Easy Stovetop All-Grain Brewing (with pics)

How big a batch of Double Bock are you trying to do and how much grain are you using? Don't forget that you'll have some absorption by the grains in the mash, around 10-15% of your water if you do 1.35-1.5 qts/lb.

magnj said:

I'm ordering 4 batches worth of grains for the next few weeks, hoping to use this method. My batches will be small 2.5G Oatmeal Stout, 1.5G Hefe, Double Bock, and Saison. I assume this will work at these scales? And would using a small 2 gallon rectangular cooler and a grain bag be OK for the mash?

I'm calculating about 1.5 gallons of mash water for my 5lb Double Bock, then 1 gallon sparge and then boil down?

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I don't think 1.5 gallons of water + 5 lbs of grain will fit inside a 2 gallon container. You also are not going to get very good efficiency if you only sparge with 1 gallon of water.

Sounds like you need some bigger pots. What are you using to boil?

I have a 22qt pot, I was just thinking mash in a cooler would be easier to keep temps up than in a pot. I have some smaller pots available to sparge in maybe 2-3 gallons. Or I could buy a 5 gallon cooler to mash in. But I was trying to keep it simple.

The bock is 5lbs, 1.5 gallons ~8.5% ABV. It will be split up into 2 1 gallon jugs, so I can try 2 yeast strains.

Well, you could definitely use your 22qt to do a much bigger sparge. Are you using my sparge "tea-bag" method? You could easily put another 2 gallons of water in there and boil down.

If you have a 3 gallon pot, I would recommend that for your mash...should be just enough room for 1.5 gallons h20 + 5 lbs of grain.

I will be attempting the tea bag method yea. So your suggesting mashing in a smaller pot and then sparging in the 5 gal? I'm trying to decipher your first post, and forgive m if this has been covered, but I'm looking for about 1.25 qt/lb for both the mash and sparge or go as big as I can for sparge? So for my 5 lb grain bill I'm looking at like 1.5 gallons for sparge and say 2 gallons for sparge and then boil down to 2.5? Can I expect to boil off a gallon in a 60 minute boil?

Deathbrewer,

Just wanted you to know that you thread inspired me to go AG and not only did it go well, my first AG beer was my best ever, a WCIPA. The Amber-Red came out nicely too. Part of the improvement is learning to lower fermentation temps and late hopping, but my foray into AG was definitely a success, and so easy. The only downside is it is very time consuming with my weak stove.

At some point soon, I will make a cooler mash tun. But your stovetop method works just fine - if you don't mind holding the bag as it drip-drip-drips. I'm thinking I need to fabricate some sort of crane with an erector set or something to hold the bag.

Definitely a life-changing thread!

Awesome. Glad it's working out so well. I have yet to hear any negative experiences that could not be remedied. I've learned a lot myself.

I have a very large colander an HBT member found for me. I haven't tried it with all-grain yet (worked great for PM), but I think it will come in handy to take the strain off of the back

Just make sure whatever you use is strong enough to hold that bag up. Hot wort splashing up in your face and all over the stove and floor isn't a lot of fun (speaking from experience.)

DB,

last nite i embarked on an indoor brewing session.
equipment:
5g igloo cooler w/ false bottom
4g coffee urn(hlt)
7.5g TF kettle w/ valve
immersion chiller w/ kitchen faucet adapter


recipe is my budwieser clone(sorta) 9#grain


all boiling was done on kitchen stove and i came in with 90% efficiency

Sweet. My friend's got a two 5-gallon cooler MLT/HLT setup. That setup does wonders.

how can a russian hockey team in the usa be the champions of the world? awesome thread as usual DB!

DeathBrewer said:

I don't think 1.5 gallons of water + 5 lbs of grain will fit inside a 2 gallon container.

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Yeah, it will. 5 lb with a 1.2:1 ratio (6 quarts water) will take 1.9 gals of space. Close, but it'll fit.

I may have access to another cooler or worst comes to worst I buy a 5 gallon one @Walmart. Either way I'm going for a batch this Friday.

jkarp said:

Yeah, it will. 5 lb with a 1.2:1 ratio (6 quarts water) will take 1.9 gals of space. Close, but it'll fit.

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and when you consider the space the bag takes up and allowing the mash to be stirred, it's not enough space.

My max on all my batches is a total of 4.2 gallons of space in a 5 gallon pot (according to ProMash.) This is still pushing it...you have to be very careful or it can get messy.

DeathBrewer said:

and when you consider the space the bag takes up and allowing the mash to be stirred, it's not enough space.

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Bah. I did it several times before upgrading to a "regular" MLT.

Simply place the grain-filled bag in first and pour the strike water on top. You can then stop and stir in stages to break up dough balls. Yeah, it's tight, but definitely possible.

Bah.

I'm saying it's a potential mess. Why bother doing an all-grain on such a small scale with a risk of spilling it everywhere or not reaching the proper water/grain ratio?

Do a partial mash, get a bigger pot, or make a smaller ABV beer.

Sure, there are other ways, but come on...you can get a 3 gallon pot at a thrift store, flea market, craigslist, etc. for $5. You can get a brand new 4 gallon pot for $20 if you look.

This is ALREADY a method for saving money and minimizing the purchase of new equipment, but I'm not going to advocate methods that could have potential problems. I don't want new people getting discouraged because they poured hot wort all over their stove due to lack of head space.

SURE, it is possible...just not the best way to do things.

If you think you're up to it and can control it, go for it...as long as you know the difficulties and potential problems.

I gotcha. I think I have another cooler I can use which is much much bigger so no worries.

First off, thanks to Deathbrewer for such an inspiring how-to. I just finished brewing up an oatmeal stout with 12 lbs of grain. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. I'm more of a learn by doing (screwing up) type person, so next time I'm sure it'll be 1000 times better.

When you dough in, does your temperature vary pretty severely in different areas of the pot? I had some areas reading 150F and I'd move the thermometer to some other spot and hit 162F. No amount of stirring seemed to solve the problem. My thermometer has been pretty reliable in the past, so I doubt it's an issue now. After about 30 minutes it all seemed to equilibrate at my target temp.

Do you wait until the temperature is fairly constant throughout and then begin your "60 minute" mash? Or do you just happen to hit it right on from the start? I add my grains to the water, not the other way around, if that helps anybody figure out what I'm doing wrong....

I went through with it last night. I ended up with a 5 gallon cooler. My strike water was 6 quarts @170F which turned out to be too low, so I added almost another quart to get the temps right around 155. I did not check the temps at the end (I mashed for 45 minutes) So idk how well it held temps.

I estimated 70% efficiency for my recipe, which should have gotten me 1.059 post boil. I ended up with 1.051 which I think is like 60%. Overall it was pretty painless, I just hope my ghetto yeast washing went ok or I'm gonna have problems. Been 12+ hours and no activity...

cladinshadows said:

First off, thanks to Deathbrewer for such an inspiring how-to. I just finished brewing up an oatmeal stout with 12 lbs of grain. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. I'm more of a learn by doing (screwing up) type person, so next time I'm sure it'll be 1000 times better.

When you dough in, does your temperature vary pretty severely in different areas of the pot? I had some areas reading 150F and I'd move the thermometer to some other spot and hit 162F. No amount of stirring seemed to solve the problem. My thermometer has been pretty reliable in the past, so I doubt it's an issue now. After about 30 minutes it all seemed to equilibrate at my target temp.

Do you wait until the temperature is fairly constant throughout and then begin your "60 minute" mash? Or do you just happen to hit it right on from the start? I add my grains to the water, not the other way around, if that helps anybody figure out what I'm doing wrong....

Click to expand...

After the grains are mixed in, i will give it a good stir, plop the thermometer in there and let it sit for a few minutes to equalize. Then I'll check the temperature, give it a good stir, and leave it another few minutes.

If you're checking every 30 seconds, moving it around the mash, or trying to get your glass thermometer to instantly read temps, you're going to have problems. Let it sit. There will always be hot spots, but mixing doesn't help as much as simply letting the mash equalize.

Generally, I mash at least 60 minutes, so I'll start when I feel comfortable with the temp (usually 5 min after a good reading) and go about 40 minutes before I heat my sparge water.

I'm trying this for the first time today. I am using about 7 pds total of grain. So I put 2 gallons of water in a pot, heated it to 165 degrees, put the bag in and grains stirred it up good to get all the grains wet and the temp about ten minutes later is stable at 155 degrees. I set the timer for 70 minutes and will use 1 /1/2 gallons of water for sparge. I am making a 4 gallon batch but only boiling 3 gallons and I am guessing I will lose about 1/2 gallon to absorption during mash. Hopefully I am close. I estimated a 60% efficiency and aimed to the high end of the recipe specsa in case it comes out lower then I will be in the low range of the recipe specs. It's a standard bitter recipe with 6 pds 2 row, 1/2 pd crystal, and .65 pds victory.
going with 1 oz 6 % AA hops(glacier) for 50 minutes and 1 oz liberty for 2 minutes and will top off with cold water.


dc


Well I missed my OG by a mile. It was suppose to be about 1.038 at 60% efficiency. It came out 1.022. I boiled 2/4 pound of cane sugar and added it to get the OG up to 1.032. But that puts theefficiency at 40%. I followed the instructions to the letter and hit the temps like mentioned. Only problems i can see is I didn't use enough sparge water. It was my first all grain batch. I crushed the grains at the LHBS.
I put 2 gallons of water in pot, heated to 166 degrees, put bag in, added grains and stirred, put lid on and temp remained about 155 for 70 minute mash. Maybe mash longer? Then pulled bag, let it drain, and put into sparge water at about 185 degrees, stirred, and let sit for 10 minutes. Then removed bag and let it drain back into sparge pot, added the mash liquid to sparge liquid, added water to get to 3 gallon boil and went from there. I took a pre boil gravity reading and it was 1.026 with temp at 140 degrees. Boiled for 60 minutes. lost about a gallon during boil. Added water to carboy, then shook the crap to mix and took reading, it was 1.022 at 4.23 gallons. I extimated it would be 1.034 at 4.24 gallons so I missed it by .12. Why? I boiled sugar and added but I thought I would have had better results with OG than I did.

DC

I took tea-bag a little too literally. I actually dunked the bag repeatedly for 5 minutes. I also mashed for only 45 minutes. I'm confident that next time I can get higher efficiency that 60%. Thanks for the great write up!

This is pretty cool!

I need to get the additional brew kettle, but I will have to try this in the future.

magnj said:

I took tea-bag a little too literally. I actually dunked the bag repeatedly for 5 minutes. I also mashed for only 45 minutes. I'm confident that next time I can get higher efficiency that 60%. Thanks for the great write up!

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Don't dunk the bag. Let it sit. 45 minutes should probably do it, but 60 minutes will ensure better conversion. Also, let it sit in the sparge water for 10 minutes after stirring. This will help extract more from the grains.

DeathBrewer said:

Don't dunk the bag. Let it sit. 45 minutes should probably do it, but 60 minutes will ensure better conversion. Also, let it sit in the sparge water for 10 minutes after stirring. This will help extract more from the grains.

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Ok, any ill effects from dunking or just poor efficiency? Next time I will definitely mash longer. I've read about strips to test conversion, what are they called?

any ill effects? just temp loss and bad mixing. It's better to let it flow around inside the pot than keep it scrunched up in the bag.

never used the strips. you can use iodophor to do a conversion test. me thinks there be a post about that in this thread, but i'm too druck right now to look for it. soryy

lol ok thanks .

awesome post! very informative and thanks for the pics

Great Post!

I'm thinking about making the jump to AG. I want to start off with some smaller batches, maybe 2.5 gal. to get going on my stove top.

Just a question--if I do a mini-mash like that 2.5 gal. how much water should I sparge with, or doesn't it matter? I know I'll steep my grains in 1.25 qt per lbs. of grain...but I'm not sure how much to steep in, or what my overall boil will be.

BeerSmith has been some help, but I'm still learning how to navigate.

Thanks-and great post!

@Indy418 From one noob to another, I think it is 150% of the mash volume. So for 5lbs that's 6.75qt mash and then 10.125 qt sparge for a boil volume of roughly 17qt or 4.25g.

@Deathbrewer Thanks again for this, I've just bottled my last two beers brewed with this method and they tasted great. I use a cooler to mash in and I've reached 70% on my second try.

Indy418 said:

Just a question--if I do a mini-mash like that 2.5 gal. how much water should I sparge with, or doesn't it matter? I know I'll steep my grains in 1.25 qt per lbs. of grain...but I'm not sure how much to steep in, or what my overall boil will be.

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You first need to figure out what your boil-off rate is (mine is 0.6 gal/hr). So for me, I would need to end up with 2.5+0.6 gallons after collecting mash and sparge water for a 1 hr boil. If you are going to fix the mash at 1.25 qt/lb, then you know how much water is being added to the mash. But, about 0.110 gallons of mash water will be absorbed into each pound of grain, so you figure in that loss. Then, you would sparge with the volume of water that would get you to your boil volume (in my case 2.5+0.6 gal) since there will be no absorption of sparge water by the grain at this point.

.6 gal/hr is a pretty low boil-off. I get over a gallon, even with my light boil at the apartment. So figure 1 gallon boil-off, .1 gal/lb absorption (and round up), etc.

So for a 2.5 gallon batch with 5 lbs of grain (at 1.25qt/lb), you would want a total of 4 gallons (2.5 + 0.5 + 1):

6.25 quarts for mash water
9.75 quarts sparge water

If you want to round off (which I always do with this method), go with 1.5 gallons mash water and 2.5 gallons sparge.

I'm not longer at the apartment, btw...I move the last of my stuff out today. I think my days of stovetop brewing are just about over. I did use this method for an all-grain "house ale" in celebration of my move into the new place...I just used a burner.

EDIT: Get a nice rolling boil going and keep some bottled water around to top-off, if necessary. It'll help with cooling, too, if you keep it in the fridge.

Deathbrewer on the new place! I'm glad you posted all your stove-top secrets before you decided to move on up.

Movin' on up... doo doo doot do...

Hey... I've used a coffee grinder now a few times using this method and it's turned out fantastic. Just thought I'd let anyone who's contemplating the coffee ginder route (using this method) that it works great.

How do you know when the grains are done from the Mash? What does conversion look like? (Mush,thick water, etc) I tried a mini mash version and the water looked no different than if I steeped it.

You could do a conversion test (google: "conversion test iodine" or look in wiki) or take a gravity reading.

After an hour or so, conversion is probably complete using this method.

Thanks for the prompt reply. I went to Cal and lived in Oakland. I miss me some Top Dog!

I haven't had a good dog in a while. Might be on the agenda this weekend

thanks a ton for this thread! I brewed my first batch of beer, all grain on the stovetop using this method. I was able to boil about 6.25 gallons of water on my electric burner for a full boil. It came out at a hair under 5 gallons, which I"m happy with.

The only thing I did wrong is pitch the yeast too hot.. my thermometer read 75, so i transferred and pitched the yeast, but it must have been in a cool spot, because my fermometer now is reading off the charts. It's a little warm to the touch.. i threw a wet towel over it, wet it with ice water and put it in a cold closet for the night.. hopefully it turns out O.K.

Thanks again for your tutorial, man!

-Adam:rockin:

DeathBrewer said:

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HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA

DeathBrewer,

Bloody awsome post, thank you! I have brewed my last extract batch. After reading your post - I just put in an order and have 100 lbs of grain on its way. Can't wait to brew AG.

Go raibh míle maith agat! (Many thanks!)

Sláinte