First AG

[MI_Dogman]

Brewers,

I will be doing my first All Grain batch in about a month and I am trying to prepare myself. I am mostly trying to accomplish what techniques to use, for this post. I have two 10 gal coolers and an 8 gallon bk for a 5 gallon batch. I mainly want to know stuff like:

- How hot should the preheat water be for the coolers?

- How often should I stir the MLT?

- Should I add the water to the grain or grain to the water in the MLT?

Stuff like that. Any other hints, tips, tricks, Easter eggs, crouch jumps, and secrets would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Singletrack]

Here's a start:

- How often should I stir the MLT? Stir well, then close it up to hold heat. Do not open again until the end of the mash. You can open and stir as often as you like, but you will lose heat, negating the benefits of stirring.

- Should I add the water to the grain or grain to the water in the MLT? Add grain to water because it is much easier to avoid dough balls that way. Don't add too slowly, because higher temps could denature enzymes. No need to rush, but add grain as fast as you can stir it in without dough balls.

...and you may want to reconsider the comma in "Loose Lips, Sink Ships." It changes the meaning -- to me anyway. (How's that for a crouch egg? )

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Use beer smith or similar to calculate strike water volume and temp. If you don't have software, post your grain weight and mash temp and somebody will give you the numbers.

Stirring and grain/water sequence: as per above.

Hint: use a couple of litres less strike water than you need, check the temp a few minutes after mashing in, if it's too hot, add some cold water; if it's too cold, add boiling water. It's hard to change the temp later.

 

[philosofool]

You should get John Palmer's "How to Brew". It has equations for all this stuff. But if you can't get his latest edition, the old edition is available on line:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/

Here's a simple, can miss (yes, can miss) way to start out. If nothing else, visualize this process before reading a more precise guide:

(1) Heat water: 1.75 quarts per pound you will mash, plus one extra gallon, to 165 degrees.

(2) Add half a gallon to your mash tun, seal it and shake it up. Wait a minute, then dump that water.

(3) Add about 1.5 quarts of water/pound to the tun, add half your grain, stir for 15 seconds, then add one quarter of your grain, stir fifteen seconds, and add the rest of the grain. Stir and check the temperature. If it is low, add some of your hot water from step one--one quart will raise the temp about half a degree. You will probably need to do this. If it is hot, adding about 1/2 cup of cool tap water will have the same effect (half a degree). Don't freak out about hitting your mash temp squarely.

(4) Mash away, and start heating your sparge water. For fly sparging, you will need a number of gallons about equal to 7.5 - (.85 x gallons in mash). This number is system specific. I've never batch sparged.

[edit]Note: if you get exactly 1.5 qts/lb. in step 3 and you know the grain temperature at the start and you take an accurate record of the resulting temperature before adjustment, you have data that will be valuable in calculating water amounts and temperatures for future batches.

 

[MI_Dogman]

Yeah, have read that book "How to Brew." It was very helpful, and that was what I am going with. I just wanted to see input from the community. I think I have a good grasp on what I need to do. I appreciate all input.

 

[Singletrack]

Sure, read Palmer. But remember, he was the one who said to add water to the grains, and that is just plain **GASP** wrong!

 

[masonsjax]

Heat the strike water to at least 10 degrees hotter than your target strike temp. Put the water in the cooler and let it preheat with the lid on. Open the lid and stir til it drifts down to the strike temp, add grain, stir until there are no doughballs and watch the temp doesn't fall below your target. There's no need to stir during the mash, you can just leave it closed for the duration.

I'll assume you're batch sparging. Just before collecting runnings, stir like mad. Collect runnings, tilt the tun to get as much as you can out. Fire up your burner and measure the volume you've collected with a dipstick or sight glass. This will tell you exactly how much sparge water you need to reach your desired preboil volume. Once the grain is wet and you've drained the tun as much as possible, what you put in is what you get out. Add the calculated amount of needed sparge water and again stir like mad. This stirring will influence your efficiency more than anything else, so do it like you mean it. Once you've stirred the life out of it, collect your runnings and smile at how perfectly you hit the volume while leaving no wasted wort behind.

RDWHAHB

 

[RM-MN]

Lets break this down into the simplest we can. The purposes of mashing are to convert the starches in the grain to sugars that the yeast can digest and make alcohol and to separate the wort produced from the spent grains. To get the starches to convert to sugars we lean on the ability of the enzymes present in the malted grains and they work in a narrow temperature range in the presence of water so we need to get the grains into water the right temperature so the enzymes to do their work and then we need to get the sweet wort removed from the grain when the mash is done.

All the talk about coolers and grain beds and grain to water ratios is confusing so lets simplify this as much as we can. Use the full volume of water for the mash. That way you eliminate the math of pounds of grain per gallon of water. You don't need to worry about how much water to sparge with or how to do you sparge, we just eliminated that. Since you are using such a large amount of water, the heat loss is of less consequence so you don't need that well insulated cooler so don't use it. Put the water into the pot you intend to boil in. Heat it up to the temperature needed so that when the cooler grains are added it will settle to somewhere between 145 and 160, the exact temperature is not very important for this first mash. You can learn from it and adjust the temperature to your liking on subsequent batches.

Now we come to the hard part, getting the grains out of the water since we definitely don't want to boil them nor do we want them in our beer. How to do that? Well, the easiest and cheapest is to put a strainer into the pot to contain the grains, then remove it when the mash is done. You can make a fancy bag from Swiss Voille or you can just buy a paint strainer bag.

With all that said, I just described a BIAB mash, full volume, no sparge. I'd suggest you try it at least once, then decide if you want to continue or go on to making a conventional mash tun. If you are unsure, make a smaller batch so if it doesn't work out well for you, you won't have much invested. I started with 2 1/2 gallon batches. I could do them in my 5 gallon pot that I had been using for extract batches. With the paint strainer bag, I could use grains that were milled fine and with that, instead of struggling to get more than 60% efficiency for the first batch, I hit 80%.

 

[MI_Dogman]

Roger that guys!! Be on the look out for my brew days on here in a month!! One will be an American Hefeweizen and the Other an IPA! Thanks for the input, I am ready to let it rip!

 

[lhommedieu]

Two more, basic considerations:

1. Control the fermentation temperature.

2. Sanitize (i.e. sterilize) everything that comes into contact with your beer from flame-out to bottling or kegging.

 

[madscientist451]

I use hot tap water to pre heat the cooler.
I use an online strike water calculator and hit the mash temp everytime.
I check the temp and stir the mash every 15 minutes, if its low I use
a step mash calculator that says how much hot water to add to bring it back up. But you can skip the stirring if you want.
Add grain to the water.