retheisen
Active Member
So this was my first go at homebrew. I planned this brew session two years ago and purchased all of my ingredients to make a five gallon batch of the standard belgian blonde that got such rave reviews. But life did what is does and the arrival twins and the subsequent loss of my wife moved homebrewing way down the list of priorities. But last week I collected my unmilled vacuum packed grains, refrigerated yeast and hops, a paint strainer bag and a couple one gallon glass bottles from whole foods apple juice and gave it a go. I scaled down the recipe from 5 gallons to 2.5, milled my grains, whipped up some starsan and set off on my first all grain brew in a bag session.
The milling worked great. I ran my 5 pounds of grain through the mill twice and got what looked like a pretty good crush with quite a bit of flour. Oh well.
I heated 2.5 gallons of water (hey its brew in a bag, lets go full volume mash right) to 164 verified with a probe and IR remote read thermometer and proceeded to dough in. I was hoping to hit 146 -148 mash temp but the full volume mash only dropped to 154 at dough in ... Lesson learned for next time. Don't overshoot by as much with a full volume mash.
Mashed for 60 minutes and pulled my bag. Sparged with another half gallon of 170 degree water over the boil pot and set the bag aside to collect runnings. Added the residual runnings as the wort came to a boil. I seemed to have about 2.5 gallons of wort pre-boil. Right on target.
The boil and hop additions went off as planned. Experienced my first hot break but did not boil over (weeee tiny victories). Cut the flame (doing all of this in a 16 quart stock pot on the stove for now) and dropped the thing in my sink filled with ice water.
Cooled to 70 degrees ... took about 30 minutes and poured my cooled wort into my gallon jugs. Hmm. Looks like I only got about a gallon and a half of wort, with lots of flour in it. And the starting gravity is a wee high at 1.075 ... oops Lessons learned re: boil off.
Then came the yeast. Two year old WLP0400 ... uh yeah. Hey we'll give it a shot. Let try to split the vial evenly between two gallon jugs and ... oops 90% goes into the first jug and a few drops make it to the second jug. fail.
But lets just keep rolling with this. I go to place my blow off tubes in the gallon jugs and hmmm not a very tight fit. I am sure this is an infection waiting to happen. But lets let it all play out.
The next morning ... no activity in either jug. Those ancient yeast just didn't have anything left to give. I call up the local brewpub and ask if they have any random yeast slurry they would otherwise be throwing away ... no dice. LHBS is not very "L" and no time to get across town between the time I get off work and the time they close. So the next best thing is to grab a six pack of something bottle conditioned and pitch a quarter bottle into each jug. I am truly flying by the seat of my pants now. That night I order an assortment of S0* yeasts and some properly sized bungs for my gallon jugs from a beer website that rhymes with "roar here" ... then I load up the babies and meet my brother and his wife in Orlando to hit Disney World for a couple days.
I return three days later to find a nice package from "roar here" on my doorstep and a one of my jugs bubbling away like a champ. The other jug is as clear as can be with no sign of activity at all. So I pitch a quarter pack of S05 into it and fit a proper airlock on the jug. A couple hours later; it too, is bubbling like a champ.
So this is where I am now. The first jug hit high krausen and then cleared pretty well. The S05 jug hit its krausen a day later and seems to be settling down now. Still a heavy layer of flour in the bottom of the jugs.
Will I drink it? I'll give it a really good smell first. I'll certainly bottle it and see what happens. But for my first attempt ... and a somewhat impromptu one at that ... I am anything but discouraged. Lots of lessons learned.
The milling worked great. I ran my 5 pounds of grain through the mill twice and got what looked like a pretty good crush with quite a bit of flour. Oh well.
I heated 2.5 gallons of water (hey its brew in a bag, lets go full volume mash right) to 164 verified with a probe and IR remote read thermometer and proceeded to dough in. I was hoping to hit 146 -148 mash temp but the full volume mash only dropped to 154 at dough in ... Lesson learned for next time. Don't overshoot by as much with a full volume mash.
Mashed for 60 minutes and pulled my bag. Sparged with another half gallon of 170 degree water over the boil pot and set the bag aside to collect runnings. Added the residual runnings as the wort came to a boil. I seemed to have about 2.5 gallons of wort pre-boil. Right on target.
The boil and hop additions went off as planned. Experienced my first hot break but did not boil over (weeee tiny victories). Cut the flame (doing all of this in a 16 quart stock pot on the stove for now) and dropped the thing in my sink filled with ice water.
Cooled to 70 degrees ... took about 30 minutes and poured my cooled wort into my gallon jugs. Hmm. Looks like I only got about a gallon and a half of wort, with lots of flour in it. And the starting gravity is a wee high at 1.075 ... oops Lessons learned re: boil off.
Then came the yeast. Two year old WLP0400 ... uh yeah. Hey we'll give it a shot. Let try to split the vial evenly between two gallon jugs and ... oops 90% goes into the first jug and a few drops make it to the second jug. fail.
But lets just keep rolling with this. I go to place my blow off tubes in the gallon jugs and hmmm not a very tight fit. I am sure this is an infection waiting to happen. But lets let it all play out.
The next morning ... no activity in either jug. Those ancient yeast just didn't have anything left to give. I call up the local brewpub and ask if they have any random yeast slurry they would otherwise be throwing away ... no dice. LHBS is not very "L" and no time to get across town between the time I get off work and the time they close. So the next best thing is to grab a six pack of something bottle conditioned and pitch a quarter bottle into each jug. I am truly flying by the seat of my pants now. That night I order an assortment of S0* yeasts and some properly sized bungs for my gallon jugs from a beer website that rhymes with "roar here" ... then I load up the babies and meet my brother and his wife in Orlando to hit Disney World for a couple days.
I return three days later to find a nice package from "roar here" on my doorstep and a one of my jugs bubbling away like a champ. The other jug is as clear as can be with no sign of activity at all. So I pitch a quarter pack of S05 into it and fit a proper airlock on the jug. A couple hours later; it too, is bubbling like a champ.
So this is where I am now. The first jug hit high krausen and then cleared pretty well. The S05 jug hit its krausen a day later and seems to be settling down now. Still a heavy layer of flour in the bottom of the jugs.
Will I drink it? I'll give it a really good smell first. I'll certainly bottle it and see what happens. But for my first attempt ... and a somewhat impromptu one at that ... I am anything but discouraged. Lots of lessons learned.
