than sugar. Yeah, it'll cost a little more, but if we were really concerned with cost, we'd be drinking Natty Light.

Finally to bring it back around to the OP, one of the members here, Bobby M, has a great write up on all grain that helped me immensely during my first few batches:

http://www.suebob.com/brew/Bobby_Mallgrainprimer.pdf

phenry said:

Another software you could look at is Brewtarget. It's free, but I've been using it for all of my AG batches and they've turned out fine.

I'm not really a fan of sparging with extra water to get a higher efficiency. For me, an extra pound of grain is cheaper than burning through another hour of propane just to hit my OG. That's just me though. I usually shoot for 6.25-6.5 gallons of wort pre-boil, boil for about 70 minutes (I like a good hot break before adding any hops), then cool/pitch. I end up with anywhere between 4.8-5.2 gallons post-boil, but I usually have a fair amount of loss due to me using whole hops so much.

So a "good" starting baseline for you first batch could be:
-Shoot for 6.25 gallons pre-boil. Take your hydrometer reading from this and calculate your mash efficiency.
-Boil for an hour. Most people have a 1 gal/hr boil off rate, and you'll probably be pretty close to that if you aren't running your burner full blast.
-Measure your volume of wort after the boil, take another hydrometer reading for your OG and calculate your brewhouse efficiency.

AG really isn't that complicated once you understand what's really going on, and the best way to do that is to just do it.

Click to expand...

Thats some really good advice!

Just a note: Beersmith had me sparging with that amount of water. I had it set for 75% efficiency and a 5 gal batch.

I'm kinda shooting in the dark here, wasn't there a benefit to the 90 minute boil, in that it removed possible tanins or something? If I can get away with 60 I'd be happy! (AG noob here!!)

But as I learn and understand my efficiencies I would love to adjust my grain bill to match up to my efficiency better. I must practice and drink more beer.


EDIT: gr8shandini, thanks for that PDF, that was a good read ( and thanks Bobby for writing that!!).

There's no real benefit to the 90 minute boil unless you're using a high percentage (like over 90) of very lightly kilned malt such as Pilsener or basic 2-row. The long boil drives off DMS precursors that could otherwise give cooked vegetable off flavor in the finished beer. Basically, I only do an extended boil if I'm doing a yellow or very light gold beer. Anything darker gets 60 mins.

gr8shandini said:

There's no real benefit to the 90 minute boil unless you're using a high percentage (like over 90) of very lightly kilned malt such as Pilsener or basic 2-row. The long boil drives off DMS precursors that could otherwise give cooked vegetable off flavor in the finished beer. Basically, I only do an extended boil if I'm doing a yellow or very light gold beer. Anything darker gets 60 mins.

Click to expand...

Thank you!