It's in the books...

My first AG batch is in the books! Here's the recipe:

SWT Canadian Pale Ale

8# 2-row pale
2# Munich malt
.25# crystal 80
.25# wheat malt

.5oz Galena 60
1oz cascade 15
1oz cascade 2 Total IBU=41
Windsor dry yeast

I started by milling all the grain. I was going to mechanize the process but I found it quite relaxing to sit in the sun and crank by hand. You were right Dude, it's very cathartic. Gives you a bit of calm before the upcoming storm.
My mash temp stabilized at 151, I was shooting for 153, but I'm not too worried about that. I batch sparged with 170 degree water and stopped the runnings at 1.010. This yielded about 7gal of wort.
Then, it was to the boil. Everything to this point had been performing above expectations. The turkey fryer I had wouldn't light! I finally got it going but I had to back the connection to the propane tank off a bit and hold it askew with some electrical tape. Anyone else seen this before? Anyhoo, I got her working and that 60,000BTUs made short work of the boil (when it did, I was ready - not a single drop boiled over.)
The boil was fine and then on to the chilling. I had built a CFC but I made a mistake and used 1/4" tubing instead of 3/8." The chiller worked extremely well, and with full cooling water on the wort exit temp was 42F! I adjusted it and got a more resonable temp. Being that it was only 1/4" tubing it took 2 hours to drain the kettle. Even my wort wizard didn't help, (actually I couldn't really get it to work at all.) Good thing I had HB and Jimmy Page and the Black Crows to keep me company!

All in all, it was great! I can't wait to do it again and share the experience with my friends and family. Unfortunatly, it looks like I'm going to Africa in a week or two, so it'll have to wait. But like the guy at the end of Conan said: "That is another story"

Chairman Cheyco said:

I batch sparged with 170 degree water and stopped the runnings at 1.010. This yielded about 7gal of wort.

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In theory shouldn't all the runnings have the same gravity when batch sparging. I though that was the whole idea and why you just let it rip as fast as you can once you get it all mixed up?

You're totally right. I wonder if that entire second batch was 1.010? I just measured towards the end and it was there. LMAO! I can be such a doofus...

In batch sparging the runnings are not going to be the same. The first part will be much heavier than the last. Thats the reason the draining off the mash water is alot darker than the sparge water. Most of the sugers are in mash water. The reason for sparging is to get all of it. With batch sparing you go with how much wort you want not by SG, if you do you are leaving some wort left in the lauder tun. Fgure out how much wort you want and add that much water plus some for grain absorbtion (sp?).

Actually, the SG for a batch will be pretty close to the same, at least for the sparge batch. This is because the SG is more or less uniform in each batch. In the initial batch this isn't always true because the 'heavier' wort may sink to the bottom and drain first. But in the sparge batch portion the SG should be relatively uniform. In any case, there is no problem with a 1010 SG batch sparge that I can see.

The world, indeed the entire universe is a better place now that it has another all-grainer in it.

Sounds like everything went really well. Very cool, great job and congrats!

So, what's next?

Chairman Cheyco said:

My first AG batch is in the books! Here's the recipe:
Good thing I had HB and Jimmy Page and the Black Crows to keep me company!

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Hey Hey what can I do... I got a hobby keep me drunk all the time!

Brewpastor said:

So, what's next?

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Well, work is taking me to Africa in the next week or two, so I'm not sure If I'll have time to do another before I go. I think either a chile beer or that mole porter of yours looks pretty good. I'll know when I leave in a couple days.

Maybe in Africa you can learn to make the root drink where you chew it up and spit it in a jar so it can spontaneously come to life and give you a buzz. On second thought, just enjoy the trip.