First AG last night - went pretty good!!

Hey ya'll... just wanted to share my experience last night - did my first all-grain batch. It was a blast, every step of the way, and I really think the beer is gonna come out great. Well, REALLY GOOD at least...

Use a 5 gal cooler w/a mini-keg bung and a stainless screen. The mashtun cost me about $16... got a good deal on the cooler at target. Had absolutely no mashing or sparging problems. Lookin at 60-65% efficiency probably, which is good enough for me for AG #1!

Brewed a Belgian White, using 5 lb belgian 2-row, 4 lb white wheat, and 1 lb flaked oats. 1 oz Tetnang bittering, .5 oz saaz towards the end... got 1 oz. coriander in there (wow did that make the kitchen smell good!), and to be different, I used bitter and sweet orange peel. Hope they don't totally cancel each other out Just .5 oz of each. Yeast was a direct pitch of T-58, and this morning it was going nice and steady.

Only had two minor problems - first of all, I underestimated the boil-off amount, so we only ended up with about 4.5 gal in the fermentor. Actually might be a good thing due to the less-than-ideal efficiency. Also, it was my first time using whole leaf finishing hops and they clogged the spigot in my brew kettle. No big deal... just had to pour it all in there. Did manage to strain out the hops though...

Anyway..... any of you out there that are on the fence about going all grain, jump over to this side!! You'll be glad you did. I cannot wait to brew again... but even more... I can't wait to drink this Wit!! It's gonna be a tough 4 weeks!

If anyone would like to see any pics of my mashtun, let me know! It was the simplest thing I ever made. The only hard part was removing all the little pieces of stainless from my hands... if only I had thought of wearing gloves...

Try addong a copper mainfold with slots to your kettle to strain out the hops. Just a single piece of copper tubing would do. Or you can you a mech sleave.

I haven't done this, but I've seen it done. I personally siphon my cooled wort out of my kettle, thus leaving the trub/hops behind.

I'd like to, but I don't know if I can. The spigot came on the kettle, and is non-removable. I could not even fit a 1/2" OD hose inside the hole. Maybe if I get really creative I can come up with something... that would be nice. Look at the pic and let me know if you have any ideas...

congrats! it's fun doing the all-grain. more work and time consuming, but it's coooool.

where'd you get the kettle from?

All grain is definately fun and worth doing for sure. There is nothing wrong with extract or partial mash, but with all grain you control so much more.

Congrats and good job!

Nice work...that's pretty decent efficiency. I usually get a little lower eff. with significant wheat in my grist. I'm not sure if that's normal or if my crush is off.

mine runs from 68-78%. i'm happy with it....

Congrtats! Isn't it great! Wish I could help you with the spigot problem, but I've got a picnic cooler set-up with a CPVC manifold; I've never attempted to reconfigure something like what you have there. Hopefully, somebody who does will chime in!

DeRoux's Broux said:

congrats! it's fun doing the all-grain. more work and time consuming, but it's coooool.

where'd you get the kettle from?

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i wouldnt consider it much more time consuming. we usually spent alot of time drinking before and after when we were doing extract brews. now we just have something to do.

subwyking said:

i wouldnt consider it much more time consuming. we usually spent alot of time drinking before and after when we were doing extract brews. now we just have something to do.

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hehe good call!

i tell ya what. i did a double decoction mash friday, and i was scared to drink until i got the sparge going. i figured i'd botch something up if i had too many brews during that brew session.

i did sample a few of El Pistolero's brews once the boil was on. he does a good job. a nice Hefeweizen and Dunkelweizen. i still need to try his Hobgoblin clone and his Wee Heavy...

Hey DJMD,

Does a copper 1/2" pipe fit into that spigot? If it's a tight fit you can just jam it in there or solder it with some NO-LEAD solder and flux.

djmd said:

Anyway..... any of you out there that are on the fence about going all grain, jump over to this side!! You'll be glad you did. I cannot wait to brew again... but even more... I can't wait to drink this Wit!! It's gonna be a tough 4 weeks!

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Congrats, man

All the others out there, don't go to hastily to AG just because it is sometimes seen as the culmination of home brewing techniques. Learn the ropes with extract and partial mashes. You want to get efficient in sanitation, full wort boils, wort chilling, fermentation management, yeast care and all the other things first before you want to worry about mash schedules, starch conversions and lautering. You will be much more satisfied that way, and yes you need to be able to put another 2-5 hrs into you brew day.

This is no intention to restart a AG vs. extract thread.

Kai said:

Congrats, man

All the others out there, don't go to hastily to AG just because it is sometimes seen as the culmination of home brewing techniques. Learn the ropes with extract and partial mashes. You want to get efficient in sanitation, full wort boils, wort chilling, fermentation management, yeast care and all the other things first before you want to worry about mash schedules, starch conversions and lautering. You will be much more satisfied that way, and yes you need to be able to put another 2-5 hrs into you brew day.

This is no intention to restart a AG vs. extract thread.

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You speak the truth. I have spent the last year doing extract beers practically every weekend... Once I got some consistency going, and quit worrying so much about sanitation (as in - I knew what I needed to do correctly without stressing about it) I then decided to try all-grain. Also got familiar with the yeast strains I was using.

My last extract brew had quite a bit of firsts - first partial mash, first full boil, first time using a chiller... but all that went so well and I just thought "what the hell..."

Now I'm at meetings all week 800 miles from home and can't think about anything but crushing grains...

DeRoux's Broux said:

i did a double decoction mash friday, and i was scared to drink until i got the sparge going. i figured i'd botch something up if i had too many brews during that brew session.

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Incidentally, did you see an above average efficiency with the decoction?

BeeGee said:

Incidentally, did you see an above average efficiency with the decoction?

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79%. about 4% better.

Not bad...I seem to get in the high 60's to high 70's, as well, with the high 60's being grists with large portions of wheat. Perhaps a decoction would help, though I'd want to know there's a flavor payoff when I could just add a little extra grain to make up for the eff.!

that's what i'm waiting to see too. i want that good, malty taste rather than just a sweet flavor. maybe just infussion w/ pilsner and munich and some melanoidin malt will work? maybe not. we'll see. the other reason i did it was because of the 60% wheat. i read it helps the sparge......

How's the color? Or actually, that was a dunkel anyways, wasn't it. My Weihenstephan clone is really light (which I like)...I'm wondering how a decoction would darken it up. WTH, I know I'll try it sooner or later regardless.

I've found I really like melanoidin malt and have started replacing dark munich with it...it would probably work in place of a lot of malts in the 25-35 SRM range. Very malty. I think for a hefe it might lighten it too much, but for a dunkel would be fine.

For sparging, I've had zero problems since going to my copper manifold (knock on toasted oak chips)...my braided hose days are well behind me.

Decoction is not used for the lighter Beers in Germany. This is also true for the Hefe-Weizens. I guess it's because of the darkening and the maltier taste. This was new to me too.

Kai

Well, that's good to know. Perhaps I'll have to attempt a dunkel, as well...

I did it for my Doppelbock, and according to the research that I did on this style, its just what it needed. Actually a triple-decoction would have been better but I didn't want to overdo it for my 1st aAG (almost AG,if your don't count the 3.5LME that I needed to get to 1.078)

Kai

It's still AG...I always keep some DME around in case I miss my target my too wide of a margin (to the low side). I've got it in my head to do a barleywine in Feb/Mar where I will actually plan to augment my wort with extract.