first ag!

[cjgenever]

decided it was time to move up to ag. I insulated my plastic fermenter and added a copper manifold. Used an 18 gauge brad gun to put the holes in the manifold and an o-ring to seal it into the plastic valve. I like to go all or nothing so I decided to go with a 60 min ipa clone. Changed it a little for my own personal tastes and added two extra pounds of grain expecting a lower efficiency on my first brew.

The 14.6 lbs topped off my bucket nicely. I heated my strike water and started the mash. Planned on 20 min@ 146 followed by 70 min@153. I added the step to help dry it a touch. All seemed good. while heating my infusion I noticed the thermometer was weird... it was working fine yesterday, but now it was reading high I just did a high temp protein rest! I pulled out an old deep frying thermometer and calibrated it in some boiling water. I then spent an hour and a half trying to get a good mash temp without too much water. I didn't get any higher than 151.

Sparge went great. The manifold design was perfect. Went to boil...

Started my boil. Had some extra water due to the infusion struggle, so I boiled for a half hour before adding hops. I started weighing out the hop additions. My scale reads.3oz, no matter what. WTF! This thing has worked for five years flawlessly! Replaced the batteries, but to my dismay the LCD had displayed its last oz. Had to guess the rest of the additions. I finished the boil and cooled the 5 gal in ten min with my newly constructed ic.

Took sg...holy ####! 79% efficiency! Diluted to 1.065 which put me over 6 gal. Cool!

All has gone well. I forgot to remove the hotbreak so I decide to rack to a secondary after primary fermentation came to a close in hopes that enough yeast would still be in suspension to clean up. Didn't get to it when I wanted to... ended up being done@ten days.

Pulled a sample, it came in@ 1.005. Dryer than I wanted, but I can blame it on a crap thermometer. The sample was tasty... less hops than wanted but within style parameters.a bit drier than I wanted but the alcohol is clean (@8% abv it's undetectable) so it won't need the malt to balance.

I'm gonna dry hop the snot out of this.can't wait for the first mature bottle!

 

[peterj]

Sounds like you had a few hiccups for your first AG. Not too bad, but definitely things you can learn from and fix for your next batch!

I imagine the lack of hop character is probably due to diluting the wort post boil. I usually take a gravity reading before the boil and adjust with water then based on how much I expect to boil off. That way you don't dilute the hops.

Also, I always do a single infusion. It's just way simpler that way and from what I hear the results are pretty much the same for most beers. What did your mash temp end up being most of the time? I'm guessing fairly low since it attenuated so much!

Anyway, sounds like it turned out alright. Now to get started on your next batch!

 

[MonsterBrew]

Congrats on your first AG! Most people, myself included, do a pretty good job of screwing up the first couple batches, sounds like you made off alright. My best advice is to log your brews so you can note what went well and what didn't and correct it for the future! Cheers.

 

[cjgenever]

Yeah, I'm going to make sure to have TWO thermometers on hand and calibrated from now on and do all my measuring before I start the mash. I had time to do it, but all things digital broke that night... must have been cursed. Bought a new scale but am going to look for a balance scale as a back up. A good old lab scale with weights has never lied or stopped working for me.

About the after boil additions... should I take a sg pre boil and adjust for temp or cool a sample. Refractometer is out of the question for a month or two and I have an apa planned. My kids birthdays are both right after Christmas and heating oil is expensive so I'm broker than broke right now. Not even sure if I can brew anytime soon, but gonna try.

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

How much wort did you leave in the kettle? What was the ratio of non-base malt grains to base malt in your grist? What was the wort volume when you took the gravity reading? The reason why I am asking these questions is that I would like to use your first attempt in a collection of examples that I assembling. An extraction efficiency of 79% is outstanding for a first attempt; therefore, I would like include your batch as an outlier. The average all-grain brewer usually achieves an extraction rate in the sixties on his/her first attempt.

 

[cjgenever]

How much wort did you leave in the kettle? What was the ratio of non-base malt grains to base malt in your grist? What was the wort volume when you took the gravity reading? The reason why I am asking these questions is that I would like to use your first attempt in a collection of examples that I assembling. An extraction efficiency of 79% is outstanding for a first attempt; therefore, I would like include your batch as an outlier. The average all-grain brewer usually achieves an extraction rate in the sixties on his/her first attempt.

precisely why I added extra grain to the bill. I would have been happy with 65 percent.

I started recording everything, but gave up when I realized my mash temperature was completely screwed. kinda went in to "save the batch" mode at that point. I'll need to pull info from my records and my memory. I'll see what I can come up with for you.

 

[peterj]

About the after boil additions... should I take a sg pre boil and adjust for temp or cool a sample.

Definitely cool it. The less temperature correcting you do the more accurate the reading. Plus, I once tried to put wort in my hydrometer tube right after the mash and it immediately melted it and almost scalded me. I usually just scoop some out in a metal camping cup and put it in ice water while I'm heating the wort to a boil. Then just add it back after you get a reading.

 

[brick]

Took sg...holy ####! 79% efficiency! Diluted to 1.065 which put me over 6 gal. Cool!

Congrats on a successful first AG brew day! I just did my first two the last two weekends and had the same "problem" with efficiency. The first time I expected <70% and wound up with 77%, so I just let that one ride. The second time I was like "Yeah, I have this now!" So I adjusted pre-boil volume upward to account for higher efficiency on my pre-packaged grain bill. Did I get that right? No, I didn't. I just under-estimated boil-off and over-shot OG anyway. That time I did like you and added a little more water, thinking that if it's good enough for extract it can't hurt an AG batch much.

Whatever. Screwing up a little is part of the fun. I'd rather have something to think about and work on for next time.