twst1up
Well-Known Member
So, after much preparation I finally tool the plunge today. In the past few months I've slowly collected my gear. I've been an extract brewer for 6 years, but only have about a dozen brews under my belt. So I got me a 15 gallon pot, an outside burner, giant all copper cfc, pump, MLT with ss braid in a rectangular cooler...and the all grain IPA kit from NB. So...here's how it's gone so far:
Pretty much used the recommendations from NB for mash thickness (1.3 quarts per pound [12.5lbs x 1.3= about 4gallons and a pint] at 175f to mash in to bring temp to @ 153f)
Preheated MLT with about 2 quarts boiling water and let sit for while my strike water heated to 175...added 2 tsp gypsum and 1 tbl 5.2...was confused by 5.2 label here: do i treat for total gallons used or total into fermenter...what about the gypsum?
dumped out the boiling water and added my strike water and doughed in...temps seemed a little high about 159 so i added a few pints cold water to bring down to about 154 then i closed the lid and didn't open for about 45 minutes (1st mistake) at which point the temp was more like 149ish.
In the meantime i had been heating my sparge water: .5 gallons per pound = 6 gallons and a quart to 200 to bring temps up to mashout.
But since my temp was low i needed to bring it up first. Thus began my semi frantic attempt to raise the temp to 153 again by adding water at @ 200f little by little to raise the temps. This took me quite a while...wound up mashing for a bit longer than an hour. However, it was when i attempted to raise temps to mash out that things got quite hectic: i was adding hot water plus was draining into a pot, heating to boiling and returning to the MLT. My note taking process broke down somewhat at this point.
Anyway, finally got it up to about 168-170 and let rest for 15 minutes. I then vorlaufed and drained into my kettle (1st running were 1048 at 104f...did i mention my target OG is supposed to be 1064?)
Then i added about 2 gallons to sparge stirred and drained, then added about 2 gallons more, stirred and drained a second time. My final runnings were about 1014. So i wound up with almost 7.5 gallons at (compensating for temp) 1040.
So i need to boil down this big time, but from what i can tell just by playing with promash and beersmith, i'm not going to be able to boil down anywhere near enough to concentrate the wort enough to hit my target gravity. So here i am, about 7 hours into it, my kettle is sitting on the porch boiling away for about an hour now. In about another 25 minutes I will add my 1st hop additions and begin my 60 minute countdown to flameout and chill.
I would really, really, really appreciate as many comments, thoughts, ideas and whatnot to guide me here. During the process my wife asked if i was liking this any better than extract brewing: hell yeah i told here: i'm making beer %100 from scratch and i just thinks thats the bomb.
I already have 2 more AG kits ready to go (hoping to brew those over the next 2 weekends...is it ok to have had my grains crushed if not using right away?
well, i'll be up for quite a while...hope to hear from some of y'all kind folks soon!:fro: