My brewday/Your brewday?

I have a question for everyone. How do you brew, and what can I do to brew better. I have made some pretty good beers, I have pretty much just started brewing I have made 6 batches. Two were really good one was ok... the others...sucked. I have a batch of brown ale carbonating in bottles that tastes pretty good. I am not really to sure if I am doing everything right. The sparging process I am not really sure about.

My Brew Method,

First I relax and have a homebrew, then I start the water boiling. For every batch besides the last brown ale I have put the grain in a picnic cooler and tried to acheive temperatures inside but found myself low at the end everytime.

The last brew I made I put all the grain into my one and only large pot and used the coolertun as a strainer back into the pot. Then I used hot water to rinse sugars out of grain. Then this is combined and everything goes according to recipe.

I guess what my question is, is: What is the best way to sparge grain when brewing on the 5 gallon scale.

Any suggestions what i could do to improve what I am doing.

I suggest finding a homebrew club or at the very least finding someone else to brew with.

I learned by reading "How to Brew" (howtobrew.com) and my set up looks very much like his in the book. It worked fine, but I really learn best by doing.

Since I didn't know anyone else who brews, I found this forum. And my favorite video helped the most! http://www.youtube.com/bobbyfromnj#p/u/29/7jfrBUDpsmg

Bobby_M also has a good all-grain primer at http://www.suebob.com/brew/allgrain.htm

Those should help. I find highly technical explanations to be over my head, so I like the simple explanations and the visual on the techniques.

Of course, we're always here for questions to help also.

+1 on finding a club or buddy to brew with.

Have you primed your cooler before adding water/grain? Pour a couple pints of boiling water inside and shake it to warm up. That might help with coming in low. How are you monitoring temps? How are you using the cooler as a "strainer"? Batch sparging, like what you are doing, is one technique and sounds like it might be best for your set up. There's nothing wrong with it. If you want to spend a little more you can step up to a fly sparging system and maybe get better efficiency, buthat's a different story.

Its best to learn through a friend or through study of books... i spent hours upon hours pouring through the internet and books to get as much knowledge as I could. I even found some old note books where i took notes out of books like How to Brew, Brewers Bible, and Designing Great Beers.

But if you live in Kalamazoo maybe you should visit Bell's and make friends with those guys. You would be surprised how friendly most professional brewers are, and a lot of them started off where you are now.

Bell's also has a homebrew store adjacent to the brewpub. Depending on who's working when you go in, you might get some good advice.

And watch lotsa YouTube videos. That's what got me to jump into AG. Watched a couple videos, saw how easy it was, made the leap.

I'd recommend a club as well. I know there are some down that way that would love to have the chance to teach brewing to someone who wants to learn.

Also, as far as preheating, I do it too, but if you use Beersmith software, you can also calculate the proper water temp either way. AND it's better to start high if you can, than low, because in order to cool it down, all you have to do is leave th lid up and stir it around. If it's low, then you have to drain some water off and heat it up high on the stove, then return it to the MLT. It's a pain.

I generally put about a gallon or two of almost boiling water in my cooler and let it sit while the mash water heats up. Usually around 165-169 degrees F depending. (on how much grain I use and the mash temp I'm aiming for). Just before it reaches mash temp, I drain the preheat water out of the cooler and pour in the mash water. The grain goes in as I mix it up with a mash paddle. As soon as the grain is mashed in, and the temp is where it should be, I close the lid and start cleaning up what's dirty.

A little bit before the mash is done, I start heating up the sparge water. usually around 170. As it's heating up, I start the vorlauf. After vorlauf and draining, I pour in the sparge water and mix it up. Let it sit for a minute or two, and then vorlauf that. Drain and repeat sparge 1 more time.

Of course the amounts of water will change, and maybe the number of times you sparge if at all. Depends on what you want to get out of the batch.

Once you set up your parameters in beersmith, it will calculate all of the water and temps for you. It's pretty accurate once you've tuned in the settings to match your particular equipment and method.

You could also get a subscription to BYO.. theres a lot of people on here who would be willing to get you one for half price ($14).

What about doing everything in pot, is there a problem with that method? I seem to be able to acheive correct temperatures that way.

You could try it, but I think with the right technique you'll find the cooler method much easier and exact.