Gearing up for first all grain batch

[lefty96]

I've been doing extract and as soon as we get a bit of a break here in Arkansas from the heat, I'm going to try my first all grain. I've been getting bits and pieces of gear along the way getting ready to step things up and wanted to see if there was anything I was missing or something I wish I had.

I have built a 10 gallon mash tun and plan to do batch sparging.

Here is what I currently have in addition to an advanced Norther brewer kit:

10 gallon igloo mashtun

immersion wort chiller

5 gallon SS kettle

2 10+ gallon alum kettles

hydrometer and graduated cylinder

digital oven thermometer w/ braided lead

InkBird temp controller

Before I brew this batch I plan on picking up a small freezer to finish out my ferm chamber and get a mash paddle and wine thief.

Anything missing other than ingredients, non-100 degree weather and time?

 

[feinbera]

If you don't already have one, get an auto-siphon, it makes transferring wort/beer so much easier than dumping or setting up a siphon the old-fashioned way. It costs about as much as the thief (a bit more when you throw in five or six feet of hose and a hose clamp – do yourself a favor and get one with a plastic toggle, tightening the kind that needs a screwdriver isn't much fun in gloves wet with slippery starsan), and you'll use it almost every time you do anything with your beer.

 

[dkevinb]

Mash paddle (I use a 21" stainless steel spoon)? Other than that you should be good to go.

Kevin B.

 

[hockeybrewer]

+1 on the auto-siphon. I'll never go back its just too easy. have fun I love ag!

 

[oljimmy]

Nothing has been more useful to me as an AG brewer than the little $20 refractometer I got on ebay. The reason being this: hydrometers need 5-6oz of liquid for a reading, which means you've got to chill a large amount in the freezer to take a reading. This takes a long time. You can also easily forget that you've put the hydrometer tube in the freezer and end up with a WortSicle.

Refractometer, problem solved. Take a teaspoon of any wort, place it on an icecube for 90 seconds and it will be around 70F, ready for the refractometer. So, for example, you can instantly figure out that if you've got 3 gallons of 1.060 and 3 gallons of 1.020, combining them will yield six gallons of 1.040 pre-boil wort. If your target pre-boil is 1.043, you can use a little less of the second runnings. If it's 1.037, you can use more of the second (or add water). All of this can be calculated on the fly, and it's truly awesome to know it right away rather than waiting around for a hydrometer sample to cool.

Also, a lot of wine thieves are plastic, which I just try not to use whenever possible (infection), and a stainless steel turkey baster will nearly always reach far enough into your carboy to draw a sample.

 

[flars]

I would use a wood or plastic mash paddle to avoid scratching the mash tun and kettle. Tubing that is one-sixteenth inch less in diameter than the auto siphon will require no clamps. Three-eighths inch auto siphon, buy five-sixteenths inch, ID, tubing.

The five-sixteenth inch tubing also fits the three-eighths inch spring tip bottling wand.

 

[lefty96]

I have an auto siphon - it needs a longer tube which I'll be getting when I pick up the freezer. I grabbed a cheapie plastic paddle @ lunch. It was the only option at the local store.

 

[cooper]

It may not be something you're interested in right now but you might want to start thinking about a way to test the pH of your mash.

 

[lefty96]

Nothing has been more useful to me as an AG brewer than the little $20 refractometer I got on ebay.

Is this the one you are talking about?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RSG-100ATCc-Black-Brix-Beer-Sugar-Wine-Wort-SG-0-32-Refractometer-HOME-BREW-/370899538292?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item565b55d174


Which I assume is nearly the same as this:
http://www.amazon.com/SainSonic-Refractometer-Measuring-Sugar-Content/dp/B000FBL2G0/ref=sr_1_3?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1438970435&sr=1-3&keywords=refractometer&refinements=p_85%3A2470955011%2Cp_36%3A1253523011

 

[oljimmy]

Yeah, exactly. There seem to be about a million models that are roughly the same thing, basically I just made sure that mine read SG and not just Brix, as that one seems to.