First AG Batch

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

I'm not actually brewing until tomorrow, weather permitting, and if not then Sunday but I'm so darn excited I figured I'd go ahead and get the thread going. I hope the weather will play nice, temps are in the teens right now and our highs for this weekend will be in the low 20's. I'm sure that will make keeping temps hard but chilling should be a breeze, LOL. I plan to mash inside to help keep my temps. Once I get rolling I'll upload some pics on how things are going.

 

[Chello]

What are you making?

 

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

A stout. I'd post the recipe but I'm at work so I don't have it available at the moment. I'll upload it tomorrow as I get going.

 

[kappclark]

Good luck - I'm sure it will turn out fine !

 

[chthonik]

We're making our first AG a porter on Monday. Must be something about winter!

MD doesn't have temps quite as cold as Ohio, but we'll probably mash indoors as well! Esp. if we still have snow on the ground...

 

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

I have pics to post but first a question because I have some numbers that just don't jive.

Is it feasible to boil off 32% of your volume in 1 hour? I'm using the Bayou Classic burner if that helps any. Based on my calculations that's what I just did. I know that I collected 6.5G from my mash, I used two marked buckets for collection. After boiling for an hour I collected 4G into my fermenter. I'm assuming a trub loss of 0.25G and based on what I saw in the kettle when I was done I'm pretty sure that's right, at best it might have been 0.5G.

Being new to all this I just want to see if that high of a boil off is at best even possible.

EDIT: I wanted to add one other detail that could be important. Due to the temperature outside, roughly 20F, I couldn't see anything in the kettle thanks to steam so while I know I had a good boil I kept the burner going wide open for the full hour since I couldn't see to know if turning the heat down would kill my boil.

 

[sweet_corn]

I normally start with around 7.5 gallons before the boil, and end up with just 5 in the fermentor. That is with a pretty rigorous boil, so your numbers don't seem that far off. Also, I use a bayou classic as well, with the standard 55K burner, and I usually run at 1/2 to 1/4 open once I get the boil going, so your numbers are not too far off if you ran full open.

I brewed today with an air temp of -8 when I started the boil, with a wind chill of -25. Full open would not get it past a slow bubble. I had to move into the garage...

 

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

Yeah, in hindsight there's really no way around it, I know that I started with 6.5G and ended with 4G and lost at best 0.5G to trub. I didn't realize how effective that Bayou Class would be.

I didn't get as many pics as I wanted from my first AG brew day, as was to be expected it was very hectic so taking pictures wasn't on my mind. Before I get to the actual brewing pics I have these pics of my new storage areas in the basement.

This first one is a shot of my two smaller storage racks:

This one is my new baby. I just bought this rack and all the airtight storage containers so I could stock up on grain.

EDIT: I wanted to add, since I imagine many will notice the door with a mirror that my two racks are blocking, that door leads to a very nasty little room that contains an old fuel oil tank. One of these days we'll clean that out but for right now my wife actually prefers having something in front of it. LOL

 

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

Now, for the brewing pics. This first one is a shot of the stands I built and my burner heating up my strike water.

This is a shot of my new 15lb. Barley crusher and the grains for this batch of stout. I'll post the recipe AFTER I've had a chance to taste this bad boy and see if it's any good.

I tried getting shots of my crush but all I have is my camera phone and they didn't come out very clear so here's a shot of the boil. Due to the temps I couldn't see squat in the kettle while the boil was going.

Here's a shot at the end of the boil, getting ready to fire up my chiller for the first time.

 

[Turkeyfoot Jr.]

Last but not least, a shot of the fermenting stout taken this morning.