Can I Get a Crash Course?

So I decided to step up from extract and try AG brewing. For my first batch, I figured it would be easier to just buy a kit from Northern Brewer than try to follow a recipe. However, all that came with the NB kit was the ingredients, and the following information...

Mash Schedule

• 153° F for 60 minutes
• 170° F for 10 minutes

So...do I heat up some strike water to 153° and add that to the grain, and then after an hour raise the temperature to 170°?

I was just going to follow his example >>

 

I highly recommend John Palmer's "How to Brew":

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/index.html

 

You're going to want to add water a fair bit warmer than the temp you want your grains at. Try using this free batch sparge calculator. For now I would just go with the suggested defaults and then adjust your rig as you get a few batches under your belt.

Oh, and if you are indeed batch sparging it is not crucial if you can't hit that 170. Its mainly for denaturing the enzymes to stop conversion, but with a batch sparge you'll get there fairly quickly when you start bringing your wort to a boil.

 

Check out this thread: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/all-grain-pictorial-video-tutorials-78963/

It helped clarify some things for me on my first batch.

 

so if i understand correctly my strike water will be a few degrees higher than 153*, then i heat my sparge water to 170*? Or do i mash at 153* for an hour, then heat it up to 170, then use 180* sparge water?

 

Buying a software like BrewSmith helps IMMENSELY when it comes to AG. I print out the brew sheet which tells me exactly how much water at what temp to add at what time. You just tell it the temp of your grains and whether or not to account for your MLT, and it figures out everything for mash in, mash out, and sparge. The brew sheet also covers when your hop additions need to go in (based on the recipe you enter) and will even give dates as to when to rack, bottle, and/or keg (again, based on what you tell it).

There are a couple softwares out there, but I like Brewsmith and it's not expensive.

 

You want to mash at 153 so heat your strike water up to 170-180 before you put the grain in. Mix it in well and adjust the temp with heat or a little more cold water to get to 153. Cover it up and keep it at that temp for an hour.

At the end of your mash, you can heat up the mash tun to 170 (be sure to stir, so that you have an even temp throughout) let it sit there for ten minutes.

Then you can start to sparge with 170 water.

 

You're going to want to add water in the neighborhood of 12 degrees higher than you want your grain to be, so somewhere around 165. Mix the water and grain really well and let it sit for about an hour.
From there, you could either add enough boiling water to get it up to 170, let it sit there 10 minutes, drain out your first runnings and then add enough more water at 170 to get you up to your preboil volume. Probably somewhere around 6.5 gallons preboil.

Or, you could just drain your first runnings without adding any boiling water and then add sparge water at a temp around 180 to bring your preboil volume up to 6.5.

Again, I recommend just using that calc I linked you to.

 

thanks guys. this has made it much clearer. I will do my research and let everyone know how it goes!

 

http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/

halfway down..........Brewing Your First Batch Sparge Beer

 

each system is different so your gonna have to tweak it until you get used to it i.e what temp to heat strike water, what is your evaporation rate, all we can give you is a ballpark figure