1st All-grain Attempt - Made Of Fail!

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DeathBrewer

Maniacally Malty
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Well, Death is finally at it with the AG action! :rockin:

After eating a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago, a bunch of the crew and I decided to head to a friends house. While I was there, he offered me some of his turkey. It was wonderful stuff, so moist..."How did you make this?" I asked. "I got a turkey fryer." "Wait, so that means you have a propane burner?"

Well, needless to say I didn't really leave his house much that weekend. I went home to get supplies and my cooler, then we headed out to morebeer the next day.

I got all the supplies for my mash tun which was already half-built:

dfjms02.jpg


Then we got ingredients for a modified version of Orfy's HobGoblin II. Unfortunately, they didn't have the hops we needed so we decided to go with all Fuggles. I was basically guestimating the IBUs (my friend and i decided to go with less hops anyway) and ended up a bit TOO short. My first mistake of the evening.

Here's the final recipe.

D**** F** J** M** S***

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
-------------------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25 Wort Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.81
Anticipated OG: 1.062 Plato: 15.23
Anticipated SRM: 17.0
Anticipated IBU: 21.6
Brewhouse Efficiency: 53 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
76.0 10.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) Great Britain 1.038 3
2.3 0.31 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350
3.6 0.50 lbs. Crystal 60L America 1.034 60
3.6 0.50 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2
14.5 2.00 lbs. Muntons DME - Light England 1.046 5

Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.75 oz. Fuggle Whole 4.75 14.3 60 min.
0.50 oz. Fuggle Whole 4.75 4.9 30 min.
0.75 oz. Fuggle Whole 4.75 2.4 5 min.

Yeast
-----
Lallemand Nottingham

So, anyway...we get home and we're getting everything set up and I'm looking through my bag. Something's missing...what is it? The false bottom!

The guy brought it to the counter, but forgot to charge me for it and forgot to put it in my bag. Hmm...we can fix this, i thought. Here was my first attempt (which pretty much screwed up the rest of the night):

dfjms01.jpg


I had drilled a bunch of holes in the tube and put a hop bag over it. seemed like an ok idea at the time.

Anyway, the thermometer wasn't entirely accurate, but we mashed at around 155 for about an hour while our little brew helper kept walking in to see what the commotion was all about:

dfjms04.jpg
 
Once we were done mashing, we tried to make our first run, and OF COURSE it was stuck. We emptied out the mash and sprayed some water through the works to try and clean it out...then we fixed the hose so it was capped at the end:

dfjms07.jpg


This may have worked, but what i didn't know at this time was that it was still totally clogged...nothing was getting through there. We went back and forth from the tun to the kettle a few times just trying to figure it out and eventually resorted to pouring it through a colander and sparging through the same...giving us a 53% efficiency. this was how i've been partial mashing...and i got better efficiency with that. ouch.

dfjms09.jpg


As we commenced with the boil, a friend dropped by to give his support (he likes miller high life):

dfjms13.jpg


And my bro adding the hops:

dfjms10.jpg
 
in the end we got some pretty good beer.

dfjms14.jpg


I added two pounds of extract at the end to make up for the lost efficiency. Once i put this all in to promash I realized that it probably would have been a more balanced beer if i just would have let it be...

We racked it this week, though and it tastes pretty good. I think we accidentally made a scottish ale! :D

So, there were many mistakes along this session, but the most important thing we learned?

Apparently those false bottoms are pretty important! Who knew?

dfjms12.jpg


The next session was much better...with better pictures, so I'll post that soon!

:rockin:
 
Welcome to the dark side. But by observing your fondness of things dark, I think you are already there. :D

You can always go with a stainless braid - that works just fine for me. It would be pretty easy to swap that out for the tube you have in there now.
 
lol, thx guys.

i almost forgot to mention how we came up with the name for the beer...there were letter magnets on the fridge. We tried to put together the best string of offensive words we could think of using a single set of the alphabet.

I'll leave that up to the imagination ;)
 
BrianP said:
You can always go with a stainless braid - that works just fine for me. It would be pretty easy to swap that out for the tube you have in there now.
Absolutely...just punch a few more holes in that tube, and slip the braid over it. Mine works great, I can't see bothering with a false bottom when a $3.00 braid works so well.

Looks like you guys had fun, in spite of the difficulties! That's what it's all about. :rockin:
 
Looks about how my second AG brew went. 1st went off without a hitch, second one. Wow can we say stuck sparge.
 
BlindLemonLars said:
Absolutely...just punch a few more holes in that tube, and slip the braid over it. Mine works great, I can't see bothering with a false bottom when a $3.00 braid works so well.

Looks like you guys had fun, in spite of the difficulties! That's what it's all about. :rockin:

I 3rd the stainless steel (make sure its SS and not the fake SS) braid for inside the MLT. Made mine (per flyguys MLT instructions basically) and did my first AG run 2 weeks ago. No stuck sparge, not even close, and I got 80% efficiency...

I did "reinforce" my SS braid (although I don't think it needs it) with a piece of copper wire that I spun around a pencil and inserted inside the braid in place of the tubing that was in there... (I removed the pencil first of course)
 
i already bought the false bottom...it was just to convenient to stop by the brew store. i THINK they gave me the one for the 5 gallon tho :rolleyes:

it works well enough, but i'm kinda sick of them messing things up...i think i'm going to return it. maybe i will go with the SS braid after all. thx.
 
it tastes good so far...a bit light on the hops. like i said, scottish ale by accident

it was "made of fail" because i had to add extract so it wasn't a true all-grain :D (although in the end, i probably shouldn't have added the extract anyway)
 
Awesome. I missed this when you first posted it. Looks a lot like my first AG attempt! And, come to think of it, the one from last weekend, too. Oh well.

Oh, and the shirt that your friend who stopped by is wearing is awesome.
 
Cue Skwisgaar's swept arpeggio solo.

Maybe you should call the beer, Drop Tuned Bb Ale or maybe, Mosh Louder Tonnes Ale. Hmmm, so many possibilities filled with metally goodness.

:mad: <-Deathmetal happy face.
 
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