First all grain brew day done!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

JoeSpartaNJ

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2009
Messages
560
Reaction score
209
Location
New Jersey
I finally made it through my first all grain brew day. I brewed up the Norther Brewer Oatmeal Stout kit. I added another pound of Maris Otter to it alone with 1/2 pound of crystal 80.

All said and told, I missed my OG by 8 points(1.048 vs 1.056), otherwise the brew season was virtually painless.


I can't wait to brew again. I do not know what I was fearing this whole time.

Thanks to everyone that answered questions I had and those that posted their knowledge on here.

RDWHAHB
 
Congrats, thats a nice accomplishment. Let us know how it turns out :D
 
Awesome! switching to AG was very exciting for me (then I switched back to extract my last year of college, I may not have graduated if I didn't, but now I'm back in the groove)

On the subject of OG: How did you sparge, batch-sparge or sparge-arm? and where the grains pre-crushed?
 
roastquake said:
how long did the batch sparge last? it may not have been long enough

I batch sparged for 10 minutes. I also had too much sparge water too. I was not able to measure my preboil volume.

All learning curves.
 
Next time let it go for at least 30 minutes, and split it up into 2 batch sparges, so if you need 6 gallons to sparge, do two rounds with 3 gallons each, and I mean 30 minutes for each round, an hour of sparging. thats the thing about AG brewing... more time is required

Also, with this method, dont worry about having too much sparge water, just take gravity readings of your runoff during your 2nd sparge and if it goes below 1.010, stop sparging and start boiling. Also remember that you will probably lose about a gallon while boiling. Any time I think my preboil volume is too high, I just boil the wort for an extra 20 minutes before hopping to concentrate it a bit. And if my final volume is a little low (and OG a little high) I just boil some water, cool it and top off the batch in the fermenter.
 
Most definitely, from warming the initial warming of mash water to being all cleaned up, it took 5 hours.

Next time, I am going to take more time, and be a little more attentive. One thing I did notice was the temperature differences I was getting from different thermometers.
 
Thats a big problem, use your newest, least used or most trusted thermometer, until you can get a good dial thermometer. You want to be on point with your mash temps, a couple degrees difference is OK, that just means the difference between more or less fermentable sugars (ie, a slightly sweeter or dryer beer). what where your thermometer readings?
 
maybe I trust technology too much, but I would trust the Digi. Or just take an average from all of them
 
Back
Top