Brewing my first all grains ...HELP!

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.

DreBourbon

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2015
Messages
143
Reaction score
21
So I'm switching from extract to all grains and I bought a grains kit but the instructions aren't super detailed so asking for your help. Here is what I think I should do, feel free to tell me otherwise. Boil 3gals to 149F, put grains in tun, wait 1 hour and transfer to kettle, reintroduced another 3gals, stir, wait 30 mins and transfer to kettle. Add hops to kettle and boil for 1 hour. Cool wort with chiller, rehidrate yeast then (add yeast at...? temp), then let sit for fermentation for 3 weeks before kegging ? Thanks.

View attachment 1452298754040.jpg

View attachment 1452298765117.jpg

View attachment 1452298774487.jpg
 
Download brewing software. Beersmith or something similar before starting
 
You will want to heat the initial three gallons to a higher temperature so when the cool grains are added it will drop to 149 degrees. That will probably require an extra ten degrees or so. Then, after draining, you will add the other three gallons of water and stir - but it should be around 168 degrees to do a proper job of rinsing the remaining sugars. No need to wait another half hour; you are only rinsing the sugars that were already converted in the first 1 hour period. Just stir and drain.
 
What I do...........


First, download a beer app on your phone like Brewzor, Brewer;s Friend, etc. (I use Brewzor).


1) Bring 3.5 gallons of water to about 159. Your grain bill looks like it has 9lbs of grain, so I always do 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain (13.5qts or 3.375gal, or round to 3.5gal) When you dump and stir in your room temperature grains, the temp will drop close to 149. The brew app will tell you more of an approximation of temp, but your "strike water" temperature is usually about 10 degrees hotter. Mash these grains for an hour.

2) After the hour mash, drain the wort from the tun into your boil kettle*. Make a note of how much wort you collected. Subtract that number from your usual preboil volume when doing extract batches. This is your sparge volume. Heat that water to about 168-170. Pour that into your tun for about 10 minutes, drain to your pre-boil volume.

3) Once your wort volume is collected, going forward should be no different than a typical extract batch.

* Depending on your brew setup, you can heat your sparge water as you're approaching the end of your mash to save time. If it takes you 15 minutes to heat sparge water to mash out temps (around 170F), then you can start heating water around where you have 15 minutes of mash time left. I didn't mention that as, since this is your first all grain, the main focus is just to take your time and make note of what all is involved (mash temp, sparge volumes, etc.) that way the next batches you start to get a process going and can tweak it for efficiency.


EDIT: Oh yeah, if something goes awry, don't freak out. You're still going to make beer in the end. Just keep good notes, that way you'll know more of what to do/not to do when you make that batch again.
 
Back
Top