First all-grain attempt

[sciatic126]

I am just finishing up with my first all-grain brew and I wanted to share the experience with HBT. This is my third batch, I did 1 extract, 1 partial mash and made the jump to all grain. With winter fast approaching, I decided to do a bourbon porter, and I got the all-grain kit from Northern Brewer with the Wyeast scottish ale yeast

Pictures of the day can be found here

Here are some of the mistakes I made the first time around, maybe this'll help someone in my position:

• I didn't account for heat loss in the MLT when adding the strike water, so I undershot my target mash temp and had to add hot water to compensate I ended up sparging too fast (took 15 minutes) and over sparging, so I ended up with 8.5 gallons and had to boil it off to the target pre-boil volume of 6.5 gallon
• Because I had to boil off 2 gallons, and it was getting late at night, I ended up boiling the liquid off (took 2 hours), covering the boil kettle off heat and coming back to it in the morning. I re-boiled in the morning, and then started the hop schedule as usual. This is not ideal, but I hope it doesn't have a long term impact
• Even though my efficiency ended up being 62% with an OG of 1.057, I think that it can be much improved with better sparging practices. I also think I extracted some tannins from the oversparge. The impact is subtle and I'm hoping it'll fade...

Either way, I'm looking forward to trying this beer. I'm happy to answer any question about the equipment etc if anyone is interested. I'd also like to hear any feedback you might have to improve my process

X-posted to /r/homebrewing

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

happens to the best of us at times. I moved my brewing equipment to a older friends house for a few months and I always felt rushed so my temps weren't hitting and my sparging technique was a disaster. That, and the new crusher we built was off 1/16th of an inch (fixed now). So my efficiency dropped from andavg 85%-90% down to 65%.

Brought everything back and if this virus clears my system I should have a relaxed brew this weekend with no rushing.

BTW, some bigger beers will usually require a longer boil.

 

[DonMagee]

I highly recommend trying batch sparging for your first few all grain batches. It takes out the complexity of fly sparging.