First all-grain brewing report

I've been lurking around here quite a bit lately soaking up the wisdom and finally did the deed yesterday. I had some snafus (like a leaky mash tun I rebuilt twice in the morning and some poor timing) so it was a 9 to 5 project when it was done. Also, when open ball valves run dry, I seem to have a bad habit of not closing them and later...well, mostly spilled water issues--once very hot water on my leg and then I discovered I was accidently fly sparging for a minute or 3, but no lost wort.

It was an oatmeal stout:
7# 2-row pale
1# flaked oats
.5# black malt
.5# roasted barley
.5# chocolate
.5# caramel 80L

I had some 5.2,etc. handy, but my ph turned out to look just about right without it. My mash ended up lasting 80 min. because I realized a little late that I should have been warming up some water already. I mashed with just over 3 gallons and then threw in a gallon and a half of near boiling water at the end. My second sparge addition was about 3.5 gallons. Grains were milled with a Barley Crusher left at factory settings, which I did verify first with my handy spark plug tool. I used a 10 gal Rubbermaid round with a cooler kit from Bargain Fittings and a manifold made from pex tubing.

I had planned on probably getting fairly low efficiency, but was pleasantly surprised to hit 82%. So I ended up with a bigger beer than I planned, but this does not upset me so much.

Cheers,

Ed

Sounds like a very successful day!

Sweet, it looks like you're setup for many successful brews to come!

Sounds much better than my first attempt. I hope it's your best batch ever!

Thanks for the encouragement, all. Of course, I hopped it too. I used some Chinook which was on special. That reminds me: I used part of a 55 pound bag of Canada Malting two row pale which, somehow, was not activating the "no brewsaver for you" shipping charges at Northern Brewer. Maybe you should check it out and see if it still works that way.

I don't have a LHBS, unless you count a 1.5 hour drive as local. That uses enough gas to justify just going with a pretty big shipping charge. Occasionally, we are in Birmingham anyway, so I try to drop by at those times.

Yes, I hope it is my best brew yet, especially since I spent 8 hours on it. I can see at least a few hours I should save next time. I even boiled it for an hour and a half because I kept thinking I had too much water, then somehow over shot a little and also forgot about the contraction, so I ended up with barely 5 gallons. What you see above, obviously, is my preboil gravity.

I found this forum to be a very nice resource. I decided on dry yeast--Safale 05--since quite a few here indicated using dry yeast for stouts and also because of the high temperatures on the FedEx trucks. This week, I'm trying to grow some yeast from a couple bottles of stout I made with Wyeast Irish Ale a couple months ago. I'll try the same beer again next weekend with that and compare. If it doesn't work, I'll use the Safale 04 packet I have in the frig.

Happy brewing,

What's the material for your manifold?

The manifold is made of PEX tubing. It is made for hot water applications, it's flexible, but not too flexible (quite stiff unless you actually try to bend it), and I think it's generally easy to work with. I drilled a lot of 1/16 holes in one side of it and found it very easy to do so. I'm using connectors made for PEX, but they are not made of PEX and are very stiff. Normally, one would use a special kind of clamps to make the connections tight, but that is not necessary in this case. It was a little difficult to bend the tubing and fit it onto the connectors, but a few minutes of patience was all it required. This was a 10 gallon round, so I think that for a 5 gallon round it might become a bit too difficult to bend into a circle of the right size while sliding it onto the connectors.

Thanks! I'm trying to eliminate some dead volume in my new 5 gallon cooler MLT and your setup looks great. But it sounds like the bent pex wouldn't be a good fit for my situation. I'll probably go with a hex shape with more elbows and shorter pieces. Any thoughts on pex vs. cpvc?

gregorynyssa said:

The manifold is made of PEX tubing. It is made for hot water applications, it's flexible, but not too flexible (quite stiff unless you actually try to bend it), and I think it's generally easy to work with. I drilled a lot of 1/16 holes in one side of it and found it very easy to do so. I'm using connectors made for PEX, but they are not made of PEX and are very stiff. Normally, one would use a special kind of clamps to make the connections tight, but that is not necessary in this case. It was a little difficult to bend the tubing and fit it onto the connectors, but a few minutes of patience was all it required. This was a 10 gallon round, so I think that for a 5 gallon round it might become a bit too difficult to bend into a circle of the right size while sliding it onto the connectors.

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What size pex tubing did you use? Where did u get yours at?

gregorynyssa said:

Yes, I hope it is my best brew yet, especially since I spent 8 hours on it. I can see at least a few hours I should save next time. I even boiled it for an hour and a half because I kept thinking I had too much water, then somehow over shot a little and also forgot about the contraction, so I ended up with barely 5 gallons. What you see above, obviously, is my preboil gravity.

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8 hours isn't that bad. My brew day usually runs close to 6 hours, including a one hour mash, and 75 minute boil. I really can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday.

HomebrewMTB said:

Thanks! I'm trying to eliminate some dead volume in my new 5 gallon cooler MLT and your setup looks great. But it sounds like the bent pex wouldn't be a good fit for my situation. I'll probably go with a hex shape with more elbows and shorter pieces. Any thoughts on pex vs. cpvc?

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That may be a good idea. If you want to keep the suction away from the walls, you have to bend it pretty tight. The connectors are made of little stiff tubes that stick into the pipe. If you cut them down to half length, you could probably get it into a tighter curve. My biggest problem was that the connectors had to go in straight, but as I bent the pipe into a tight semicircle, the end of it wanted to have some curvature as well. Also, I didn't heat the pipe at all, though that would probably make it easier to bend. If I did it again, I'd probably just try sticking it in hot water for a few minutes.

Actually, a square form might be pretty good. You could have the corners right up against the walls and just not drill so close the the corners--you wouldn't drill the elbows anyway. A tight fit like that would eliminate any movement, though mine seems to stay put pretty well.

It's not a big deal to try it. The 5 ft piece of pipe I bought at Lowe's was $1.78.

HomebrewMTB said:

Thanks! I'm trying to eliminate some dead volume in my new 5 gallon cooler MLT and your setup looks great. But it sounds like the bent pex wouldn't be a good fit for my situation. I'll probably go with a hex shape with more elbows and shorter pieces. Any thoughts on pex vs. cpvc?

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I forgot your question. I read up on my options quite a bit and personally feel better about pex. Apparently, cpvc can be brittle and split under some kinds of stress and some people had a concern about leeching chemicals, though I think there was no good reason for concern.

Mpavlik22 said:

What size pex tubing did you use? Where did u get yours at?

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It is 1/2" inner diameter. They had five foot lengths of it at Lowe's for $1.78. I guess a smaller diameter might be easier to bend for a smaller cooler.

hercher said:

8 hours isn't that bad. My brew day usually runs close to 6 hours, including a one hour mash, and 75 minute boil. I really can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday.

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5 or 6 would be nice and I think that's how it should normally be if I'm not doing first time things like rebuilding the mash tun when it leaks hot water. I think I've got it under control now and it really never leaked enough to cause problems, so I should have just gone ahead with it (as I eventually did) and tried to find a solution later.

gregorynyssa said:

It is 1/2" inner diameter. They had five foot lengths of it at Lowe's for $1.78. I guess a smaller diameter might be easier to bend for a smaller cooler.

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How many times have u used this setup? Have u experienced any stuck sparges?

Mpavlik22 said:

How many times have u used this setup? Have u experienced any stuck sparges?

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Today was my second time. I haven't got stuck, but I've only done a dual batch sparge kind of thing. I thought I'd set myself up with a little manifold just for versatility.