The Count down is on........... For my first AG Brew

Ok, I have finished my mash tun, have developed my reciepe and have everything I need and am planning to make my very first AG Brew either this week end or the first day I have off next week.

But since the recipe is my own creation, and it contains a lot of Rye which is known for creating stuck sparges, I wanted to run through my Reciepe and AG routine before I attemp it just to get your opinions, comments, and conserns.

First here is my recipe, I first developed it with the help of "Designign Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. I have posted it on here before but since I have started using beersmith, I have modified the reciepe some based on what I learned after plugging my recipe into beersmith. The recipe is below:

Forrest's Rye Stout

8 lb British Pale Ale Malt (due to a shipping error I am using Belgian Pale Malt this time)
1 lb Rye Malt
12 oz Cara-Rye
10 oz Chocolate Rye
8 oz Black Patient Malt
8 oz Black Barley
8 oz Dark Crystal Malt
1 oz Kent Golding Hops (Pellets)
1 oz Fuggles Hops (Pellets)
1 oz Williamette Hops (Pellets)
2 oz Malto-Dextrin
1/2 tsp Irish Moss
1 package Nottingham Ale Yeast


So for my mash, I am going to heat 3. 75 gallons of water to 165 degrees then add it to the mash tun, then add my grains and stir breaking up all clumps.

Put the lid on my Mash Tun and let mas for 1 hour.

Drain liquid from mash tun recycling the wort back into the mash tun until it clears up.

Next for my Batch Sparge, I will heat 2.25 gallons of water to 175 degrees and pour it into the mash/lauter tun. Stir and let set for a minute or so and then drain, recycling until liquid clears up.

Next the Boil,

When the wort comes to a rolling boil, I will add my 1 oz of Kent Golding Hops for Bittering and my 2 oz of Malto-Dextrin.

30 minutes into the boil, I will add the 1 oz of Fuggles Hops for flavoring.

15 minutes before the end of the boil I will add the Irish Moss

5 minutes before teh end of the boil I will add the 1 oz of Williamette Hops for aroma.

I will boil the wort for 1 hour.

After the boil I will cool the wart quickly and transfer into my sanitized fermentor.

I will shake the fermentor and then add the Nottingham Ale yeast.

Then I will get to the really hard part...... Waiting.

When it is fermented, I will add 1/3 cup of corn sugar for priming and then bottle.

Anybody see any problems with what I have written above? Would anybody do anything differently?

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like you've got the plan down. You might want to up your water vollume just a bit on the sparge. That much grain may soak up more water than you think and you want a full 6 gallons of wort to boil down to 5 1/2.

I like to end with about 5 1/4 to 5 1/2 gallons of post boil wort. You'll loose some volume to cold break and removing your hops.

Also, I like to take a preboil gravity reading. Not necessary, but kinda fun.

Instead of adding all water and then all grains, you may want to alternate, 3-4 inches water, 3-4 inches grain and repeat. THis will help to mix the mash and make strring a lot easier. 165 degrees will be fine if your grains are at room temp. If your mash temp comes in low, draw off some wort and heat it up and reintroduce it. More efficient than simply adding more hot water.

Your recipe doesn't look like it will be a stuck sparge problem. What kind of setup do you have?

Here is a pic of my wrapped manifold that helps avoid stickers.



Oh yeah...take pictures and share (see my link below). What day are you brewing?

How much water would you recommend for the sparge? 3 Gallons?


I am glad you put that bit in there about alternating Grain and Wather, I ment to ask if I should pour water in first or the grain in first or if it even mattered at all.

Don't worry, I am going to take lots of pictures.

I am using a 5 gallon rubbermaid Gott cooler with a stainless steel false bottom, the cooler and the valve I put on it to dran the wort was given to me for free so I spent a little money and got a false bottom. I will try to post pictures of my set up before I attemp to make the beer. I am using an out door propane cooker with a 10 gallon kettle for my boil, and smaller 5 gallon pot to heat up the water.



I am not sure what day I am going to do it on yet, maybe Saturday. I am a chef but I feel like I doctor, always on call. I never know from day to day when my time off will be. I don't want to try to rush through this. I want to wait until I have plenty of time so that I can give the beer the attention that is so greatly deserves.

Looks like you've got about 12 lbs of grain. I have a 5 gallon round as well. (See link below for pics). My last 12 pounder I ended up filling the initial mash to the top. I think I ended up doing almost the same with the sparge...near the top.

I'd guess about 3.5 - 4 gallons for initial strike and then 3 - 3.45 gallons for sparging. As long as there is color in that wort you're draining, there is flavor. You can always extend the boil time to get down to your volume.

Most important...have some freakin fun.

Kick on some music, crack open a cold one (I usually don't have a beer until the boil is under way...and even then, with moderation until my fermenter is secured with air lock) and enjoy the process.

BierMuncher said:

Most important...have some freakin fun. /images/smilies/wink.gif

Kick on some music, crack open a cold one (I usually don't have a beer until the boil is under way...and even then, with moderation until my fermenter is secured with air lock) and enjoy the process.

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Oh Yeah, I have got the fever that is for sure. I have been dreaming about making this beer. I have actually had people say to me "Is Beer all you think about?"

You know, most chefs have dreams of opening up their own restaurants but not me. My story book dream is to open up my own brewery.

I am going to have a blast.:rockin:

Figuring 12 pounds of grain I would suggest 3 1/2 gallons for the mash and 6 gallons for sparging. You are going to end up with about 8 to 8 1/2 gallons of wort with this method so you might need an extended boil.
If you only want to sparge with 2.25 gallons your efficiency is going to suffer. If you have already calculated this then you are good to go. If not you might want to conceder the amounts I've listed.
What OG were you shooting for?

Well, I have not really calculated anything, I was following what I was told was a good general all purpose starting point by the guy at my local home brew store.

I guess I would like to try to get as close as possible to the OG of 1.060. I think that should be a pretty realistic goal.

I think you want to collect at least 7 to 7.5 gallons and then boil down. I loose about 2 gallons to boiling and straining out the hops. I like to end up with 5.5 gallons in the fermentor so that I have a good 5 at bottling time. Your grain will absob roughly .13 to .15 quarts per pound on the mash.

Forrest said:

Well, I have not really calculated anything, I was following what I was told was a good general all purpose starting point by the guy at my local home brew store.

I guess I would like to try to get as close as possible to the OG of 1.060. I think that should be a pretty realistic goal.

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To get 1.060 you will need to get about 70 percent efficiency. I would definitely go with 6 gallons for the sparge.

RichBrewer said:

To get 1.060 you will need to get about 70 percent efficiency. I would definitely go with 6 gallons for the sparge.

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I only have a 5 gallon mash tun. I am going to be doing a Batch Sparge so can I put in say 4 gallons, drain it and then add three more gallons basically doing a double sparge. Will that work?

Forrest said:

I only have a 5 gallon mash tun. I am going to be doing a Batch Sparge so can I put in say 4 gallons, drain it and then add three more gallons basically doing a double sparge. Will that work?

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I'd like for the batch spargers to chime in here but I think that would work just fine.

Wouldn't you split the target final volume in half minus the mash volume plus the absorbtion rate to determine the amount of water for batch sparging?



Right?
:cross:


I fly sparge, BTW...

Forrest said:

I only have a 5 gallon mash tun. I am going to be doing a Batch Sparge so can I put in say 4 gallons, drain it and then add three more gallons basically doing a double sparge. Will that work?

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4 gallons with almost 12 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon tun is really pushing the volume. The last thing you want to do is spill extract from your mashtun. You lose gravity and if mashing indoors it makes a mess that is almost impossible to clean up. I would mash with 3 gallons and then sparge in 2 steps with 2 gallons of 170 degree wather each. This method usually gets most of the sugars out of the grain for me.

I have done maybe 10-12 batch sparges so take this advice with this in mind. You should really know how much wort volume you need before you can do the math. For the first time it is rather an educated guess because you don't know how much evaporation will occur and how well you want to filter the wort into the fermenter. I lost too much on the first 2 times and upped the grain and volume of wort to help get my target volume. This is how I figure it.
You need 6.5 gallons of preboil wort with roughly 12 lbs of lovely grain.

12 X 1.25 per pound for the mash. = 3.75 gallons
Absorbtion is .13 per pound = 1.6 ( rounded up )
3.75 - 1.6 = 2.15
You will need to add some water at the end of the mash to reach 1\2 of desired volume. In this case 3.75. Add 1.6 gallons at the end of the mash. Sparge is just the remaining half of desired volume or in this case 3.75.

It's late so I hope this makes sense. You will learn a lot the first couple of times, try to be calm if things don't go just right.

My porter was a 12 pounder and I used a round 5 gallon. I added water, grain, water, grain until the cooler was within about 2-3 inches from the top. That worked out good because it let me insert my digital probe into the hole I drilled in the top-right into the mash.

I drained that wort and to sparge, repeated the process...again, right to the top.

The last (3rd)phase was about 1/2 to 2/3 filled.

I ended up with 7 gallons and everything was great.

Not real scientific measurements, but it worked fine.

The point is, you have 12 pounds of grain and the 5 gallon will work fine. But you have to do all the grain at once and just figure out how to get 7 gallons of pre-boil out of the batch.

Blender said:

I have done maybe 10-12 batch sparges so take this advice with this in mind. You should really know how much wort volume you need before you can do the math. For the first time it is rather an educated guess because you don't know how much evaporation will occur and how well you want to filter the wort into the fermenter. I lost too much on the first 2 times and upped the grain and volume of wort to help get my target volume. This is how I figure it.
You need 6.5 gallons of preboil wort with roughly 12 lbs of lovely grain.

12 X 1.25 per pound for the mash. = 3.75 gallons
Absorbtion is .13 per pound = 1.6 ( rounded up )
3.75 - 1.6 = 2.15
You will need to add some water at the end of the mash to reach 1\2 of desired volume. In this case 3.75. Add 1.6 gallons at the end of the mash. Sparge is just the remaining half of desired volume or in this case 3.75.

It's late so I hope this makes sense. You will learn a lot the first couple of times, try to be calm if things don't go just right.

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I second Blender's recommendation. This should get you right where you want to be.

Ok I am probably going to make my first Ag this Sunday. I appreciate all of your recommendations and advice.

Bender,

as for your recommendation, you said I shoudl add 1.6 gallons at the end of the mash, what temp should this water be, the same as the mash water temp? And also, do I add this water directly into the mashtun before I train the wort or after have drained the wort.

Thanks

It can either be at your sparge temp or up to ~200' if you want to mash out. This is added before you drain. Stir it in good, let it rest for a few minutes, vorlauf, and drain. Good luck.

Lil' Sparky said:

It can either be at your sparge temp or up to ~200' if you want to mash out. This is added before you drain. Stir it in good, let it rest for a few minutes, vorlauf, and drain. Good luck.

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Yes this is what I do only I use 185 degree water. Have fun and be sure to let us know how it all went.