maltMonkey
Well-Known Member
sorry in advance for the long post....
Knocked out my first all-grain on Friday .it turned out to be a very interesting experience with many problems and setbacks. Recipe was an English pale ale that I concocted in Beersmith.
I started around 2:00 in the afternoon. The very first thing I did was turn on the burner for the hot liquor tank, and I already had my first problem. The propane tank was not pressurized or something, because the propane didnt come out very forcefully creating a not-so-hot fire. I had used the tank a couple times prior, and Im not sure what the deal is. At any rate, I switched tanks and kept going. Then the spigot on the HLT started leaking .apparently the tightening nut had come loose. I was able to give it a quarter turn and it worked (albeit it was a bit cock-eyed now).
I started grinding the 11lb grain bill by hand in my corona mill. Gave up about 1 pound into it. Removed the handle, found a bolt that fit in place of the threaded handle, put a socket driver on my drill, and quickly cranked through the rest of the grain.
When my mash water got to 175 I filled my MLT, expecting a 2-3 deg drop in temperature from the MLT being room temp. Instead I got a 10 deg drop. I was doing this all in my garage, and it was about 40 deg outside, so next time Ill have to take the ambient temperature into consideration. I barely caught this in time, and just brought the last gallon of liquor to boiling before putting in the MLT, and it brought the temp to exactly what I was wanting for my pre-strike heat. Mashed in and nailed my strike heat temp (was shooting for 158). I used 1.25 quarts/lb of grain as my mash ratio. While this was on the lower side of what is recommended, I still felt as though the mash was pretty watery .Just not what I had pictured in my head.
I checked the PH of the mash strictly out of curiosity. I didnt have any water modifiers on hand, and was just planning on dealing with whatever it was as I didnt want to overcomplicate things my first time. As near as I could tell on the pH paper, the mash was around 5.8 ..too high, but what could I do?
After a 60 minute saccharification rest, I noticed that the mash temp had dropped too 148. Too low, and I should have been adjusting the temp with more hot water the whole time. I guess I didnt think about it because I just thought with the MLT lid closed there would be enough insulation to maintain the temp over 1 hr. Another lesson learned.
I attempted a mash-out, and was very disappointed with the results. Beersmith and a couple other calculators had figured that I could add just over 5 quarts of 212 deg. water to get my 168deg. mash out temp. I ended up adding 10 quarts, and still only got to 166 deg. I basically just gave up on the mash out at this point.
I started vorlauf, and this is where the real problem began. I got some grain coming through the hose, which should have been my first indication of a problem. Flow was quite slow (more like a dribble), but it did consistently drain. I had heard to vorlauf until the wort ran clear, but it looked pretty clear to me from the beginning. At any rate, I collected app. 1 gallon wort into a pot and poured this through a strainer back into the MLT. The sparge arm worked great. I have it suspended by 4 strings, which turned out to work great. Someone had suggested that the arm would float on the mash. I tried this and it started sinking right away. So I ended up pretty happy with my sparge arm design.
I began my fly sparge, and the fun continued. I had a MAJOR stuck sparge. After several minutes of fiddling around with stuff and burning my hand in 150 deg. water I discovered the problem. My draining manifold is not soldered to the spigot pipe, which allows me to remove it and clean it easily. Unfortunately I had knocked it out of the fitting while stirring the mash, causing all the wort & grain to get sucked straight into the pipe connected to the spigot. After getting back in I tried everything to get the sparge going again: blowing/sucking on the hose, attaching my auto siphon, stirring the grain like a madman ..eventually I just shook on the hose for about 20 seconds and everything started coming out great. The sparge manifold worked great, and I was very relieved. Unfortunately I had lost 35 minutes and the mash temp had dipped down to 142 deg. I said screw it, and went ahead and collected my 6 gallons of wort.
The boil went pretty well, but I had 2 problems. One was that again, going by Beersmith, I had only accounted for 1 gallon boil-off over the 1 hour boil. WAY off. I lost over 2 gallons, and had to add water in the middle, which of course dipped the temp, losing the boil for a bit. My other problem was that with all the steam I couldnt see the gallon marks I had made in my boil pot. This ended with me only having about 4 ¾ gallons of wort at the end of the boil.
I started up the wort chiller (which I had never used before), and even though I had tested it earlier and tightened up the leaking hose clamps, the temperature conditions must have made the hoses contract or something because it immediately starting leaking water in a spray right into the wort. I ran and grabbed a screwdriver, and got the clamps tightened quickly. Other than that, the chiller did a pretty nice job, getting the wort from boiling to 74 degrees in about 35 minutes.
I took a gravity reading on the wort, and was 3 points lower than expected (1.048, shooting for 1.051) .coupled with the fact that I didnt even collect my full 5 gallons this points to bad efficiency. I dont know if it was my crush, my equipment, or all the stuck sparge problems I had.
I was pretty tired, so I pitched the yeast, cleaned up the equipment (LOTS more to clean than in extract brewing), ate, and went to bed.
All in all, it was quite a 6 hour adventure .stressful at times, but I cant wait to fix what I need to, adjust for what Ive learned, and do this again!
The setup:
Beer making fuel:
Grain bill:
Crushing by hand:
Knocked out my first all-grain on Friday .it turned out to be a very interesting experience with many problems and setbacks. Recipe was an English pale ale that I concocted in Beersmith.
I started around 2:00 in the afternoon. The very first thing I did was turn on the burner for the hot liquor tank, and I already had my first problem. The propane tank was not pressurized or something, because the propane didnt come out very forcefully creating a not-so-hot fire. I had used the tank a couple times prior, and Im not sure what the deal is. At any rate, I switched tanks and kept going. Then the spigot on the HLT started leaking .apparently the tightening nut had come loose. I was able to give it a quarter turn and it worked (albeit it was a bit cock-eyed now).
I started grinding the 11lb grain bill by hand in my corona mill. Gave up about 1 pound into it. Removed the handle, found a bolt that fit in place of the threaded handle, put a socket driver on my drill, and quickly cranked through the rest of the grain.
When my mash water got to 175 I filled my MLT, expecting a 2-3 deg drop in temperature from the MLT being room temp. Instead I got a 10 deg drop. I was doing this all in my garage, and it was about 40 deg outside, so next time Ill have to take the ambient temperature into consideration. I barely caught this in time, and just brought the last gallon of liquor to boiling before putting in the MLT, and it brought the temp to exactly what I was wanting for my pre-strike heat. Mashed in and nailed my strike heat temp (was shooting for 158). I used 1.25 quarts/lb of grain as my mash ratio. While this was on the lower side of what is recommended, I still felt as though the mash was pretty watery .Just not what I had pictured in my head.
I checked the PH of the mash strictly out of curiosity. I didnt have any water modifiers on hand, and was just planning on dealing with whatever it was as I didnt want to overcomplicate things my first time. As near as I could tell on the pH paper, the mash was around 5.8 ..too high, but what could I do?
After a 60 minute saccharification rest, I noticed that the mash temp had dropped too 148. Too low, and I should have been adjusting the temp with more hot water the whole time. I guess I didnt think about it because I just thought with the MLT lid closed there would be enough insulation to maintain the temp over 1 hr. Another lesson learned.
I attempted a mash-out, and was very disappointed with the results. Beersmith and a couple other calculators had figured that I could add just over 5 quarts of 212 deg. water to get my 168deg. mash out temp. I ended up adding 10 quarts, and still only got to 166 deg. I basically just gave up on the mash out at this point.
I started vorlauf, and this is where the real problem began. I got some grain coming through the hose, which should have been my first indication of a problem. Flow was quite slow (more like a dribble), but it did consistently drain. I had heard to vorlauf until the wort ran clear, but it looked pretty clear to me from the beginning. At any rate, I collected app. 1 gallon wort into a pot and poured this through a strainer back into the MLT. The sparge arm worked great. I have it suspended by 4 strings, which turned out to work great. Someone had suggested that the arm would float on the mash. I tried this and it started sinking right away. So I ended up pretty happy with my sparge arm design.
I began my fly sparge, and the fun continued. I had a MAJOR stuck sparge. After several minutes of fiddling around with stuff and burning my hand in 150 deg. water I discovered the problem. My draining manifold is not soldered to the spigot pipe, which allows me to remove it and clean it easily. Unfortunately I had knocked it out of the fitting while stirring the mash, causing all the wort & grain to get sucked straight into the pipe connected to the spigot. After getting back in I tried everything to get the sparge going again: blowing/sucking on the hose, attaching my auto siphon, stirring the grain like a madman ..eventually I just shook on the hose for about 20 seconds and everything started coming out great. The sparge manifold worked great, and I was very relieved. Unfortunately I had lost 35 minutes and the mash temp had dipped down to 142 deg. I said screw it, and went ahead and collected my 6 gallons of wort.
The boil went pretty well, but I had 2 problems. One was that again, going by Beersmith, I had only accounted for 1 gallon boil-off over the 1 hour boil. WAY off. I lost over 2 gallons, and had to add water in the middle, which of course dipped the temp, losing the boil for a bit. My other problem was that with all the steam I couldnt see the gallon marks I had made in my boil pot. This ended with me only having about 4 ¾ gallons of wort at the end of the boil.
I started up the wort chiller (which I had never used before), and even though I had tested it earlier and tightened up the leaking hose clamps, the temperature conditions must have made the hoses contract or something because it immediately starting leaking water in a spray right into the wort. I ran and grabbed a screwdriver, and got the clamps tightened quickly. Other than that, the chiller did a pretty nice job, getting the wort from boiling to 74 degrees in about 35 minutes.
I took a gravity reading on the wort, and was 3 points lower than expected (1.048, shooting for 1.051) .coupled with the fact that I didnt even collect my full 5 gallons this points to bad efficiency. I dont know if it was my crush, my equipment, or all the stuck sparge problems I had.
I was pretty tired, so I pitched the yeast, cleaned up the equipment (LOTS more to clean than in extract brewing), ate, and went to bed.
All in all, it was quite a 6 hour adventure .stressful at times, but I cant wait to fix what I need to, adjust for what Ive learned, and do this again!
The setup:
Beer making fuel:
Grain bill:
Crushing by hand:
The Hennepin went down easy I bet. I use Promash, and my Mash-out infusion is not close either, using their mash scheduler.
