All grain with a nylon bag tips please.

I already built on one stub in the wiki.

I started with a 5gal kettle, and a $65 beginners kit from the LHBS. Then I bought a glass carboy and I was in steep/ extract and eventually PM business.

Then for $6.99 I bought a nylon mesh bag big enough for my brew kettle and I made the jump to all grain.

First time I hit 57%. Second time I allowed for the amount of water my grains were going to soak up, and I allowed for water evaporation during the boil.

Can I have a banana for 83% brewhouse please?

So I found the "budget all grain equipment" article in the wiki and put what I know in it.

I figure next time I brew I can whip out the camera and do it up right. If you aren't willing to chop up my text in the wiki could you post your nylon mesh bag tips in here so your knowledge can be assimilated?

thanks

For my next trick I will put a false bottom in my bottling bucket....

it may be that I'm not understanding your post, but it sounds like you boiled your grains. you didn't do that, did you? would you care to describe your entire all-grain process?

why would you want a false bottom in your bottling bucket?

billtzk said:

it may be that I'm not understanding your post, but it sounds like you boiled your grains. you didn't do that, did you? would you care to describe your entire all-grain process?

why would you want a false bottom in your bottling bucket?

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I guess I kept it too short.

I have been tracking my evaporation losses, and the first time through with the grain bag I calculated the amount of water the grain abosrbed very carefully.

For the second batch, yesterday, I allowed for both how much water the grain was going to absorb, and my expected evaporation rate, so I heated 3.75 gallons of water in my five gallon (not insulated) brew kettle.

Then I poured in my 5# of Marris Otter (no grain bag yet), stirred it up good and checked the temp. Put the lid on. Every fifteen minutes or so I would check the temp again and fire the burner under the mash-tun-brew-kettle to get back to temp.

I mashed for 60 minutes at "155°", I was heating to about 157° and letting it cool to about 152°.


Towards the end of the mash I put my fine mesh nylon grain bag inside my bottling bucket like a trash bag in a can. Could have used an ale pail I guess.

Then I poured the mash into the bag and bucket. I lifted the grain bag up out of the liquid and slipped a mixing bowl under it to catch the drips, set that in the kitchen sink; poured my liquid back into the kettle and started a fire under that.

Then I put the bowl upside down in the bottom of the bucket and set the grain bag gently on top of it so a little more liquid could drain.

I gave the kettle a good stir and pulled a gravity sample out of there.

After about ten minutes I lifted the grain bag off the upside down bowl in the bottom of the bucket, that liquid tasted sweet so I put it in the kettle. Ten minutes later the next drippings tasted kinda sour so I poured them down the drain.

By that time my gravity sample had cooled off...

5 pounds of MO @ 38 points per, I pitched 2.5 gal of 1.063, I think that is 82.8% brewhouse.

This would certainly be impractical with grain bills much over five pounds, but my kitchen stove can only handle about a three gallon boil anyway.

that's pretty close to what i've been doing....only i can handle over five kilos of grain. I managed to keep my temp in 153-155 range, although i don't trust my thermometer...for my present economic and living situation this method is perfect for me, if a little unorthodox...

ok, i understand the process you used.

if you consider maris otter to be 38 points per pound and you finished with 2.5 gallons at 1.063 (at the right temp or corrected for temp) and you had no other grains in your grain bill, then I agree with your 83% eff. that would be very good.

you calculate mash efficiency using the pre-boil volume and specific gravity at 59 degrees fahrenheit or with correction for temp. brewhouse eff is calculated the same way but using post-boil volume.

the way your description reads, it sounds like you took the hydro reading pre-boil. if so, then what was your pre-boil volume? or is that 1.063 actually post-boil for 2.5 gallon?

I pitched yeast on 2.5 gallons of 1.063 post boil. Grain bill was 5# of Marris Otter only.

I got super lucky on the hot break though, must have been beginner's luck. My bottling bucket leaves 1 quart in the floor area that doesn't run out the spigot, I put that quart in a gravy separator overnight just too see, even after sitting overnight there was only about another 1/2 cup of clear sweet wort in with the hot break. No way can I plan on getting lucky like that over and over.

When I used the six row last week (and got 57%) I had hot break just glorping out the spigot into my primary.

I bet with some other grain I would be leaving a "ton" of sugar in the floor of the whirlpool. I guess in that case I could put a dinner plate in the floor of the bucket and wait a little bit and whirlpool again and then re-open the spigot.

beenjammin said:

that's pretty close to what i've been doing....only i can handle over five kilos of grain. I managed to keep my temp in 153-155 range, although i don't trust my thermometer...for my present economic and living situation this method is perfect for me, if a little unorthodox...

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I agree I could mash more grain in my five gallon kettle, but I don't have another container to heat sparge water in. Are you running a second kettle as a hot liquor tank?

I only have the one five gallon kettle, and a six quart Dutch Oven, so my limit right now (I think) is the amount of sparge water I can have ready.

Someday I will have a turkey fryer and a back yard.

my kettle is actually between 6.5 and 7 gallons...my sparge water i heat in multiple gallon sized pots....three pots to fill my four burner stove.....so right before i pour my grains into the bucket lined with the sieve, i add half my sparge water into the kettle (which helps to pour the grains) and then add the other gallon in the bucket with the sieve...i then heat up another gallon of sparge and add that to the bucket partly to maintain temp and partly for more sparging.....i'm left with more wort than i can boil so i boil my wort down until i can get all of it in there....

i admit i've been oddly lucky with hotbreak material...nothing too hard to deal with....my two main flaws are exact temp maintainance...and fast wort chilling (right now i'm relying on the insanity of newfoundland winters)...i wish i had numbers to show you but i'm an art student, i've never been too concerned with numbers...my stove can handle the full five gallon boil though so i think if your stove could only boil three then you seem to be stuck at the volume you've been going with...which isn't a bad thing for sure....

if you want more detailed info of my process, durring my next brew session i'll make sure to focus on the calculations and try to explain better...i think the brew-in-a-bag mucguyver all-grain is definately a way to get into all-grain without adding anymore equipment, but i do hope to have a proper mlt someday....

beenjammin said:

my two main flaws are exact temp maintainance...and fast wort chilling (right now i'm relying on the insanity of newfoundland winters)...i wish i had numbers to show you but i'm an art student, i've never been too concerned with numbers...

...i think the brew-in-a-bag mucguyver all-grain is definately a way to get into all-grain without adding anymore equipment, but i do hope to have a proper mlt someday....

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I have met two Newfies, lifetime, and they are among my favorite people ever. You just be yourself, I like you alreaady. An island with its own time zone...

I really like direct heat for temp control, but I came at this from making stews and stocks in the kitchen already. I may or may not do M and L in the same T.

My next wort chiller is going to have to recirculate.

I am actually not worried about numbers for numbers sake. I more want to use numbers to figure out how to do this well, so I don't have to use the numbers any more and can just be an artist about it. Full circle eh?

Here's the link to Brew In A Bag - http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4650&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Sounds very, very similar to what you are currently doing, but it could potentially eliminate some transferring of liquids, and ease strain on your back - not an issue on 2.5 gal batches, but on 5 gal batches you'll start to get weary of transferring back and forth and back and.....

I like your experiment though! Very good information! I have a friend that I'm trying to gently introduce to partial mashing, and am debating if I just want to teach him BIAB instead.

chriso said:

Here's the link to Brew In A Bag - http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4650&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Sounds very, very similar to what you are currently doing, but it could potentially eliminate some transferring of liquids, and ease strain on your back - not an issue on 2.5 gal batches, but on 5 gal batches you'll start to get weary of transferring back and forth and back and.....

I like your experiment though! Very good information! I have a friend that I'm trying to gently introduce to partial mashing, and am debating if I just want to teach him BIAB instead.

Click to expand...

I found that link when I was digging around here running searches like "n00b AG" and "All grain for retards like Poindexter".

But thanks for posting it again, and there is no question as volume goes up my back needs less work to do, not more.

Not sure what to suggest about your friend.

I have been practicing hitting temps with my steeping grains for a while. I find that steeping at reasonable mash temps gives a better tasting beer than grains steeped at temperatures for mash out and up.

Once I was hitting useful mash temps consistently with my steeping grains, I knew I was ready for PM. If your friend can't taste the difference s/he probably isn't willing to invest the effort.