Another first all grain batch post

[DonMagee]

So I finally got all my equipment bought and shipped and this weekend will be my first all grain attempt. I figured I'd layout my process and see if anyone has any suggestions or tweaks

I bought a Scottish Export 80/- all grain kit (pre-crushed) from morebeer (where I bought my kettle) and that is what I'm going to use to learn the process and hopefully make delicious beer!

I plan on doing a batch sparge using a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler with a kettle screen as a braid. I have a 15 gallon morebeer kettle with a diverter tube for the boil and my old 5 gallon kettle to heat strike/sparge water.

My plan was to preheat the cooler with hot water and then drain and add my strike water, when it cools down to temp, dough in, wait 60 minutes (heat sparge water in the mean time) and drain the wort into the boil kettle. Add half my remaining sparge water, stir, wait 10 minutes, drain and repeat for the last half.

The recipe is as follows: (They assume 70% efficiency)

8lb 2-row
1lb Crystal 40L
8oz Honey
4oz Crystal 120L
2oz Chocolate

1.5oz Northern Brewer hops @ 60 minutes
1 Tablet Whirlfloc @ 5 minutes.

Safale US-05 dry yeast and looking for a OG of 1.046-49. They don't say what the FG should be, but they do say it should be around 4.5% ABV.

What they don't tell me is what my mash temp should be, but my research online shows I should be in the high 150's. I was going to be around 158 (I'm a big fan of malty beer). They also say to use 1.1qt of water per pound of grain for the strike water. I'm going to buy a copy of beersmith and I'm going to do a 'dry run' this week to find out the boil off rate of my kettle and the dead space in the cooler so I can make sure I hit my target volume in the fermenter. I just thought now would be the time to get feedback and see if anyone has any suggestions for changing the process or the recipe.

In any case I'm down to my last case of homebrew, so I need to get brewing!

 

[BrewinHooligan]

Kudos! I just did my first AG on Sunday and hit 70% efficiency. Most people have their strike water about 10-15 degrees over their mash temp becuase the grain will bring the temp down when you dough in and usually 1.25 qts/lb of grain is suggested for the mash. Don't wait for your strike water to cool before adding the grain. Keep some ice and some boiling water handy in case you over or under shoot your mash temps. I used 10 lbs of grain and lost around 1 gallon of water for absorption which seems to be pretty common, but your system may vary. Before the sparge, I encourage a "mash-out" which is basically adding 1.5 gallons of boiling water at the end of the mash for around 10-15 mins to halt conversion and also seems to help efficiency. Again, I have only one AG under my belt, but I used lots of information I found here along with asking my friend who has won a few medals in competition. Good luck and post how it goes!

 

[LouBrew13]

Congrats my 2nd ag batch was just transferred into secondary. My lhbs insisted on fly sparging and my efficiency was spot on. I'm dying to try these first 2 batches of ag. First was just bottled so I'm super excited. Samples tasted and smelled great. Good luck and again congrats. Only advice I can offer is keep out of the mash tun. It's working just fine.

 

[DonMagee]

I just plugged the recipe into beersmith and it says I'll be at 43 IBU's and the style maxes out at 30 IBU's. I'm wondering if I should drop the hops down to 1oz or maybe move .5oz of those hops to later in the boil. I guess it really doesn't matter in the long run if it's in style, as long as the beer tastes good

 

[Ma23456]

Don't stir during the sparge bc you will mess up your grain bed

 

[DonMagee]

Don't stir during the sparge bc you will mess up your grain bed

Really? All the guides I've read on batch sparging (and videos I've watched) say that you add your sparge water, stir, wait 10 minutes, Vorlauf until clear, and then drain into your kettle.

 

[phenry]

Really? All the guides I've read on batch sparging (and videos I've watched) say that you add your sparge water, stir, wait 10 minutes, Vorlauf until clear, and then drain into your kettle.

I stir a bunch before I sparge (or while I sparge? I can't really tell you the right term I guess). I batch sparge, so once I drain my first runnings I dump in my sparge water, stir for about 5 minutes, let it rest about 10 minutes, stir again, then start vorlaufing until clear.

 

[Ma23456]

I never stir and hit 75 %

 

[DonMagee]

Well everything went pretty well and beer is being made in my basement. I hit my target temp of 158 without issue and slightly above my target OG of 1.049 (I was 1.050). I only had two issues.

1) I had a hard time getting the wort to run clear after the mash. I think my kettlescreen is too big. i'm going to replace with with a SS braid.

2) My diverter tube didn't really do much diverting. It seems like it's letting air into the hose and once the wort dropped below the ball valve it broke the siphon. I tested it with water before the brew day and everything worked fine. I'll have to play with that some more.

3) The 15 gallon kettle from morebeer is just too big for 5 gallon batches. I had a little over 2 gallons of boil off and the depth of the liquid was about 6-7 inches. I think I'm going to just move up to 10 gallon batches from now on. At 6.5 gallons there wasn't even enough liquid to cover the thermometer.

 

[BrewinHooligan]

I have an SS braid in my tun from a toilet supply line and my wort runs clear from the beginning so I think you will be happy with that modification.

 

[DonMagee]

Any tips for figuring out why my diverter tube lost it's siphon when the wort got below the ball valve?