I may not be cut out for this all-grain business

[passive]

Update: Now with pictures and follow-up.

So, tonight was going to be the night that I started my first all-grain beer. A couple weeks back, I ordered up everything for MysticMeads Raging Red (www.homebrewtalk.com/f65/raging-red-irish-red-ale-239188/). I had to make a hops and a yeast substitution, but those should be pretty minor.

Tonight, I've finally got time and space to brew, and I start reading a bit more about all-grain. See, I had gotten a kit that did include a fair amount of grains, but it also included liquid malt extract. For some reason I didn't connect that the reduced sugars in MysticMeads recipe (1lb honey) meant I was in for a substantially different process. For that recipe, I essentially made a big tea bag of the grains, and that is what I planned to do this time.



Problem number one is that the biggest pot in the house is 13 liters (a bit more than 3 gallons). From what I've read, I would be better off with 26 or 30 liters, in terms of getting the wort. With the grain bags added (I needed two), I've got less than 8 liters of water in the pot (I had 8, but getting that second bag in there splashed some out). I'm going to lose some due to evaporation, so at best I'll have 7 at the end. I would really prefer to make at least 21 liters of beer, so I expect that means I need to get the specific gravity of the wort up to about 3 times what I want it to be, so perhaps 1.18 according to the recipe.



Oh, and I'm planning to add tap water after the boil to increase the volume.

My temperature during the mash was 140-185 F. Woo!

Is there anything I'm doing right here?

Here's the closest thing to sparging that I did:



I added a bit more sugars in the form of maple syrup, and with water, I was up to about 15 liters.



Two days ago, I took a hydrometer reading, and had a taste. My hydrometer is a bit off, but it seemed to be about 0.001 above water (hopefully I've got my decimal places right). It looks like this, which is a bit different for me (but then again, the last two I fermented were left for about two months).

 

[cmybeer]

I'm having trouble following your post so maybe I'm missing something here.
Are you doing that all grain recipe with 10# of grain in a 3gal pot in which you are just steeping the grains because I don't think that is going to work out?
It sounds like your biggest problem is lack of planning when jumping into something new but I'm still unsure about what your plans are.

Correction: I see that you posted last night, looks like I'm late to the game. How did this turn out, do you have any question?

 

[passive]

@cmybeer, nope, it's tonight. Definitely a lack of planning/preparation, but I'm getting some interesting pictures, I think.

At this moment, I'm boiling wort, I've added the first round of hops, the second should come shortly. At about 6 liters, the wort was measuring 1.15 specific gravity. I ran some water through the grain bags to bring it up to 7 liters. I've got honey to add at the end of the boil, but that probably won't be enough to bring it up to 1.18, so I may supplement it with maple syrup or some other sugar.

 

[david_42]

One of the key elements of successful all-grain brewing is sparging the grains to get the sugars out. With that small pot, you won't be able to get much more than half of the sugars.

What you can do it boil the first runnings, cool them and put them in the fermenter. Then put the grain bag back in the pot with as much hot (near boiling) water as it will hold. Stir it as best you can, remove the bag and then boil the new wort for 15 minutes or so.

 

[cmybeer]

We do our all grain mashing in a 10 Gallon Cooler with a false bottom. If you want to continue doing all grain without investing anymore money you can successfully do all grain brew in a bag (BIAB) with a pot that size. I do them in my 3.5G for smaller test batches of recipes I want to make but don't want to make a full 5 gallons. You can still sparge with that technique by just pouring some water over the grain after the mash or you can just say screw it and plan for a lower efficiency. The only draw back here is that you will only get enough wort that will fit in your pot.
PM me if you have any question.

 

[idahobrew]

Don't give up on all grain. My first suggestion would be to get a bigger pot. You can look around at yard sales, thrift shops, craiglist etc. and get a darn good deal sometimes,if money is an issue, try to get at least a 10 gallon pot. Then you can do 5 and 6 gallon batches easy with the BIAB method. You can make a few bags with the voile curtain material sold at walmart for less than $5.00 if you know someone with a sewing machine. BIAB is pretty simple, don't need a lot of equipment, can get good efficiency and make great beer.

 

[wcrooker]

I got my pot from amazon. Its a 15.5 gallon stainless steel pot for about $135 shipped. Its the bayou classic one. I do believe they have a 10 gallon as well.

 

[sdsurfaddict]

Im here to research the effects of mash temps on the flavor and mouth feel. But it seems to me that a 45 degree fluctuation in a mash would be a bad thing. Go too high and you kill the enzymes I think. Ive never heard of anyone mashing above 165 yet. But then again, Im here to research this topic haha!

Oh yeah, a cheap alternative to using a dedicated pot with false bottom is to use a 5 gallon paint strainer and a bottling bucket for your sparge. Works great for me and I keep about a 72% brewhouse efficiency =)

 

[stratslinger]

Yeah, there's a couple things that are key to all grain: a consistent temperature in the range where the enzymes work best (usually between the upper 140's and 160 or so) and the right amount of water (1 - 1.5 qts per lb of grain). Go very far outside of those parameters for your mash and, while your OG might be relatively close, your wort may not be very fermentable at all...

It should be very interesting to see how your first attempt goes. Before you make a second attempt though, I'd definitely recommend doing a little more research. Read up here on HBT - there are quite a few methods for all grain that you can get into fairly easily, but you'll benefit greatly from going in with a little research under your belt! Definitely looking into BIAB methods (Brew in a Bag) - you can get into that for the cost of a larger pot and a paint strainer bag, or you can go the more traditional route like many of us and assemble a cooler mash tun (and also the requisite larger pot).

Either way, don't give up - see this one through, do some research, and come back for a second try with a little more preparation!