Jay52
Active Member
Friends:
Thought I'd post a thread about my first "real" brewing experience. While I'm a veteran of at the "Mr. Beer" standard, I've spent the past four months concentrating my studies toward "real" brewing while piecing together a servicable equipment inventory. Today, I was able to put this equipment to work for the first time. And because I felt pretty confident in my knowledge of the "science" behind all-grain brewing, I decided to jump right in with an all-grain recipe, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone.
The equipment I used was as follows: a 48 qt. Igloo Ice-cube cooler that I converted with a 3/8" ball valve and SS braided manifold, a 34 qt. coated steel boiling pot, a counterflow chiller that I built myself, and a couple of 12 qt. SS pots that I used to hold sparge water and catch my runnings. Fermination in a 6.8 gallon glass carboy. I expected a few equipment issues, seeing as how I've never used this equipment, and am an amateur at the processes of AG brewing, but everything went somewhat smoother than I expected.
I calculated my recipe and procedures using BeerSmith as follows...
Style: American Pale Ale
Type: All Grain
Recipe Specifications:
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.41 gal
Estimated OG: 1.056 SG
Estimated Color: 5.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 31.8 IBU
Estimated efficiency: 70%
Actual Efficiency: 69.9%
Boil Time: 60 min
Ingredients:
10 lbs. 5.3 oz US Pale Malt 2-row
8 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine
4 oz Crystal Malt - 60L
.4 oz Chinook (16%) - after hot break
.5 oz Pearle (8.2%) - after 45 minutes
1 tsp. Irish moss - after 45 minutes
1.0 oz Cascade (6.9%) - at flame out
1 pkg. Wyeast labs #1056 - American Ale
Mash-in...Add 3.45 gal of water at 169.4F (154F at 60 minutes)
Mash-out...Add 1.94 gal of water at 198.2F (168F at 10 minutes)
Batch sparge with 2.5 gal of water at 168F (10 minutes)
Notes: Strike Temp at 170F...hit mash-in temp at 154F. Mashed for 75 minutes to assure full conversion. Mash-out resulted in 160F...curious? First runnings OG 1.060 at 4 gallons. Sparged with 2.5 gallons for 6.5 gallon pre-boil total. Pre-boil gravity at 1.048. Small boil-over...replaced back .5 gallon of water. Post boil OG 1.056.
I'm thrilled that I hit all my marks for efficiency and gravity readings. My efficiency would have calculated to 76% if taken pre-boil...but I'm thinking the boil-over and the added .5 gallon is the reason why my final gravity ended at 70%...fine by me!
My only miss was at mash-out, where adding a quantity of 198F water missed my 168F target at 160F. Not sure why?
Tried to take pH readings, but while the scale was marked for brown tones up through 6.2, my paper kept giving me purple, even pre-sparge...could somebody have put the right legend with the wrong papers?
Discovered my new refractormeter only has alcohol % measurements, and no brix measurements...so I guess that means it's pretty much useless, right?
Biggest problem was using my DIY, 20 ft. CFC (3/8" copper) with gravity flow from a height of only 3 ft. to the ground. Hard to get a good siphon going, particularly at the end when there was a lot of sediment due to the late hop addition. Must raise my wort next time to get a better siphon action. A couple of leaks at the water hose connections on the CFC, but this easily cooled the wort down to less than 80F with only a moderate water flow rate...though admittedly, flow rate of the wort was slowly fed by gravity.
Pitched the Wyeast slappack without a starter, so I'll see if that comes back to bite me, but I'm already seeing a little bit of action...did a decent job of aeration, but could probably do better.
I have a refrigerator and Ranco controller, but haven't been able to hook it up yet...so I'm fermenting my 6.8 gal carboy IN my mash tun using the water/daily ice/wet towel/fan method. House is normally around 72 degrees, but this should give me some extra protection...and I have another towel to make sure no UV light messes up the works.
Of course, I'm waiting to see if my final gravity checks out and will follow 7 days in the primary with a 10 day stay in the secondary, with a 3-day dry hop with .5 oz of Cascade at that time. Taste and aroma at pitching time was wonderful, so I'm hoping that the final beer will be a terrific first AG batch! I used ALL of my wort for fermentation, so I'll likely lose a little bit when transfer to secondary (bye-bye trub)...just a mental note to have more pre-boil volume to yield a little more headroom.
Thanks for letting me write my lengthy report. I appreciate all I've learned here over the last few months...and if you have any feedback, I'm always interested...while I somewhat get the "science" aspects, I can see that there is a lot of "art" as well, and that can only be discovered with experience.
BTW...the recipe is from the "Clone Brews" book, which called for Nugget as the bittering hop. Because my LHBS didn't have any Nugget in stock, I substituted with Chinook.
-------------------
jay
Thought I'd post a thread about my first "real" brewing experience. While I'm a veteran of at the "Mr. Beer" standard, I've spent the past four months concentrating my studies toward "real" brewing while piecing together a servicable equipment inventory. Today, I was able to put this equipment to work for the first time. And because I felt pretty confident in my knowledge of the "science" behind all-grain brewing, I decided to jump right in with an all-grain recipe, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone.
The equipment I used was as follows: a 48 qt. Igloo Ice-cube cooler that I converted with a 3/8" ball valve and SS braided manifold, a 34 qt. coated steel boiling pot, a counterflow chiller that I built myself, and a couple of 12 qt. SS pots that I used to hold sparge water and catch my runnings. Fermination in a 6.8 gallon glass carboy. I expected a few equipment issues, seeing as how I've never used this equipment, and am an amateur at the processes of AG brewing, but everything went somewhat smoother than I expected.
I calculated my recipe and procedures using BeerSmith as follows...
Style: American Pale Ale
Type: All Grain
Recipe Specifications:
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.41 gal
Estimated OG: 1.056 SG
Estimated Color: 5.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 31.8 IBU
Estimated efficiency: 70%
Actual Efficiency: 69.9%
Boil Time: 60 min
Ingredients:
10 lbs. 5.3 oz US Pale Malt 2-row
8 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine
4 oz Crystal Malt - 60L
.4 oz Chinook (16%) - after hot break
.5 oz Pearle (8.2%) - after 45 minutes
1 tsp. Irish moss - after 45 minutes
1.0 oz Cascade (6.9%) - at flame out
1 pkg. Wyeast labs #1056 - American Ale
Mash-in...Add 3.45 gal of water at 169.4F (154F at 60 minutes)
Mash-out...Add 1.94 gal of water at 198.2F (168F at 10 minutes)
Batch sparge with 2.5 gal of water at 168F (10 minutes)
Notes: Strike Temp at 170F...hit mash-in temp at 154F. Mashed for 75 minutes to assure full conversion. Mash-out resulted in 160F...curious? First runnings OG 1.060 at 4 gallons. Sparged with 2.5 gallons for 6.5 gallon pre-boil total. Pre-boil gravity at 1.048. Small boil-over...replaced back .5 gallon of water. Post boil OG 1.056.
I'm thrilled that I hit all my marks for efficiency and gravity readings. My efficiency would have calculated to 76% if taken pre-boil...but I'm thinking the boil-over and the added .5 gallon is the reason why my final gravity ended at 70%...fine by me!
My only miss was at mash-out, where adding a quantity of 198F water missed my 168F target at 160F. Not sure why?
Tried to take pH readings, but while the scale was marked for brown tones up through 6.2, my paper kept giving me purple, even pre-sparge...could somebody have put the right legend with the wrong papers?
Discovered my new refractormeter only has alcohol % measurements, and no brix measurements...so I guess that means it's pretty much useless, right?
Biggest problem was using my DIY, 20 ft. CFC (3/8" copper) with gravity flow from a height of only 3 ft. to the ground. Hard to get a good siphon going, particularly at the end when there was a lot of sediment due to the late hop addition. Must raise my wort next time to get a better siphon action. A couple of leaks at the water hose connections on the CFC, but this easily cooled the wort down to less than 80F with only a moderate water flow rate...though admittedly, flow rate of the wort was slowly fed by gravity.
Pitched the Wyeast slappack without a starter, so I'll see if that comes back to bite me, but I'm already seeing a little bit of action...did a decent job of aeration, but could probably do better.
I have a refrigerator and Ranco controller, but haven't been able to hook it up yet...so I'm fermenting my 6.8 gal carboy IN my mash tun using the water/daily ice/wet towel/fan method. House is normally around 72 degrees, but this should give me some extra protection...and I have another towel to make sure no UV light messes up the works.
Of course, I'm waiting to see if my final gravity checks out and will follow 7 days in the primary with a 10 day stay in the secondary, with a 3-day dry hop with .5 oz of Cascade at that time. Taste and aroma at pitching time was wonderful, so I'm hoping that the final beer will be a terrific first AG batch! I used ALL of my wort for fermentation, so I'll likely lose a little bit when transfer to secondary (bye-bye trub)...just a mental note to have more pre-boil volume to yield a little more headroom.
Thanks for letting me write my lengthy report. I appreciate all I've learned here over the last few months...and if you have any feedback, I'm always interested...while I somewhat get the "science" aspects, I can see that there is a lot of "art" as well, and that can only be discovered with experience.
BTW...the recipe is from the "Clone Brews" book, which called for Nugget as the bittering hop. Because my LHBS didn't have any Nugget in stock, I substituted with Chinook.
-------------------
jay
