First AG brew tomorrow!! A few more tips could make me a happy brewer.

After brewing for the past three months I feel that it's time for me to save money and go AG. I've been researching everything I can and getting info that would make a normal person's head spin. I know most of you get tons of questions all the time here, and I hate to make another thread, but I feel like there's a few questions that haven't been answered yet.

First off, I'm brewing a honey hefe (7lbs two row american malt, 5lbs white american wheat) with some orange. This seems like a very simple recipe to start with, so that's why I'm using it. Keep it simple, right?

A few questions I have is: I'm using a 10 gallon rubbermaid drink cooler as my mash tun, seems like the best thing to use. I've asked everyone and they suggest using a hose screen rather than a false bottom, that's what I'm going with. I have a big enough brew kettle, so I'm not too worried about brew size. Does anyone suggest anything different for the filter system?

Also, I'm getting a ton of different info about batch sparging and getting good conversion. Most people say use the same amount of sparge water as you would with strike water. Some folks say that you can up your sparge water and boil down the wort to get the right volume, would that help out? Some folks say use less sparge water, but that seems counter intuitive. Am I wrong in thinking that using a far larger volume of water would actually get more sugars out of the grains and then you can just boil down the wort to get your proper volume? Does it matter how long I boil down my wort to reach the volume I'm looking for?

I haven't started building my mash tun yet, I'm still looking for the best setup I can. If any of you awesome brewers have a 10 gallon drink cooler setup they'd like to link me to, that would be much appreciated.

Cheers guys!

Your tun and filter really don't have much/any impact on the final beer. A braid is fine. A false bottom is fine. The grain bed is actually doing the filtering.

You should grab some rice hulls for this batch. Wheat has a tendency to turn to something that looks like oatmeal and has issues draining.

For volumes, use one of the many online calculators. The process is pretty forgiving as long as you collect the total amount of wort your recipe calls for. You don't just want to collect a ton of wort and boil forever (at least as a general rule). Lengthy boils darken the wort and cause some flavor changes. Those are appropriate, and often desirable, in something like a barleywine, but not a simple wheat beer.

Crushed corriander seeds will give you more orange flavor than the orange itself. Use both.

For figuring volumes, it's easier to figure how much wort you need preboil, and work backwards.

For example, if you want 6.5 gallons of wort to start the boil (a good place to start), you mash as usual. You normally can't go wrong with 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain for the mash. Have a couple of quarts of boiling water on hand, and a few ice cubes on hand in case you miss your temperature too high or too low. But stir very well first, so that you give it time to equalize first. Otherwise, people add boiling water, then ice, the boiling, etc as they try to hit the temperature. Give it a good 5-10 minutes, with stirring, before adjusting the temperature.

You can generally expect 10 pounds of grain in the mash to absorb one gallon of liquid, so keep that in mind.

When you draw out your first runnings, measure them. And then use the difference between your boil volume and those runnings for the sparge volume.

For example, using a 10 pound grain bill:

Mash in with 15 quarts (4.25 gallons).

You'll get out 3.25 gallons.

If you want 6.5 gallons for the boil volume, use 3.25 gallons for the sparge.

It's pretty easy once you get familiar with your equipment and deadspace and such.

This one will tell, you all you need to know:

http://onebeer.net/batchspargecalc.shtml

I input usually 1.5gal over my desired batch volume for boil off as that's what my system seems to boil off. Apart from temps for strike, that calculator has been dead on accurate for me since I started batch sparging a few years back.

And I did exactly this build and have had flawless run offs with zero issues. Fight the urge to "make it better" with ball valves and all the other homebrewer have-to's (nothing against that, but this setup is less is more all the way).

http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/mashtun.htm

Enjoy your first batch. I know I did.

This is just the way I do it but it works for me.

If I have 10 pounds of grain I will mash in with about 3 gallons
On my system I lose about 1 gallon per 10 pounds.
With 10 pounds and 3 gallons my first runnings would be about 2 gallons.
Since the grain is now wet it won't retain anymore wort so just sparge with however many gallons needed to be added to your first runnings to get your boil volume.
I usually do a 6.5 gallon boil for a 5 gallon batch so for this example I would sparge with 4.5 gallons.
Pretty much all brews call for at least a 60 minute boil. I would say this is the standard and minimum for all grain for a bunch of reasons.
Definitely through some rice hulls in there. Wheat can make sparges hell.
Good luck and have fun!

I do what Yooper does for determining sparge volume. I also try to use 6.5 gallon pre boil volumes. Keeps it very simple.

I recently made a very similar beer. As Rm MN suggested, corriander adds a lot.

And I also want to chim in about rice hulls. They're cheap and easy to use.

Most importantly, take your time, take good notes, and enjoy yourself. I recently switched to AG and was pleasantly suprised how straightforward the process is, and a lot more fun the making extract kits.

Enjoy!

Thanks guys!! I really like all this advice.

Another question I have is that I usually us an ice system to cool my wort and didn't like to use the wort chiller I had made. I basically scrapped it for the ice method as it cools my wort fast. Now that I'm going all grain, I was wondering about boiling down the volume to add my usual ice volume. I know it's a lot more time consuming, but I've always liked the ice. Should I go back to my counterflow chiller system? Does anyone have experience with that?

There are endless methods of chilling the wort. I would stick with an ice bath. Put the kettle in your sink or bathtub and fill with water and ice. As the ice melts, add more. I can cool 5 gallons in about 30 minutes with this method. Although I just use my coil chiller.

I actually throw ice into the wort when I chill. I boil water and then seal it and freeze it.

NastyN8 said:

I actually throw ice into the wort when I chill. I boil water and then seal it and freeze it.

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Do you throw in the sealed bag or as ice? If you're throwing it in as ice you have to account for that volume. Since he is doing a full volume all grain, that won't work unless he misses his final volume, but if its sealed in a container and sanitized, it could help chill it down.

I always just throw clean ice directly in to my wort. Luckily I built a counter flow chiller when I first started brewing, but I had some problems with it leaking, so I didn't use it after the first few times. Luckily I kept it around just in case, and now that will be my saving grace.

I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to do my recipe today, I'd love to get your input!!

5 lb American white wheat
7 lb American 2 row base malt
1 lb honey
1 oz corriander
2 blood oranges
1 lb rice hulls
1 oz german hallertau hops (3/4 at 60 min, 1/4 at 15 min)
I'm going to go with 4 gallons of strike water at a mash temp of 153. I'm going to try to get a wort volume of 6.5 gallons. Doing two seperate batch sparges to get to that volume.

Any advice? Looking good?

Looks pretty good. Might be a tad much honey malt. I brew a hefe that's very similar that has .25 lb of honey malt and it comes out supper malty, with a good sweetness to it that isn't overpowering.

I had a damn hard time getting the grain bed to sparge temps. The runoff is going perfect, no problems and it looks like I got a very good conversion. I haven't added honey yet, so if the gravity looks good I may not add any at all.

I ended up with over 7 1/2 gallons of wort trying to get it to temp!! Only got the grains to 160, even throwing boiling water on there. I'm not too worried, it looks great, unless perhaps someone has terror stories about a low sparge temp...?

I have terror stories about low sparge temperature. I BIAB so my sparge is a much smaller amount but I use cold tap water for the sparge. WHAT???!! I know that sugar is more soluble in hot water than cold but I still get a lot of sugars out with the cold water and I didn't have to have another pot heating water. The moral of this is don't sweat missing your sparge temperature. Hotter is better but not a whole lot better. Stirring better will easily make up the difference.

Ok, so all said and done, I have some crazy readings going on. 12lbs grain, one lb honey.... and after boiling down to 5 gallons I have an OG of 1.088. This seems like CRAZY high for a hefe. Am I ruining things here? Is all the stuff I put in affecting the gravity? Did I get a really great mash?

NastyN8 said:

I ended up with over 7 1/2 gallons of wort trying to get it to temp!! Only got the grains to 160, even throwing boiling water on there. I'm not too worried, it looks great, unless perhaps someone has terror stories about a low sparge temp...?

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Actually, you can sparge with cold water and have little to loss of efficiency, so no need to go to 7.5 gallons just to get to a certain temperature!

NastyN8 said:

Ok, so all said and done, I have some crazy readings going on. 12lbs grain, one lb honey.... and after boiling down to 5 gallons I have an OG of 1.088. This seems like CRAZY high for a hefe. Am I ruining things here? Is all the stuff I put in affecting the gravity? Did I get a really great mash?

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Well, with 12 pounds of grain and one pound of honey, that seems about right for an AG.

Now, it's high for a hefeweizen for sure. But that's because you used 12 pounds of grain and a pound of honey! With my system, I would have got about 1.080 with that grain bill and the honey.

Now you now roughly what you'll get from your system, so you can better plan for next time.

I thought something was seriously wrong with my measuring equipment there.

Am I getting a decent conversion then?

NastyN8 said:

I thought something was seriously wrong with my measuring equipment there.

Am I getting a decent conversion then?

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Yes, it sounds like it. that's about 78-80% efficiency, but I didn't do the math so it's just my guess.