First AG complete!

My first batch was a partial mash, and it didn't come out drinkable. Its just too sweet and flowery for me. I think my problem was that i made a steeping bag out of cheesecloth and just made it too small, which held the grains too tightly.

Second batch I made Ed Wort's Apfelwein and its very good!

So over the weekend I tried my hand at all grain. I did a Red Hook ESB clone. Since my kettle is a turkey fryer, I had to use BeerSmith to adjust the volumes of my boil and sparge. I went by the directions BeerSmith gave me after i input the recipe:

15qts strike water at 158
4.94gal of sparge water - batch sparged for 20min
~90-100min boil

This gave me about 7gal boil, which was at the very rim of my kettle. So i took about 5qts out and boiled it on the stove for 20min while the remaining wort boiled outside. I combined the two once the hot break calmed down.

Recipe calls for an SG of 1.054-1.058 - we got 1.056 and per BeerSmith our efficiency was 71%. Now i just hope that it turns out better than my first try!!!

Since it seemed like such a successful brew day, I made some Graff on Sunday

 

Good to hear. That's almost the first thing I did when I went to AG. I basically overstuffed my 5 gallon pot with grain; you did it with wort. Mine turned out great and I'm sure yours will too.

Congrats!