Never brewed before, starting with All-Grain

[TeleTwanger]

I'm gonna save some $ and brew in the kitchen on top of the range with a "5 gallon" kettle. It's been done before (YouTube ftw).
concentrations of alpha and beta amylase are such that I won't have to add enough water to overflow my brewpot. That's why I'm going with the 5g. In essence, i don't need no stinkin 10g brewpot.

I don't know it seems like you are just doing AG to prove a point. Do you want to make good beer or just impress people with your skills? I don't see how you are going to mash enough grains with the ability to only boil 4 gallons of wort to do 5 gallon batches. Yes it can be done (I guess) but why bother? You are going to be a slave to your kettle and be very limited to doing really low gravity beers. You could probably get away with mashing 7 lbs of grain with a thick 1/1 mash and end up with around 4 gallons wort for the boil and end up with a 1.037 beer. You'r better off doing PMs and mashing 6 lbs or so grain and adding a few lbs dme. When I did pms I would mash about 50% fermentables and the rest I'd get from DME and the beers were indistinguishable from AGs.

 

[The Pol]

I began brewing with all grain as well... had never been to this site, didnt know anyone that brewed. It is really not that hard, it is not that complicated, and I have yet to make a bad batch. (3 years brewing AG now) You have to do a little reading and pay attention to what you are doing, but skipping extract IMHO is not the giant leap that some make it out to be.

Congrats, good luck and may the force be with you!

 

[amercuric]

You could probably get away with mashing 7 lbs of grain with a thick 1/1 mash and end up with around 4 gallons wort for the boil and end up with a 1.037 beer. You'r better off doing PMs and mashing 6 lbs or so grain and adding a few lbs dme. When I did pms I would mash about 50% fermentables and the rest I'd get from DME and the beers were indistinguishable from AGs.

You have a point. So my plan is that I'll just pour the maximum capacity of water my brewpot can store into the mashtun (10 gal Coleman cooler with SS braid) and get a feel for how many pounds of grain I can mash. I'll get some DME so if the original gravity is low I'll just add some DME. Thanks TeleTwanger.

BTW, not trying to impress anyone. I'm just a DIY'er college student with little money so I'm forced to innovate instead of doing everything the conventional way.

 

[TeleTwanger]

You have a point. So my plan is that I'll just pour the maximum capacity of water my brewpot can store into the mashtun (10 gal Coleman cooler with SS braid) and get a feel for how many pounds of grain I can mash. I'll get some DME so if the original gravity is low I'll just add some DME. Thanks TeleTwanger.

My rough calculations are:

7 lbs grain (6lbs base malt, 1 lbs specialty(crystal, black, etc)) so for a thick mash you could do 1qt per lbs giving you 7qts h20. Then you could sparge with 3 gallons ( a little less than .5gallons per lbs)and end up with about 4.5 gallons wort. After 1 hour boil you'll end up with about 3.5 gallons. Top off the primary to 5 and you should be around 1.035 @70% mash efficiency.

You could do an even thicker mash or less sparge water but the problem with efficiency makes this counter productive. If you add just 2 lbs dme you'll bump up the OG to around 1.050 and 3 lbs would be 1.060.

 

[amercuric]

Okay so today I return the 5 gallon pot for a larger one.

Then I'm making the wort chiller with 20' of 3/8" copper tubing, plastic tubing, and a barbed hose adapter. I know the proffessional chillers have 25' of copper, but I can always upgrade later with more pipe and a brass compression valve if needed.

--UPDATE: I managed to have the kind folks at OSH cut me 25' instead of the precut 20' coils at Home Depot.