First-time All Grain Brew with English Pale and Dunkelweizen...

Hello Everyone today I embarked on my first two All-Grain Brews: English Pale Ale and German Dunkelweizen.
In all honesty the English Pale Ale was a kit from MoreFlavor in Palo Alto AKA Morebeer.com, the Dunkel on the other-hand is the following recipe and times:
1lbs Rice Hulls
5lbs White Wheat (Milled)
4lbs Rahr 2Row (Milled)
1/4lbs Roasted Barley (Black) (Milled)
1/4lbs Chocolate Malt (Wheat) (Milled)
1/8lbs Carata Special II Malt (Milled)
1/4lbs Caraviene Mild Crystal (Milled)
Brought 6.5gal of water with 1Tbs 5.2ph Powder to 155 Degrees F
Once at that Temp I added all my milled ingrediants and allowed it to steap for 65min I ran a little over.
After that 65min I strained...Yes I had all that grain just in my Pot and cuz I know I'm gonna hear it I'll just admit now that my 10gal mash kettle is Al and had no false bottom. I did not have enough at this time to buy a stainless steel.
Ok back to the brew.
I then brought my mash up to boil and added:
2oz Vanguard Hops for 40min and remove!
1oz Northern for 10min and Remove!
1oz Perle 10 and 1oz Irish Moss for 10min and remove the combined Hops Boil was 60min.
After removing the last 1oz of Irish Moss and Perle Hops place in Ice-bath until the you reach 70 to 75 Degrees F
Once 70 to 75 Degrees F is reached you will Pitch your yeast I used:
Wyeast 3068.
When I tasted it it was amazingly sweat with hints of Toasted Oats (insert duh here), Chocolate and Walnuts.
I'm hoping my yeast will soften the Toasted flavor and round out with more Banana (I like banana!) So there you have it my first attempt at both recipe adaptation and all grain brewing. So go ahead and let me have it so i know where to improve and please let me know if anyone likes what I did. Thanks and as all ways

Before you do your next AG batch, I recommend you study http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/
And you could also do a search on this forum for brew in a bag.
You will have to modify Palmer's instructions to use the brew in a bag method rather than a conventional MLT.
What you did was a grain steep, rather than a mash. Doing a proper mash would result in better conversion.
The other thing I would suggest is that you don't remove the hops until you transfer to the fermenter.

Good luck,

-a.

Just a heads up.

Roasted Barley and Black malt are different animals. Black malt is malted barley that has been roasted and has a smoother flavor Roasted Barley is not malted, and has a different dry bitter flavor. Not really used in german beers. Dunkels, Schwarz type beers use Black Malt.

When you do hop additions you dont need to take them out a bittering addition stays in for the entire boil, flavor addition once in, stays til the end.

ajf said:

Before you do your next AG batch, I recommend you study http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/
And you could also do a search on this forum for brew in a bag.
You will have to modify Palmer's instructions to use the brew in a bag method rather than a conventional MLT.
What you did was a grain steep, rather than a mash. Doing a proper mash would result in better conversion.
The other thing I would suggest is that you don't remove the hops until you transfer to the fermenter.

Good luck,

-a.

Click to expand...

Good to know and thanks for that heads up.

ajf said:

Before you do your next AG batch, I recommend you study http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/
And you could also do a search on this forum for brew in a bag.
You will have to modify Palmer's instructions to use the brew in a bag method rather than a conventional MLT.
What you did was a grain steep, rather than a mash. Doing a proper mash would result in better conversion.
The other thing I would suggest is that you don't remove the hops until you transfer to the fermenter.

Good luck,

-a.

Click to expand...

So in the future I should just use a grain bag? How is what I did different from those who mash ina cooler?

shayn80 said:

So in the future I should just use a grain bag? How is what I did different from those who mash ina cooler?

Click to expand...

You steeped about 10 lbs grain in 6.5g water.
When mashing, you need about 2.5 - 5 qt water for that amount of grain, and you need to get the water hotter than the mash temperature so when you add the cold grains, it settles down to the required mash temperature.
With the amount of water you had, the enzymes would have been very diluted, and not able to work at optimum efficiency, and the pH of the mash would probably have been too high. (pH 5.2 can only do so much).
Using a grain bag is a cheaper alternative to using an MLT with false bottom, manifold, or braid, but provides similar functionality. i.e. the ability to strain the grains out of the wort.

-a.