All Grain Brewing Simplified

Revision as of 07:03, 26 February 2007 by Sause (talk | contribs) (Boil)
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This guide is written for would be All Grain brewers to see what is involved in a basic all grain brewing session. It is not meant to be a tutorial but just an overview of what is involved

Basics Steps

Recipe

Creating the recipe is a step usually done before the brew day. The recipe includes only grains, adjuncts, hops, water, and yeast. No extract will be used in this process. The recipe should include what temperature to mash and how long. Use of a brewing software will aid in creating a recipe.

Ingredients

The use of grain in this process puts the home brewer as close to commercial beer as one can get. One usually uses 5-15 pounds of grain for one 5 gallon batch. This grain must be milled so that the kernel is broken up but leaving the husk as intact as possible. Hop utilization will be greater when doing a full boil so the use of less hops in the recipe is recommended. A yeast starter is suggested to be made 1-4 days in advance to provide a quick fermentation. If brewing for a particular style the brewer might adjust the water to match that of a famous area from which the style is brewed.

Mash

After heating the water to the correct temperature, the brewer mixes the grain and water in a specific ratio ranging from 1-2qt/lb of grain. Be sure not to aerate the water to much, hot side aeration can occur at any point the water is above 100F. After checking that the mix is at the require temperature the brewer lets the mix mash for a dedicated period, an hour being fairly standard.

Sparge

After the mash is complete the brewer must "rinse" the grains of the sugars. This is done by sparging the grains, there are two common methods of sparging batch and fly. Fly sparging is the letting out of the water from the bottom slowly and the adding of 170F water from the top at the same rate. Batch sparging is the draining of the mash/lauter tun as quick as possible and then adding more water, mixing, let it settle and drain again.

Boil

After spraging the collected mixture is brought up to a boil where hops are added at the prescribed rate and times. During this period the wort will be condensed to make the desired amount of beer.

Cooling

Cooling 5 gallons of boiling wort to 70F is no small task since this is to be done as quick as possible. The use of a wort chiller is recommended to lower the temperature quickly. Since the generation of DMS occurs above 150F dropping the temp past this point is of importance.

Pitch

Once the wort is at 70F you may transfer to the fermenter. Aerating the wort at this point is highly recommended to raise the amount of oxygen in the wort. After aerating pitch the yeast in to the wort.

Other Methods

  • Brew in a bag.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11694&st=330

Detailed How To Pages

Further Reading

Navigation

Back to

Top