First AG this weekend, double check my process?

[dawn_kiebawls]

Hi everybody (Hi, Dr. Nick!),

This weekend is going to mark my first AG batch of my brewing career. I stopped at the LHBS, milled the grain and got my yeast in order to brew a raspberry saison (I should ad, I accidentally added .25lb of pale to the grain bill)

This is how I'm envisioning my brew day to go, so if I'm already making any glaring mistakes PLEASE set me straight so I can adjust my plans instead of panicking mid brew!

Since water adjustments are still way out of my league I am going to start with bottled spring water, using 1 campden tablet and no additional salts. I'll do 1.25q/lb of grain. Heat strike water to 156 in order to mash at 150F, for one hour. Vorlauf to set the grain bed and drain first runnings. Pour 4.5 (.5g/lb of grain) gallons of ~160F sparge water in, set the grain bed again and drain remainder into BK.

Boil for 60 minutes, follow hop/spice schedule, cool and pitch.

The recipe says they did not sparge. Should I follow suite and not sparge? If not, should I simply put my full boil volume in the mash tun with the grain, mash, drain and quit over complicating things? Also, I've never done a full volume boil and I am not sure how much volume I should shoot for to end up with a 5 gallon batch, or is it as simple as boil ~7 gallons and just boil until I'm at the 5 gallon mark?

Since this is my first AG batch I am not overly concerned about hitting all my numbers dead on, but more focused on getting the technique down and feeling comfortable. After all, it will be beer either way!

Thanks again for all the help from this wonderful community!

 

[Sammy86]

Hi everybody (Hi, Dr. Nick!),

This weekend is going to mark my first AG batch of my brewing career. I stopped at the LHBS, milled the grain and got my yeast in order to brew a raspberry saison (I should ad, I accidentally added .25lb of pale to the grain bill)

This is how I'm envisioning my brew day to go, so if I'm already making any glaring mistakes PLEASE set me straight so I can adjust my plans instead of panicking mid brew!

Since water adjustments are still way out of my league I am going to start with bottled spring water, using 1 campden tablet and no additional salts. I'll do 1.25q/lb of grain. Heat strike water to 156 in order to mash at 150F, for one hour. Vorlauf to set the grain bed and drain first runnings. Pour 4.5 (.5g/lb of grain) gallons of ~160F sparge water in, set the grain bed again and drain remainder into BK.

How are you mashing your grains? BIAB? Cooler Mash tun? If BIAB or stainless mash tun you will probably need to make the water a hotter temperature than 156...you will have to figure this out otherwise you will be mashing very low

Boil for 60 minutes, follow hop/spice schedule, cool and pitch.

The recipe says they did not sparge. Should I follow suite and not sparge? If not, should I simply put my full boil volume in the mash tun with the grain, mash, drain and quit over complicating things? Also, I've never done a full volume boil and I am not sure how much volume I should shoot for to end up with a 5 gallon batch, or is it as simple as boil ~7 gallons and just boil until I'm at the 5 gallon mark?

Again, this is something you're going to have to play with. I would put 6.5 gallons of water and boil it for 60 minutes to find out exactly what your boil off rate is. Otherwise you're going to miss your post boil amount and OG.

As far as sparging goes if you do full volume mashing you're probably going to need to know your boil off rate to get the right amount of water you need. Everyone's system is different, so I generally use 8.5-9 gallons of water to get myself 5.5 gallons of wort in the fermentor. Everything is connected so I would do a test run just to make sure of your numbers

Since this is my first AG batch I am not overly concerned about hitting all my numbers dead on, but more focused on getting the technique down and feeling comfortable. After all, it will be beer either way!

Thanks again for all the help from this wonderful community!

Read the Red

 

[doug293cz]

Do you want to finish with 5 gal in bottles/keg, or do you want 5 gal to the fermenter? If you want to finish with 5 gal, you need to target about 5.5 gal to the fermenter.

If you are going for 5.5 gal to fermenter, you will have a challenge to meet the OG given in the recipe (i.e. you need to hit 100% conversion efficiency, and do a perfect batch sparge.) If targeting 5.0 gal to fermenter, things don't quite have to be perfect.

If you don't do a boil off test, I would suggest assuming 1.25 gal/hr boil-off rate (but testing is better than assuming.) To figure out your total brewing water you have to allow for grain absorption of about 0.12 gal/lb, and add that and your MLT undrainable volume to your target pre-boil volume to get the total water. Target pre-boil volume equals target post-boil volume plus expected boil-off volume. Then use 60% of your total water for mash (strike water volume) and 40% for batch sparging. This will optimize your lauter efficiency, and probably help your conversion efficiency (because of the thinner mash.) The 1.25 qt/lb guideline for strike water really only applies to fly sparging.

Brew on

 

[brandonlovesbeer]

Just make sure you don't have overly chlorinated water (if you are using tap water). Good luck.

 

[seatazzz]

Just make sure you don't have overly chlorinated water (if you are using tap water). Good luck.

OP said they are going to use RO water with one Campden tablet. If you are using RO water the Campden is pretty unnecessary, since there will be next to no minerals/chemicals/weird stuff in your water. The only purpose of Campden is to get rid of the chlorine/chloramine in your water, it doesn't bring anything else to the party. That being said...unless your tap water burns your nose hairs with chlorine when you smell it, you might be better off with using tap water AND using a Campden tablet (or two, it won't hurt it). Tap water will still have some of the minerals your mash needs to work right. RO water has NONE, that's the point of it. If you are dead set on using RO water, there is a product you can buy called Brewing Salts (under different brand names, the original escapes me at the moment) that will give your RO water some basic minerals that will help your mash. If you go the tap water/Campden route, make sure you add the campden to the water before you start heating it. Let it sit for an hour or so to let the campden do its job. As long as the rest of your process (don't pitch yeast until your wort is chilled below 75 degrees, use healthy fresh yeast, keep your fermentation temperature within acceptable levels) is good, you should be fine.