First all-grain brew day! Suggestions and comments, please.

After 11 years of extract/specialty grain kits, I completed my first all-grain brew day. The recipe is an American Red that I found in the recipe section:

9lbs 2-row
2lbs crystal 40L
2oz roasted barley
2oz Willamette for 60 min
Wyeast #1056

Mash at 154F for 60 min

I have an Igloo IceCube with a stainless braid as my MLT. I have a 10-gallon kettle from Spike Brewing with stainless 3-piece ball valve, thermometer and sightglass. It's a really nice piece! It is both the HLT and BK right now, and I can see that a second one would be REALLY helpful to have. I put all the ingredients into BeerSmith and tried to follow as closely as I could.

Can I run down my brew day? I'd like to get some thoughts.

Mash:
Heat 8 gal water to 176F. I transferred 13.9 qt to the tun according to BeerSmith. It dropped to 165F, so I doughed-in. I was shooting for 154F to mash, but only hit 150F. I accidentally mashed for 100 minutes instead of 60 due to losing track of time and reading this site. I lost 3 degrees over that time, so I will be investigating the insulation in the cooler's lid.

Sparge:
BeerSmith had me doing batch sparge, two steps, with 1.01 and 3.15 gallons at 168F. I heated 1.01 gallon to boiling and dumped it in with barely a budge in temperature. Stir and then vorlauf 2qts, dump it back in, vorlauf again, dump it into the kettle. I drained and additional 2.75 gallons of wort in about 10 minutes. The second step of the sparge, I heated 3.5 gallons to boiling, dumped it in and stirred. Nailed it on 168F. Vorlauf and drain. I collected 3.25 gallons the second time in about 30 minutes. In total, I had just under 6.5 gal of wort. BeerSmith was calling for 6.30, which I felt was pretty close. Target pre-boil gravity was 1.045, which I sorely missed at 1.020.

Boil:
Once I hit boiling, I added hops and promptly forgot to close the bag, so hops all over the kettle. I boiled for 60 minutes, and attempted to drain into the fermentor, but had hops plugging everything up. I just dumped the entire kettle in, hops, sediment and all. I ended up with 5 gallons at 1.050. BS wanted 5.72 gallons at 1.054. Ran the wort chiller and filled up the washing machine at the same time. Pitched the yeast at about 78F and called it a day, after 7 hours.

Issues:
1) I think there will be contamination, as I did not sanitize the spoon or the thermometer when chilling and adding yeast.

2) Did I sparge too fast?

3) Probably need to heat the strike water a little hotter, now that I know how much heat I lose during transfer and dough-in.

Hit me, folks. I could use the comments and criticism.

While you're certain to refine things considerably as you use and learn your system, I see only one flaw that made me cringe: pitching yeast at 78F. Ouch, that's too warm... Unless you are cooling it fast and simultaneously.

Otherwise it's the "Beersmith tells me to..." stuff that I'd work on. You should probably tell BS what you need, not the other way around, especially in terms of sparging and other volumetric stuff. But that kind of adjustment and confidence comes with time. Congrats on moving to AG after many years!

Sounds like a first all-grain brew day to me.

Some things I noticed. Your pre-boil gravity seems low. Make sure you give it a good stir before you take that sample. Also, take this opportunity to check your settings in Beersmith. Seems like your boil off was higher than anticipated.

As to your 3 questions: 1) maybe, but always a good idea to keep a spray bottle of starsan on hand. 2) no. When batch sparging, let it rip. If you have issues with the sparge sticking, you can slow it a little. 3) agreed. Again, check your settings in Beersmith. I believe there is a box to check about adjusting temp for equipment.

Hope this helps, and good luck on future brews.

I wouldn't sweat the 3 degrees over 100min too much. I would lose 1-2* in my cooler over 60ish minutes to no effect.

Also to echo the above, make sure to get BeerSmith tuned for your system. Anytime I change something significant on my system I do a water test to make changes to my setup if needed. I can tell you how much liquid I lose in each vessel. Some is to dead space and some is to kettle junk and trub. If the only new piece of equipment is the mash tun, you should already know your kettle and fermentor losses and only need to figure out your mash tun dead space.

And I'm guilty more times than I'd like to admit of not stirring good enough and getting a wonky gravity reading. It actually just happened yesterday for my IIPA so I had to guestimate my SG.

moldmaker said:

Target pre-boil gravity was 1.045, which I sorely missed at 1.020.

Boil:
I ended up with 5 gallons at 1.050. BS wanted 5.72 gallons at 1.054.

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That sounds pretty impossible. To get from 1.020 to 1.050, you would have to boil off 60% of your total volume. Maybe you forgot to do a temperature correction to the gravity reading?

Also remember that BeerSmith gives the various volumes at specific temparetures: the pre-boil volume should be measured at boiling temperature, and batch size at fermentation temperature. Measuring at the wrong temperature can give a 5% difference.

If you calculate the pre-boil gravity from the other figures you get something like 1.041, which sounds more plausible.

McKnuckle said:

pitching yeast at 78F. Ouch, that's too warm.

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It's not that warm. White Labs recommends pitching ale yeast at 70-75. I don't think 3 degrees will be too much.

http://www.whitelabs.com/faq/beer-professional

Let's examine the White Labs quote a bit more carefully:

"The yeast should be pitched at 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 21.1 to 23.9 Centigrade. Once you see active fermentation, bring the temperature to the desired fermentation temperature."

They advise to pitch warm in order to jump start the lag/growth phase. However, they don't expect you to ferment it so warm. You need to bring most yeast strains down into the 60s for optimum performance from a flavor perspective.

The advice is a bit misguided, because many brewers can't easily bring a 75º space down to 65º at the drop of a dime.

I preheat my mash tun with 2 gallons at 180 degrees. I leave it in while I hear the strike water, give it a good swirl then dump it and get started. Maybe give it a try.

Two things:

1) Your recipe calls for a little over 20% crystal. That's an awful lot. I'd be thankful that you mashed at 150 instead of 154. The beer might have been too chewy at that temp.

2) I have the same spike kettle and love it. One word of advice (learned from experience). Don't take your post boil volumes from the sightglass as gospel. Check to make sure that the level in the glass matches the level in the kettle. While brewing an APA recently, a hop got stuck in the sight glass and it gave me a reading approximately 1g below the level in the kettle. I didn't catch it until I added .75 cups of top off water. The beer was OK, but it was a mistake I'd rather not have made.

Scriv said:

I preheat my mash tun with 2 gallons at 180 degrees. I leave it in while I hear the strike water, give it a good swirl then dump it and get started. Maybe give it a try.

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Using a similar setup as yours just round igloo 10gal cooler as mlt. I do like Scriv does only I add 1 gal boiling water to MLT and swirl it around. Dump the hot water back into my boil kettle that serves as my HLT and put lid on the MLT. This preheats it and when I add the rest of the water to the HLT for my strike it gives it a temp boost to get to my desired temp quicker.

McKnuckle said:

Let's examine the White Labs quote a bit more carefully:

"The yeast should be pitched at 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 21.1 to 23.9 Centigrade. Once you see active fermentation, bring the temperature to the desired fermentation temperature."

They advise to pitch warm in order to jump start the lag/growth phase. However, they don't expect you to ferment it so warm. You need to bring most yeast strains down into the 60s for optimum performance from a flavor perspective.

The advice is a bit misguided, because many brewers can't easily bring a 75º space down to 65º at the drop of a dime.

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I get what you're saying, but it doesn't really have to be at the drop of a dime. You can pitch at 75 and set in whatever environment you're going to ferment it in. I pitch at 73 or so and set it in my fermentation chamber or basement (at 66 degrees year round). My point is that pitching at 75 degrees isn't going to hurt anything.

Biggest problems I see are with the mash tun preheat and the sparge. You already realized the sanitation issue. I put a gallon or two off 170ish degree water in the tun prior to adding strike water. Once preheated you only need to doe in at about 7-10 degrees above mash temp. So preheat, dump, add strike water, and doe in. Stir till you hit mash temp. Don't bother with the one gallon mash out addition. Just vorlouf and drain, then add your full sparge volume. Probably at about 175 degrees to get to mash out. Then stir the hell out of it for 5 minutes or so. Let it settle then drain. Adding boiling water can extract tannins and cause astringent flavors. Other than that, sounds like a typical first day of AG, filled with oh **** moments. Good luck on you next brews. It gets easier as you learn your system. Focus on that first, the quality of the beer will follow as you dial everything in.

Thanks, folks. I appreciate it. When you say to add the full sparge amount, that's the full 4.16 gallons instead of two separate sparges with 1.01 and 3.15 gallons?

To answer another question, no, I did not temperature-correct for the pre-boil gravity. I put the hydrometer into 6.5 gallons of ~160F wort.

Yes the 4.16

rje45 said:

It's not that warm. White Labs recommends pitching ale yeast at 70-75. I don't think 3 degrees will be too much.

http://www.whitelabs.com/faq/beer-professional

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I do not agree with this statement. You should look up the ideal range of the yeast and pitch at or just below the middle of the range. It is mid sixties for most ale yeasts.

As rje45 said, it takes too long to get the wort temperature lowered once fermentation has started. It is better to start lower.

Pre-heat your mash tun before adding the strike water. This will keep the cooler from drawing the heat out of the water.
I also wonder about your pre-boil gravity. It seems too low for where you ended up.
Too coarse a grain crush is usually the culprit for low OG. Your miss was not too far off for a first try.
With Beersmith you can refine settings until you get the results you need. It will take some time.
I do a 2 step sparge. I measure what I have collected from the mash, calculate what I need to get to my preboil amount, I then add about half. Measure the volume in the kettle again then sparge with what I need for preboil.

I think it's starting to make sense. So this will be: vorlauf, drain the mash water and measure, calculate how much sparge water to add to achieve pre-boil volume, add that volume to the tun at once, stir, vorlauf, drain? I certainly have the space in the tun for it.

I was impatient with the yeast this time. My chiller will eventually get the wort to 70F.

moldmaker said:

I think it's starting to make sense. So this will be: vorlauf, drain the mash water and measure, calculate how much sparge water to add to achieve pre-boil volume, add that volume to the tun at once, stir, vorlauf, drain? I certainly have the space in the tun for it.

I was impatient with the yeast this time. My chiller will eventually get the wort to 70F.

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Try to calculate the amount of sparge water you need so that very little is left when drained to the boil kettle. If you leave a lot of water you will have left sugars in that water.
Stir very well before each draining.