all grain?

[smithnick0]

Can someone simplify the All grain process for me? Like what grain you use and why and what you get out of them? And how the 3 teir setups work you see everyone building?

 

[stevo155]

Did you read this yet?

http://www.howtobrew.com

Bascially the all grain process is converting starch to sugar that yeast can eat. You start with a base malt ( 2-row, pilsner, etc ) and add other grains for flavor and color and mash ( hold at a constant temperature for the enzymes to do their work ) and collect the wort.

Here's a site that will tell you what the different grains give you:

http://www.brew365.com/

 

[tchuklobrau]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/all-grain-pictorial-video-tutorials-78963/ this makes ag about as simple as it gets. grain changes by which recipe u are making. 3 teir makes it so gravity does all the work for u. no heavy lifting.

 

[nebben]

The three tier systems you see here are to simplify transferring water or wort from one pot/tun to another. The top is the HLT (Hot Liquor Tun), and its job is just to heat up water. The precisely heated water then goes to the mashtun to do the mashing described above. Collecting wort usually will just involve opening a valve on the mashtun and draining into the boil kettle. Multi-tiered systems are primarily set up to avoid needing pumps. Gravity does all the work to move from one step to the next. I personally have 2 coolers- one for hot water heating and another for mashing. I transfer from one to another by gravity, then muscle the mashtun around by hand. You can do mashes easily with a minimal amount of gear and without a huge three tier system (or pumps for that matter).

In a nutshell, all grain brewing steps:

1. Grind up grain. (Malted barley is the primary ingredient for beer since it contains the enzymes needed to convert starches to sugars, and it contains all the fermentables needed. Other than rye, wheat, oats, and some other adjunct grains, most are barley. For brewing, barley is sold in many different types. A base malt (2 row, 6 row, Marris Otter, pilsner...etc.) usually makes up the most of the grain for a batch by weight. Next come grains for color, body, mouthfeel, flavor, and other stuff (crystal malt, special b, chocolate malt, black patent, honey malt, carapils...tons of malts here). Barley starts out the same, it is just processed differently by the maltster. The idea with malted grains is that during the malting process, the raw barley seeds (or any grain) are wetted and left to germinate in controlled conditions. Once the germinated barley has reached a certain size, the grain is dried and heated, rolling off all the chaf. The germination process helps the barley seeds develop enzymes needed to convert starches to sugars in the mash for the brewing process. Malting is done by the maltster before you buy the grain at the homebrew shop, or by hardcore homebrewers with extra time on their hands.)
2. Heat up water.
3. Make a soupy/oatmeal consistency mash of about 1.25Q water/pound grain with your crushed grains and hot water. For most simple mashes, getting this barley+water concoction to about 154F is ideal, but the range varies depending on what you're trying to do.
4. After stirring the mash occasionally for an hour and maintaining your mash temperature (150-158F for most cases), start collecting wort.
5. After the grains have drained most of their wort, add more water (sparge) to rinse the grains. Collect more wort. Keep collecting until you get enough wort for your pre-boil target, or about 1.020 gravity- whichever is first.
6. Boil wort as normal. Make dog cookies out of the spent grain or compost.

There are a lot more bits to each part that can be very different and more detailed. Some mash styles call for pulling of grain out of the mash and boiling it. Others call for carefully stepping the temperature of the mash up a few degrees here and there to target certain enzyme reactions in the grain. Sparging comes in many techniques too- single batch sparge, fly sparge, vorlauf with batch sparging (return some wort back to the mash when draining to try and obtain clearer wort), mashing out and sparging...etc.

What it comes down to is really simple steps though- make an oatmeal consistency mash of about 1.25Q water/pound of grain. Stir adequately. Heat up to 154F'ish. Wait 60 minutes. Drain. Rinse. Boil. Cool. Ferment. Drink.