Preparing for my first all-grain

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Bigsnake

Bigsnake

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Very excited. Doing a Belgian Pale Ale this evening. Going to start the mash in my TV room and watch the LSU football game. LOL Didn't have time this week to build my HLT and sparge arm so I'll be doing a batch sparge. I'll also be trying out the largest starter I've ever made.

Going to see about getting another burner this afternoon before I start. Been doing partial mashes so this seems like it might be less work :p

My 4th Saturday in a row brewing and I've helped with about 3 other batches in that time frame. Some other friends in the neighborhood that brew so we're filling up our pipeline.
 
Got a new burners and got a stainless steel turkey pot today. Going to use it to help in heating sparge water and use it to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. 15 minutes left on the mash now.
 
Bulls Beers said:
I hope it goes great....I did my first last weekend..
Click to expand...

Thanks. You do batch or fly sparge on yours?

I forgot to go get 5 gallons of bottled water so I used tap water. Put the 5.2 buffer solution in there, mixed the grains in and tested pH. Came out at around 6. Hope that isn't too high. The normal pH of our water is pretty high. I tested it in the lab the other day on a good pH meter and it was at 8.4 for plain tap water. I tasted the first runnings and it was grainy and sweet so I got some conversion at least. I took the SG of the second runnings and it was 1.030. Have the last sparge water in there now.
 
Bigsnake said:
Thanks. You do batch or fly sparge on yours?

I forgot to go get 5 gallons of bottled water so I used tap water. Put the 5.2 buffer solution in there, mixed the grains in and tested pH. Came out at around 6. Hope that isn't too high. The normal pH of our water is pretty high. I tested it in the lab the other day on a good pH meter and it was at 8.4 for plain tap water. I tasted the first runnings and it was grainy and sweet so I got some conversion at least. I took the SG of the second runnings and it was 1.030. Have the last sparge water in there now.
Click to expand...

I went the easy route and batched sparged..It went pretty well, except for my OG was high.
 
Bulls Beers said:
I went the easy route and batched sparged..It went pretty well, except for my OG was high.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I like the batch sparge. Seems like a lot of labor involved. Beersmith had me doing 4.98 gallons for sparge so I split it up into two 2.5 gallon batch sparges. I plan on brewing again next weekend so I think I'm going to rig up an HLT and give fly sparging a try. Seems like it'll be less labor than doing two batch sparges.

Beersmith had predicted OG at 1059 and I hit 1054 but I think I was short on volume. I forgot to mark off 5 gallons my new better bottle before I brewed.

The new burner is awesome though. Super powerful. Finally enough power that I can easily boil over if I'm not careful as well as burn stuff to the bottom of the pot :p Plus it was hot enough to discolor the bottom of my pot. :eek:

I also pitched a GIANT starter. It was probably just shy of a normal yeast cake that I get in one of my carboys. I'll see how it turns out. I got a blow-out tube on the carboy now.
 
Bigsnake said:
I'm not sure I like the batch sparge. Seems like a lot of labor involved. Beersmith had me doing 4.98 gallons for sparge so I split it up into two 2.5 gallon batch sparges. I plan on brewing again next weekend so I think I'm going to rig up an HLT and give fly sparging a try. Seems like it'll be less labor than doing two batch sparges.

Beersmith had predicted OG at 1059 and I hit 1054 but I think I was short on volume. I forgot to mark off 5 gallons my new better bottle before I brewed.

The new burner is awesome though. Super powerful. Finally enough power that I can easily boil over if I'm not careful as well as burn stuff to the bottom of the pot :p Plus it was hot enough to discolor the bottom of my pot. :eek:

I also pitched a GIANT starter. It was probably just shy of a normal yeast cake that I get in one of my carboys. I'll see how it turns out. I got a blow-out tube on the carboy now.
Click to expand...

Bobby_M and others here recommend a double sparge as you are describing. It seems to improve efficiency.
 
One fringe difference between the two methods is how you manage the temperature of the sparge water. When you batch, you can make sure you have your water at 180F and dump it in. When you fly, you get the water up to temp and it has to be held there for a good 45-60 minutes. This is easy if you have a dedicated stand with a burner or a cooler to hold the temp.

Fly is less labor, longer time.
 
Bobby_M said:
One fringe difference between the two methods is how you manage the temperature of the sparge water. When you batch, you can make sure you have your water at 180F and dump it in. When you fly, you get the water up to temp and it has to be held there for a good 45-60 minutes. This is easy if you have a dedicated stand with a burner or a cooler to hold the temp.

Fly is less labor, longer time.
Click to expand...

I think I'd get another 10 gallon cooler to use as an HLT and build a sparge arm. Is there any good guides on here for building a decent sparge arm? I'm thinking CPVC pipe but I'm not sure what I'd use to glue connections together. Don't know what's safe for food.

The double batch sparge was just a lot of labor and there is already enough of that on brew day for me :p Plus from what I've read it doesn't seem like it would add that much more over a double batch sparge for the process I used. I'd just have to watch the two flow rates carefully.
 
Pete08 said:
Bobby_M and others here recommend a double sparge as you are describing. It seems to improve efficiency.
Click to expand...

I've heard people mention it before as it's for improved efficiency. If you asked me a year ago I could have pulled the formulas out to actually prove that it small rinsing is better than one large batch without having to go derive them again. But I'm one of those engineers that hates math so that won't be happening. Learned about it in some of my ChemE stuff. It's the reason I do three small rinses of sterilized water in my carboy instead of just one to get bleach out.
 
Bigsnake said:
I forgot to mark off 5 gallons my new better bottle before I brewed.
Click to expand...

They've already done it for you :) At least, close enough for my puproses.
bb_6g_measure.jpg
 
gxm said:
They've already done it for you :) At least, close enough for my puproses.
Click to expand...

Thanks! but that kind of sucks, means I have 4.5 gallons in the fermenter. I checked the gravity and it was a few points high but I decided not to top up not knowing how much I had in there.

Appears I underestimated my boil off again. Happened the first time I brewed and ended up with a little more than 4 gallons in the fermenter.

I got a new burner yesterday and I'm guessing now I boiled off 2 gallons. (7 in the pot, 2 to boil, .5 for trub/sediment loss) It's way more powerful than my old one too. Old burner I could keep it on full power and it would be a gentle boil on my pot. This new burner it was a rolling boil that I had to turn down to keep it from boiling over. It discolored the bottom and sides of my pot too.

Edit: and I already ordered stuff for my next all-grain.
 
Well, you could always top it off now, or a little later once your past blow off. At least it looks like your first AG went well, congratulations! Hopefully you see as much of an improvement in the taste and flavor as I did.
 

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