first AG brewday and new basic equipment

Well, it went awesomely! i was just gonna use my equipment for partial mashes, but decided to break it in via a SMaSH recipe and had WAY too much fun... took way longer then i wanted though... lol 6 hours!

but anyways, onto a few pics i did get a chance to snap with my phone

new brewpot - 8 gallon next to my old 5 gallon ($30 at bimart)


some other small new stuff,
Grain (marris otter) , 3lbs of cane sugar, bottle caps, 2 air locks, 2 corks, 2 smaller fermenting buckets and the handle of the 2 foot long spoon i got for stirring, found out the hard way i need something more stable. it's kinda flimsy but is it ever long! Citra and summit hops, and some hazelnut flavoring for a later on brew day, and some coopers yeast (i do love their yeast, and it's the cheapest at my brew shop lol works for me!)


Here is the tun, lost 0 degrees in the hour! (stayed at 156*


couldn't decide if i wanted to fly or batch sparge, decided on the batch but didn't wanna reach in there and grab that piece of plastic


the aftermath (this was taken a day later) and i had too much wort lol i was doing a split boil but still wasn't done sparging when i was done collecting, so i put the rest in another pot and used the hop dust from austin home brew supply.
for the 1 gallon fermenter (the jug uptop) i had a 1 gallon waterbottle i just used that day, drilled 2 holes in the top a little smaller then the diameter of some tubing i just bought that day as well, shoved 2 pieces of tubing into a mr beer bottle and filled with water for a blow off tube... just incase... haha don't know if this will work, but i figure if it holds water to drink, i can ferment into it



sorry i didn't grab more, first all grain and was trying to watch everything closely. hope you enjoyed!



cheers!

6 hours for a AG brew day is about right. I have my brew day down to about 3.5-4 hours now if I set up the night before so all I have to do is turn on the burner and go. A big time saver was building a CFC to chill my wort, that cut off about 45 minutes alone. happy brewing!

The length of my all-grain brew day depends on how much I drink during the brew process and how many people come up to help me get rid of my beer back stock. It will streamline for you with time and experience. There is a lot of stuff you can do ahead of time and there is a lot of cleanup you can do while you are boiling.

6 hours is about my average too. Nice work.

6 hours for your first AG is killer! Mine was closer to 10. Now (maybe 12 or 15 under my belt) i can do sub-5 hour brews if i focus, or 6 if i'm working on other things. Looks like you've got it down! Well done.

JMSetzler said:

The length of my all-grain brew day depends on how much I drink during the brew process and how many people come up to help me get rid of my beer back stock..

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yah, my last one two of my friends came over and help... boy was that a mistake.. i was pretty loaded by the time i was putting the beer in the carboy... and they drank 1/2 of my keg already, well i helped too... that day took about 6 hours... started at 2 ended about 8-830

rustbucket said:

yah, my last one two of my friends came over and help... boy was that a mistake.. i was pretty loaded by the time i was putting the beer in the carboy... and they drank 1/2 of my keg already, well i helped too... that day took about 6 hours... started at 2 ended about 8-830

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I really enjoy having friends over while I brew though... I'm not concerned much about time when I'm brewing. I dedicate the entire day to it. I typically invite my friends to come over about noon or so and I get started an hour or so early... I get my equipment out and prepared along with a batch of star san, get my grains ready to grind, get my water volumes measured out, get the hose hooked up and get my chiller ready to go et cetera...

If I put my mind to it, i could probably do an all-grain batch from start to finish including clean up in 4.5 hours

oh i love having my friends over to bring a brew day along, but it sometimes become more about drinking the beer more than brewing it for them...

i as well typically dedicate a full day towards a brewday too...