Back to Basics... What do you wish you knew before starting AG?

[kellzey]

Plan on a couple of hours to clean up equipment, floor, hoses, buckets, kettles, etc.

Plan for a good 6-7 hour day for your first attempt.

Wear comfy shoes... have a chair to sit and enjoy a cold brew while you wait through your various time periods.

Have fun!

 

[mavandeh]

Hey, good luck and thanks for posting this. Like you, this will be my first AG attempt. Post back with what you've learned from your fist day.

I learned that, for brew in a bag, you do in fact need a bag.

Mashed in without said bag, then dumped the mash into a 5 gallon bucket with my bag, pulled the grain out and placed it back in the tun/kettle, and then dumped the mash water back over the grain. Lost about 6-7 degrees, so I heated it back up and stirred with the pot wrapped in blankets. Got back up to temp relatively rapidly, and still managed to overshoot my post-boil gravity reading and didn't lose any volume.

Next time I am crushing straight into my bag.

I would like to build a contraption for straining and pressing my grain bag to get the water out quicker as well. Something like a fire bellow.

Also, I learned that for a 3 gallon batch there is less wort in contact with my chiller than in a 5 gallon batch, and it takes a surprisingly long time to cool. Imagine that.

In addition, I realized that I need a better way to measure my pre-boil volume. Wooden dowel with notches should do I think.

I tasted the wort, and the flavor approximates the way I thought it would taste. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

 

[mavandeh]

Seriously - get Beersmith. Best upgrade you'll ever make.

I friggin' love BeerSmith. I've even used it for some of my extract recipes. It's such a great tool.

Great advice in this thread. I'm glad I brought this up!

Keep posting!!!

 

[flipfloptan]

For BIAB: Stir stir stir the mash. Squeeze Squeeze Squeeze the bag.

 

[bullinachinashop]

Plan your work, then work your plan!

You can research as much as you want, but in the end, doing it is when you're going to find out the obstacles that you need to work through.
Having a Mentor can help.
Keep brewing, take good notes, read a lot on HBT and have fun!
Good luck,
Bull

 

[bellam87]

The time. 4+hours is a huge chunk of the day. Not too bad when you start early in the day...a real pain when it's dark, you're tired and you just want to be done. I've learned to be sure my schedule is open for six hours on a brew day.

Oh yeah, and making sure you have enough propane on hand.

+1 on this! Especially the propane.... it's always fun losing your boil because you didn't bother checking

 

[gotsumbeers]

Get everything ready the day before. Crush grain, measure water, etc. Have a game plan and take notes.

Also, good brew music or a podcast to listen to is essential for me.

 

[CourtHouseBrewing]

Get everything ready the day before. Crush grain, measure water, etc. Have a game plan and take notes.

Also, good brew music or a podcast to listen to is essential for me.

I agree, it's all about having a plan and being prepared the day before.
I set up and clean as I go through each process.
I live in Florida and brew outside so I take the grain outside first.
It helps to get the grain to a warmer temp so you lose less heat when you strike.
I get my HLT full of water and heating while I bring out my cooler, pump and hosing.
As the water heats I set up my cooler and pre warm it with 160oF plus water, about 2 gallons works great.
I add the water back to my HLT and wait to reach strike temp.
When I’m ready I dump the water and begin.
This is the time to gather the next step for collection.
After I collect and sparge I start to clean up the equipment I’m finished with.
This continues till at the end the only thing I have left to clean after I pitch the yeast is the brew pot and chiller.
Like many have said if I knew how easy it was I would have gone to AG much sooner.

 

[BrewScout]

I wish I knew how much more difficult it is to cool 5 gallons of wort than it is to cool 3 gallons. Just did first all grain batch and full boil yesterday and without a chiller it took me almost an hour and a half to drop wort down to pitching temps. Lesson learned I guess.

 

[david_42]

Definitely, oversize the mashtun. My brews improved when I went to a 48 qt cooler and thinner mashes.

 

[JonM]

I agree I was surprised how easy it was.

This. And I wish I had gone straight to the Northern Brewer bulkhead assembly. I screwed around with a DIY deal that leaked, there wasn't enough room for the ball valve handle, etc. When I finally got the NB one, didn't leak a drop and was much easier to install and use.

 

[homebrewfrank]

Expensive only hurts one time! I went the cheap route on a few things and then ended up going back for the expensive ones in the end......if you're short on cash at the time, save up for the equipment you want, dont just get what you can afford at that moment

 

[biestie]

There's a Sunday session with Denny Conn as guest from a few years ago. Find it and listen to it. He's my kind of AG brewer. Takes keep it simple stupid to a whole new level.

 

[mavandeh]

That if you leave spent grain in a pile outside for a week in the GA heat it will smell like death...

That's definitely not in any videos I've seen!

 

[kellzey]

There's a Sunday session with Denny Conn as guest from a few years ago. Find it and listen to it. He's my kind of AG brewer. Takes keep it simple stupid to a whole new level.

Can anyone share a link for this?

 

[biestie]

I can when I get home. It's at the brewing network website under Sunday session podcasts, like 5 years ago if you want to look for it. I should be able to find out when I get home from work though.

 

[edroberts]

Make sure you use a good thermometer and a lot of stirring of your mash. I made the mistake of using a digital probe thermometer that didn't take well to submersion. After a few beers, it corroded on the inside, eventually reading 20F too low. That quickly screwed up a few beers. Nothing like mashing at 140 when you are expecting it to be 154!

With that... Make sure you callobrate the thermometer in advance.

 

[JiP]

I agree with a lot of posts... it's more simple than I had originally thought. All of the posts, opinions, experts, etc. were intimidating.

Also, I'd not worry about efficiency unless you'd like to do it as an engineering hobby. It's much easier to add 1 or 2 extra pounds of grain to a recipe than it is to increase efficiency by 5%, i.e. 65% efficiency of 14 pounds may be as good as 75% efficiency of 12 pounds. In fact, some people believe that it's better to have less efficiency for more grains because of fewer tanins, and the cost for a home brew batch is only a few $.

Finally, I'd drink lower alcohol beers during all-grain days... they seem to take longer than expected, so my ratio of 1 beer/hour of brewing is a painful day if they are IIPA's [What is the standard beer/hour of brewing out there?]

 

[Jakeintoledo]

I've not done many AG brews--about 10 under my belt--but wished I had known that a refractometer cannot tell you FG, only OG. I spent a week cussing out the manufacturer of the dang thing under my breath, because I assumed my beer was under attenuated.

Turns out, I'm a *******.

 

[JonnyJumpUp]

Have fun, dont worry about the details, stay cool, focus on the general process.

 

[biestie]

Can anyone share a link for this?

http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/...ssion-08-13-06-Batch-Sparging-with-Denny-Conn

If I remember right, they had some technical difficulties and he didn't come on until 30 or so minutes into the show.

 

[Jakeintoledo]

Stir. Stir! STIR! after adding hot water.

NASA should look into using grains + water as an advanced insulating substance. The wacky soup can be 140 degrees in one place, and 158 degrees a couple of inches over, and it can hold those temps for a surprisingly long time. You can imagine the kinds of unnecessary hot-water disasters this can lead to. As a corollary (I know you said only one thing), take readings from all around the mash, and stir if the temps are radically different.

Seconded. I stir vigorously, and when I'm done, I do it again. I also like using digital RTDs or thermocouples just because they're quick to get readings. But I've seen ten degrees of difference even in a stirred mash. To the point where I've considered fabricating a worm drive agitator paddle for the tun. But mostly cause I like throwing needless money at crap like this.

 

[40watt]

I like all the "prep the night before and have a detailed plan" comments. For whatever reason, I seem to be incapable of this. I am a wing it, start at 6 in the evening, brew while making dinner/ doing yard work/ building some contraption kind of guy. I do not suggest this. I always forget my whirlfloc. One day I will tape it to my face, and see if that helps.

 

[bkl63]

I actually sat in on some friends doing all grain a few times before I made the move and was very book smart on the whole process. My first was actually at the AHA Big Brew so many others were around had I gotten stuck. Been brewing ALL Grain since and have been getting very efficiencies and many complements on my beers.

 

[LandoLincoln]

Put a little sticker on your carboy that says, "Take OG before pitching yeast, you idiot!"

 

[Grinnan5150]

Do all your prep the night before, i've finally figured out how great it is. I write up a template in my notebook with everything I normally record, so all I have to do is fill in the blanks instead of scrambling to do everything while writing it down. Also leave a space so you can record your times, mash-in, sparge out, boil start, hop additions.

There's a lot to keep track of and do, but if you get everything you can ready the night before you spend most of your time sitting around drinking watching the HLT, Mash Tun, and brew kettle.

+1,000 on this. Prepping the night before makes brew day so much less hectic. I also wish someone told me how peeved my wife would be with my brewing habits.

 

[benzy4010]

The amount of time including clean up and set up

 

[Jshine42]

I'm only 5 AG brew days in and Here's what I learned.. without echoing everything mentioned above..
1. Pre-Measure additions and label them.(hops, Irish Moss, etc.) have them in baggies and/or cups labeled with times.
2. Have a brew day sheet with everything already calculated out on it as well as spots for readings along the way. Times, Temperatures, Volumes.
3. I don't start drinking beer until after the Sparge. Too many things that I need to watch and do before then and I don't want to miss them. (Yes I do start after the boil is coming up)
4. Relax.. it's really not as hard as it's made up to be.

** if you have a SWMBO over estimate your time. the last thing you want to do is tell her you'll be done by X time and it's Really X+2 Hours.. makes for unpleasantness.

 

[mavandeh]

** if you have a SWMBO over estimate your time. the last thing you want to do is tell her you'll be done by X time and it's Really X+2 Hours.. makes for unpleasantness.

Lol, true! Around out house, it's pretty well understood that brew day is pretty much the entire day.

 

[mavandeh]

** if you have a SWMBO over estimate your time. the last thing you want to do is tell her you'll be done by X time and it's Really X+2 Hours.. makes for unpleasantness.

Lol, true! Fortunately, around our house, it's pretty well understood that brew day is pretty much the entire day.