My first AG brew, I have some questions.

Alright I will try and make this short and sweet. I have a couple questions regarding my first AG brew, I used this recipe.

Questions I have about all grain brewing?

1) Does the temperature of the initial water (strike) matter when adding the Campden or pH stablizer to it?

1.2) Is there a specific temperature the sparge water has to be at?

2) What should I do with the spent grains I have in my MLT?

3) What should I do with the used hops? Can either the grains or hops be used as compost?

4) How long should I let my fermenting beer/wort stay in the primary, and do I have to transfer to a secondary?

5) I plan on kegging my beer, does anyone have a helpful video about kegging beer?

I made a short write up of my brew here

cheers
-Chris

1) I don't use campden tablets or whatever when brewing beer.

2) Compost

3) Compost. There's no better use for spent grain/hops

4) If you plan on leaving it in the primary for more than a few weeks than transfer to a secondary after a week. That's just my general rule. To be honest it probably doesn't matter. I've got a scotch ale in the primary that I don't plan on touching for at least a month.

5) Sanitize keg. Pour beer into keg. Seal it and hook up CO2 tank or add 1/3 cup corn sugar in a cup of water and seal it for a week.

artyboy said:

1) I don't use campden tablets or whatever when brewing beer.

2) Compost

3) Compost. There's no better use for spent grain/hops

4) If you plan on leaving it in the primary for more than a few weeks than transfer to a secondary after a week. That's just my general rule. To be honest it probably doesn't matter. I've got a scotch ale in the primary that I don't plan on touching for at least a month.

5) Sanitize keg. Pour beer into keg. Seal it and hook up CO2 tank or add 1/3 cup corn sugar in a cup of water and seal it for a week.

Click to expand...

compost it is, even though i don't have a garden.

Heeeey, awesome!!! This was my first AG as well. Turned out great.

1) Never used campden, don't feel it's necessary

1.2) With sparging you won't want to raise the temperature of your grain bed over 170*F or you run the rise of extracting astringents including tannins from the husks that will nastify your beer. My basic practice is to make my sparge water 180*F... I figure with my mash at ~150-156 adding 180*F water is a safe bet. It's worked out great for me thus far.

2) +1 on the compost. Also, spent grain crackers/pretzels/bread/pizza dough/dog treats.... search for it. Pretty good stuff. I wouldn't know so much about the dog treats... though they seem edible enough to me.

3) Compost

4) Keep it in your primary for 3-4 weeks. And sucks to the secondary!!

5) If you need a video on virtually ANYTHING you can just go to youtube. I went to youtube and typed in "kegging homebrew" and the first 9 videos are ones I personally learned 80% of my kegging knowledge from. Searching is awesome.

But here's personally what I would do:
- Primary 3-4 weeks, rack to keg
- Put keg in fridge for about 24 hours
- Hook it up to CO2 at ~30PSI for 48 hours
- Dial CO2 down to desired carbonation level. For a brown I'd go with about 11PSI
- Let it sit like that for another 48 hours
- Enjoy

You can set it at 30PSI for longer than 48 hours to speed it up if you wish but you run the risk of over-carbonating and that's much harder to fix than it being not carbonated enough. If it's supposed to be highly carbonated I will sometimes leave it for 72 hours then turn it down to the desired PSI for 24-48 hours. Hope that helps. Go watch those videos on youtube, especially the 4 part one by chrisknight000