My first AG - Excellent Experience!!!

My first AG experiece started Christmas morning when I was given a gift certificate to my closest real HBS, 2 1/2 hours away. I picked up enough grain to do a batch of APA similar to the one talked about in UNOmar's "House Pale Ale" thread. Here was the grain bill:

8 3/4# 2 row Pale Malt
2# Vienna
1/2# Crystal 20L
1/2 oz. Northern Brewer (60 min)
1/2 oz. Cascade (30 min)
1/4 oz. Cascade (15 min)
1/4 oz. Cascade (Flame Out)
1/4 oz. Northern Brewer (Flame Out)
Wyeast 1056 recycled from last batch.

Strike with 17 quarts (1.5 qt/lb) @ 165 F
Sparge with 4 gallons @ 170

Yesterday I made a starter with 8 oz. XLDME and 1 3/4 quarts of water in a 1/2 gallon container. Blew the top off in 8 hours. Today was perfect. 11 hours playing with my 7 month old, followed by a nice dinner and a 4 year old bottle of wine with my wife, then Brew Time! But wait, an old friend calls as I am filling my buckets and he is an hour away and dropping in to say hi. Better yet, he spent a year living with a Brewing Science major in college and has lots of experience. Perfect!

The first burner was lit at 7:10 to preheat my cooler, and all went well. Grain bed was right at 153F after the first stir. (Thanks Beersmith!) I only lost about a degree or two in the hour of mashing.

Boiling went well, but I forgot (too many of those) the Irish Moss in the boil. The new home made immersion chiller got the temp down to 75F in 18 minutes, and the yeast was pitched 4 hours 15 minutes after the burner was lit.

Had 3 hours of good conversation, and a sampling of brews from the previous batches.

Final results:

4 3/4 gallons of wort, plus the 1 3/4 quarts of starter was just right.

Efficiency was 69.3%. I was hoping for 70%, but I am not at all displeased. OG was 1.054.

Now, hopefully my keg system will be here and set up before this batch is out of the secondary!!!

Excellent! I wish I had been there!

Awesome Wables!

I did my first AG yesterday also, a nut brown ale which was bubbling like crazy 3 hours after pitch. Maybe a pale ale is up next. Congrats and good luck with the next one. If you are like me that next one will come very quickly!

Great job!
I think if you bump your sparge water up it will increase your efficiency. I use 1/2 gallon per pound of grain. This would put your recipe at roughly 5 1/2 gallons of sparge water,

RichBrewer said:

Great job!
I think if you bump your sparge water up it will increase your efficiency. I use 1/2 gallon per pound of grain. This would put your recipe at roughly 5 1/2 gallons of sparge water,

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Um, huh? If you're shooting for a 5 or 6 gallon batch, how do you reconcile 5.5gals from the sparge water alone? I used 3 gallons, and my efficiency was 72% (I also did my first AG, on Friday).

RichBrewer said:

Great job!
I think if you bump your sparge water up it will increase your efficiency. I use 1/2 gallon per pound of grain. This would put your recipe at roughly 5 1/2 gallons of sparge water,

Click to expand...

Yeah, my sg at the end of the sparge was 1.012 (without temperature correction). Next time I am going to drop my infusion to 1.25 qt/# and sparge more.