Another All-Grain virgin bites the dust

Well, after months of collecting and preparing the equipment I decided it was time. Up at 8am to heat the water for what was initially intended to be an Ed Worts Haus Ale clone but with the hop shortage I had to back off the grain bill to keep it in balance. Then I stared longingly at my pressure canner and then all bets were off.

5.2 kg 2-Row
1.3 kg Vienna
0.3 kg CaraRed

Crushed with the Crankenstein, bloody well looks like a toilet swirly, the grain goes through so fast!! about 2kg per funnel, less than a minute each fill.

Infused with 2.7L/kg (1.3 qt/lb) at 133F and hit 122 bang on for the protein rest, 30 minutes later, opened the steam valve. 3F per minute rise but had to shut down twice for 10 min each time to get pressure up. Averaged out to 1F per minute over a 30 minute rise to 152.

Held 152 for 1 hour then blast with steam to 168, took 5 minutes! Love the steam.

Batch sparged with 2 batches after draining first runnings. Took about 45 minutes to finish and boil. The vorlauf made the wort go from cloudy grey to less cloudy yellow, but it never did go brilliantly clear, is this fairly normal? I did a 2x 2L vorlauf for each sparge.

I ended up about 5L shy of my target boil volume so somewhere in my measurements I missed a jugful.

25 IBU of Cascade hops added during the boil, 1.5 oz at 60 min, .5 oz at 30 and 2/3 oz at 5 min.

I finished my boil and had about 8 gallons in the pot, so I had to add a gallon of water to each carboy to top it up. All in all, got 10 gallons at 1.043 and an 81% brewhouse efficiency, not too shabby for a first timer. I guess it might be a bit higher next time if I add more water to the sparge and work out my boil off losses more accurately

Can't wait to see how it turns out, should be a nice light summer beer.

Good going. I am surprised at the steam the first time brewing an all grain? What yeast did you use and details. Will you be bottling or kegging?

WBC said:

Good going. I am surprised at the steam the first time brewing an all grain? What yeast did you use and details. Will you be bottling or kegging?

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Thanks, I'm a bit of a gadget freak but less of an automation freak so the steam infusion works for me. I also use the canner for autoclaving starters and the like.

I used Wyeast 1056 American Ale from a 2L starter I made about 5 days ago. Pitched a 10ml freezer stock that I made a while back into 1.5L of 1.040 wort and put it on a stir plate. Then fed the starter on Friday with another 0.5L, then into the fridge on Saturday to crash it out.

Bottling for now, I've seen kegs for sale up here but they're not cheap by a long shot, about $50 per corny at least, shipping is a killer if you order from the states as well. We have a friend who drinks a lot of Grolsch so the swingtops make bottling a bit less painful

See if you can find Cornys local. I have fermented/served in Sankey half barrels too. They are not too hard to clean either. I just take out the stem and use a rubber stopper and blowoff tube like you would with a carboy. When it is finished I put the shortened stem (.75 inch) back in and purge with CO2 and age it. To serve just add CO2 via a regulator and connect to a beer faucet. You can also bottle by transfering beer from the Sanke to a bucket with boiled corn sugar primer in it and bottle as normal. I ferment in a refrigerator with a Ranco digital controller which can hold +/- 1 degree F.