OnTheStrangeBrew
Member
My first all grain brew is in the secondary fermentor as I type. My first A.G. is a Gumball Head clone. It is a wheat beer from Three Floyds Brewing Company in Munster Indiana. I used 4 ounces of Amirillo hops. makes me thirsty just typing it. I think I went a little crazy from this first all grain. I didnt have my exact fermentation temperature. I was a few degrees off. So I bought a Johnson Controls A419 temperature control unit. I have a probe that goes into the beer. You set your target temp. on the digital display. It will control either a heater or a cooler. You propgram when you want it to kick on the heat or the cooler based on your setting.
I also acquired a 15.5 gallon keg. It was sitting on my back porch for six months. So i used a plasma cutter to cut a hole in the top. So now it is a 15.5 gallon brew kettle. My old 7 gallon pot will now just be for getting my strike and sparge water up to temp. I thought about upgrading my cooler mash tun into a steel mash tun, but decided on being able to do bigger batches was better. Not to mention the fact that I would have to monitor my 7 gallon kettle for boil overs. Well no longer. I guess I have caught the all grain bug.
On my first A.G. I managed to hit my Original gravity. I cracked a huge smile when I took the reading after brewing for 5 hours. Made me feel a little easier when you get the right results. My strike temperature was also spot on based on the calculations i plugged in. I also figured out my grain absorption which was 1.44 gallons of water absorbed into the grain. The calculators default setting was 0.12 gal/lb. which came out to be 1.4 gallons based on 12 pounds of grain. Math is great when you can actually use it in such a great way!
I also acquired a 15.5 gallon keg. It was sitting on my back porch for six months. So i used a plasma cutter to cut a hole in the top. So now it is a 15.5 gallon brew kettle. My old 7 gallon pot will now just be for getting my strike and sparge water up to temp. I thought about upgrading my cooler mash tun into a steel mash tun, but decided on being able to do bigger batches was better. Not to mention the fact that I would have to monitor my 7 gallon kettle for boil overs. Well no longer. I guess I have caught the all grain bug.
On my first A.G. I managed to hit my Original gravity. I cracked a huge smile when I took the reading after brewing for 5 hours. Made me feel a little easier when you get the right results. My strike temperature was also spot on based on the calculations i plugged in. I also figured out my grain absorption which was 1.44 gallons of water absorbed into the grain. The calculators default setting was 0.12 gal/lb. which came out to be 1.4 gallons based on 12 pounds of grain. Math is great when you can actually use it in such a great way!
