Obligatory first AG post (with pics)!

First off, huge props to the entire HBT site - without months of lurking, posting, reading, asking questions, etc, there's no way I could have pulled this off. Thanks all!

Anyway, did my first AG on Saturday. I brewed a slight variation of Yooper's Anchor Steam clone. Used the Denny Conn thin-mash+infusion+single-batch-sparge method. Been doing a bunch of PM brews, using up to 8 lbs of grain, for a bit, so the whole thing wasn't too confusing. Still, it was a great learning opportunity. Had a great time; can't wait to do it again! Some pics:

Poured in the strike water at 15 degrees above strike temp; let sit for 10 min then stirred until I hit strike temp.

Stirring in the grains.



Was aiming to mash at 154, but after about 5-6 minutes of stirring temps had equalized to about 152. Rather than add boiling water or deal with trying to hit the exact temps (maybe next time - this was all about getting the process down), I figured it was good enough and closed the lid.


The good news: after 1 hour, I lost less than 1 degree of temp!



Added infusion water, stirred, vorlaufed, drained, added sparge water, stirred, waited 10 min, then vorlaufed and drained again:



Was looking to hit 6.75 gallons pre-boil volume, but only got 6.5. Oh well, another thing to fix next time.



Did some laundry while waiting for the boil. Happy SWMBO = more brew days.



Also had time to feed little Palefire. Yes, that's a Madonna shirt he's wearing. You got a problem with it!?



Chilling the wort. I can usually get from boiling to 65 in about 20 minutes.



Transferred to fermenter and pitched the starter. Mr. Malty recommended a starter twice this size, but I only have a 1L erlenmeyer flask. There was airlock activity after about 10 hours, though, so I think I'm fine.



Happy in the swamp cooler!



I estimated efficiency at 65%, and was shooting for an OG of 1.051:

This was at 70 degrees. Hit it right on the nose!

Total time, including set up and cleanup: 4.75 hours. Not bad! Next steps are to raise efficiency 5-10 points and cut 15-30 minutes off of total brew time. Other than that, couldn't have gone better. Thanks again to everyone who participates here - it's a great community and I've learned so much from y'all. Prost!

Congrats on the first AG batch, let us know how it turns out.

thanks, man - bubbling away happily at 62, so it's looking all good!

1st: congrats! Looks like you had fun doing it too!

2nd: How did you get ten pics into a single post?

Wow, way to go! Now sit on your hands for 3 weeks. Or better yet, repeat!

Nice work....for a first timer it seems you did it pretty much like an old timer.

Looks good. Seeing a brewday gone well makes me really want to brew... Stupid apt living...

Congrats, and good job! (I second the afore mentioned 'repeat' step...get that pipeline full!

First AG, new baby and you had time for pics - wow that's amazing.

Madonna shirt needs to go!

congrats, sounds like my brewday on sunday was about the exact same.

Great job! Now the waiting begins.

4.75 hours for your first AG is very impressive!

Thanks, all! I love how supportive this forum is.

samc said:

Madonna shirt needs to go!

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Well, we do live in San Francisco ... and our neighborhood has a relatively high gay population. So the shirt does seem to get him a ton of props from people on the street. But don't worry - I also got him an Iggy Pop "Raw Power" shirt that I try to get him to rock as often as possible.

I will be doing my 1st AG later this week. i hope that mine goes as simply as yours did! Congrats.

SNB said:

I will be doing my 1st AG later this week. i hope that mine goes as simply as yours did! Congrats.

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Good luck! I'm sure it'll go great. One thing that really helped was spending a fair amount of time going over the steps in my head so I knew what to expect. I've done about 10 PM brews (DB's method, mashing up to 8 lbs of grain) and had that system pretty dialed, so it wasn't too much of a step up. Also reading around here for things people do to shave time off the brewday and make things easier - use hot water from the tap, start heating up sparge water early, put heat on the first runnings while sparging, use downtime (like the mash or the boil) to set up, clean up, measure out hops, etc.

Let us know how it goes!

Palefire said:

Good luck! I'm sure it'll go great. One thing that really helped was spending a fair amount of time going over the steps in my head so I knew what to expect. I've done about 10 PM brews (DB's method, mashing up to 8 lbs of grain) and had that system pretty dialed, so it wasn't too much of a step up. Also reading around here for things people do to shave time off the brewday and make things easier - use hot water from the tap, start heating up sparge water early, put heat on the first runnings while sparging, use downtime (like the mash or the boil) to set up, clean up, measure out hops, etc.

Let us know how it goes!

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Well i did a PM last night that was a disaster!! I just hope this isn't an idea of things to come. it was my first brew in a few months, so i was a bit rusty. i am doing another PM tonight so keep your fingers crossed that it goes better