All Grain Brewing

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

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

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

McCall St. Brewer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2005
Messages
1,172
Reaction score
6
Location
West Monroe, Louisiana
I would like to learn more about making all grain beer but frankly am a bit confused about how to do it. Can anyone recommend any books or even online guides on how to do it? Also, has anyone here ever posted a guide on how to get started? (I tried searching but my initial search didn't come up with anything). Most of the threads here seem to discuss equipment setups, but not much about how you actually do it.
 
Best place to start would be Palmer's Howtobrew, I've linked the section on all grain. The online version is the 1st edition. Palmer includes more information than you need to get started, but I like his approach.
 
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByCat.aspx?Cat=60

Follow the above link to Midwest brewing and inquire about their Homebrew DVD , it is offered with any order. You may even be able to purchas it for a nominal fee ( I'm not sure about that) .
This is good because you can see it done not just readabout it, though I'll second the idea of John Palmers book.
His first edition is availabe online in it's entirety.
enter Google search for him.
Hope this helps.:)
 
You'll get a good insight from the links above.

Here's a very quick run down

Take base and specialty grains soak it in hot water for an hour to turn starch to sugar
Rinse with hot water to release sugar and other bits, collect the run off this is called wort.
Add water to wort to give around 6.5 gallons
Boil for around an hour or so adding hops to give bitternes, flavour and aroma.
Once reduced to about 5 gallons cool transfer to fermenter add yeast. In a week you'll have beer (Flat and unaged but beer all the same)
 
good links above. also try Brewing Quality Beers by Byron Burch and New Brewing Lager Beer by Gregory J. Noonan. the first being the easiest and the later being the more detailed and intense.
 
The trouble with books is that they can give conflicting information. I'm very impressed with Palmer's Howtobrew, but IMHO the best way to learn its to read a basic book (such as Palmer), and do it. Once you have a few brews completed, you can get a lot more out of the books than you could without any practical experience.

-a.
 
orfy said:
.....
Add water to wort to give around 6.5 gallons...

Should this step be in AG brewing (seems to defeat the object a little bit to me)?

Do you mean "Continue to sparge to give boil volume of 6.5 gallons"
 
Yes because you'll loose around a gallon in boiling and some will be left in the brew kettle with the hops and hot break gunk. So if you started with 5 gallon you'd only end up with around 4 gallon in the fermenter. If you have finished sparging at less than 6.5gallon (nominal) then you can just top up with water.
 
sparge to you get a SG of about 1.010-1.008, if it's not enough, top up w/ water to achieve the boil volume you need to end up w/ 5.5 gallons to primary.
 
Idealy you sparge to get your total boiling volume, but if you're batch sparging and you "miss", it's sometimes easier to just add some water to the boil then to make another pass at the grain.
 
Batch sparging is where I really love Promash. I've got my system parameters dialed in pretty well now, and it usually calculates the water almost dead on. For some reason I seem to have a lot more evaporation than most people, so I go for 7g in the kettle and yesterday hit it on the mark using Promash's calculations.
 
Evap rate is pretty easy because Promash has a calculator where you just put in pre-boil volume and post-boil volume and it tells you what it is. I just eyeball the volume marks on my brew kettle. Generally speaking, if I hit my pre-boil target volume and SG I'm homefree as I know if I boil off too much I can add water to get back to my target post-boil volume and I'll be at my target OG.

Figuring out all the deadspace and line losses is a bit trickier, but once you have those they don't change unless you change equipment, although I occasionally get a little more or less out of my kettle into the fermenter as I siphon (no tap yet).

I think grain absorption varies with conditions, as well, but not much.
 
Thanks guys...that's cleared that one up for me. Obviously the whole sparging thing is going to take some for-thought and a few calcs / practice to get right.
 
BeeGee said:
For some reason I seem to have a lot more evaporation than most people

My number is 20% evaporation in promash and that works for me. I was very suprised to find this number so high when I first started brewing. Nothing special about where I live such as temp. or altitude.
 
Being new to this site, I am curious why no one recommended the Papazian books? Are those considered outdated now? That is more or less how I transitioned to all-grain and I still use them for references. I have not bought a brewing book in ten years but must admit this site motivated me to pick up that New Brewing Lager Beer book.........
 
jeffg said:
Being new to this site, I am curious why no one recommended the Papazian books? Are those considered outdated now? That is more or less how I transitioned to all-grain and I still use them for references. I have not bought a brewing book in ten years but must admit this site motivated me to pick up that New Brewing Lager Beer book.........

they're good books, and great for intro or novice brewers. but, i think it's just the natural progression once you move into all-grain brewing then into recipe formulation, you want a little deeper book that focuses more on the science and technique of all-grain brewing. i think we all like Charlie's books and respect him for what he's done for the homebrewing community.
 
DyerNeedOfBeer said:
My number is 20% evaporation in promash and that works for me.
That's exactly where I sit. What type of kettle do you use? I have a 7.5g ss, but don't know the dimensions off the top of my head. I've seen a lot of places say "figure 1g/hr", but a 7g boil at 20% that's 1.4g in that hour boil which gets me pretty close to my 5.5g batch size in Promash.
 
If you are going to start A.G. brewing, you may think of upping your batch size--it doesn't take any more time to do a 10 or 15 gallon batch and if you are spending all day to get it done, you might as well not have to do it as often.
 
smithlammers said:
If you are going to start A.G. brewing, you may think of upping your batch size--it doesn't take any more time to do a 10 or 15 gallon batch and if you are spending all day to get it done, you might as well not have to do it as often.

my main thing is capacity. i only have room for two taps, so i don't want two taps of the same brew. it also takes the same amount of time and work to brew 2,200 gallons. bummer hu :confused:
 
Back
Top