Looking at moving to all grain - A couple questions

[StophJS]

Hey all, I've been brewing with extract now for a few months, and I think I'm about ready to just make the leap to all grain. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about it but I still come up with a few questions. First off.. I am under the impression the only additional equipment I would really need is a mash/lauter tun. I'm going to get a bigger kettle in the near future, so I figure I can use my old 5 gallon kettle for my sparge water. Am I pretty much just looking at getting an MLT?

I gather that I'm going to want a 10 gallon cooler to make my MLT, because 5 won't cut it for bigger beers. Is it better to get a stand up cooler or a rectangular one? Any preferences on brands? I'm worried that with either shape, depending on the size of the grain bill, I might run into situations where the grain bed is either too thin or too thick. Does this typically become an issue or no?

Lastly, water seems to be a really big deal. Are most AG brewers just using their tap water assuming they've read the water report and it looks good? I like spring water but I don't want to have to buy it for both strike and sparge water.. this seems like a lot. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Pappers_]

Yes, a five gallon pot is great for hearing sparge water, while using your new, large kettle for the full boils that you have to do with all grain. A 10 or 12 gallon pot is good.

Do you have a wort chiller?

I use a Home Depot store brand round cooler for my MLT, its worked fine. I don't think the grain bed can be too thick, with batch sparging at least.

For water, a real killer can be chlorine and chloramines. If you are able to carbon filter your water (like with Brita), that's great. And/or fill your pots the night before with tap water and let it sit out, I believe chlorine will dissipate like that. Then add campden tablets (potassium or sodium metabisulfite, I can't remember which) which will drive off the chloramines.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Grain bed thickness is only a problem when you're doing a small lower-gravity batch, say 1.040 5-gallon batch in a 60-qt+ cooler.

For water, I wouldn't worry about it for right now. Taste the water, if you like it, you're good to go for beers with 6-8 or higher SRM (color). When you get more comfortable with it, you can go down in colors and start learning about water adjustments. But for now, don't worry about it. It's just too much too early.

As for equipment, you need a mash tun and a boil kettle large enough for your boil (at least 8 gallons for a 5-gallon batch). A hot liquor tank is nice, but you could use your boil kettle, heat to 170F, and store in a food grade bucket from when you start running off.

M_C

 

[GodsStepBrother]

Firstly, technically you do only need a mash tun to mash in and you will be doing all grain. There are a lot of different styles it doesn't have to be fancy and there is even the brew in the bag method, you might want to look into that. The important thing is to pop your cherry and brew an all grain batch!

Secondly you mention you have a 5 gallon pot and in the near future get a bigger pot. Keep in mind that when it comes to all grain you collect all your wort at the beginning of the process and do not water down later (though some people do). So if you where to use this pot you would be limited to 3.5 to 4 gallon batch depending on how wide it is and how much boil off you get from it. Usually with a roiling boil you will loose a gallon to a gallon and a half in boil off, but this all depends on your elevation width of your pot burner etc... You will also be cooling 5 gallons of wort instead of the 3 or so most people do when doing extract beer.

When it comes to the cooler size, BobbyM did a great write up that should help you.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/ .
I personally would go for a bigger one, especially like you said doing high gravity beers, and also you can do 10 gallon batches with the bigger pot. I went for a bigger one and have very little limitations.

I use my cities water that I just filter to take out the chlorine and chloramine. My city does not have that bad of water, you just want to make sure your water is not super hard or very soft, but this is another worry that I would save until I was comfortable with the process. Maybe an experienced brewer from Grand Rapids can chime in on the water quality there.

Hope this touched base on some of your concerns.

Good Luck!

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

+1 to the concerns about chlorine and chloramine. You can learn how to adjust water for taste and color down the road (it's not as hard as you think) but chlorine/chloramine will ruin a great beer as it turns into a medicinal flavor. It's very nasty.

I have the 10 gallon Home Depot cooler-turned-MLT. I have never had to worry about not having enough room in the tun but I do find with five gallon batches and smaller -- especially smaller -- it is harder to keep stable mash temperatures due to the airspace between the lid and the top of the mash, even with a pre-heated tun. I've pretty much dialed in my system to know when I need to check and see if the temperature has dropped and add some hot water but otherwise it works well.

 

[StophJS]

Thanks all for the quick and detailed responses I definitely plan on getting a wort chiller when I go to AG. Ice baths have been good to me so far, but that's with 3 gallon boils. As far as water, a guy at the LHBS was pretty skeptical of GR's water. I actually do my brewing at my parents' house on the lake shore though right now for the convenience of space and because the basement there sits stable right around 65 F year round. I want to say the water there is actually well water.. it tastes like any bottled water though and has no discernible off-smells or anything, and doesn't seem unusually hard or soft. I'll have to double check that, but if that's the case maybe I'll send it to the lab. Thanks for the link Godsstepbrother, seems like 10 gallon is just what I need.

Also, I forgot to ask, is there some specific process to arriving at your 5 gallon destination, or is it just altogether not as exact as topping off an extract batch? I imagine you lose a fair amount of water to the grains in addition to the boil, and I've read you really don't aim low and top off with AG.

 

[Pappers_]

. . .

Also, I forgot to ask, is there some specific process to arriving at your 5 gallon destination, or is it just altogether not as exact as topping off an extract batch? I imagine you lose a fair amount of water to the grains in addition to the boil, and I've read you really don't aim low and top off with AG.

Yes, you need to account for the liquid that boil off to get to your final volume. For my setup, I usually start with 6.5 - 7 gallons of wort preboil to get to 5.5 gallons after boiling.

Basically, I sparge until I get to my preboil volume target. Its a simple approach, but it works.

 

[StophJS]

Ohh of course, that makes sense. Thanks.

 

[spenghali]

After you mash, your grain will be pretty much completely saturated with water. So you should know know almost exactly how much sparge water you will be needing to reach your desired preboil volume.

For example, if you mash out and have 2 gallons of wort, you will probably only need around 4.5 gallons of sparge water to reach 6.5 gallons of preboil wort, since you will be getting almost all the sparge water back because the grain is already saturated with water.

It's also a good idea to have a little extra water ready to go just in case.

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

I prefer a round cooler because the shape doesn't allow as much channeling and you don't have to worry about a well designed manifold as much.

Yes, all you should need is a MLT to get you going.

As for your mash being too thin/thick, you can always adjust your qts/lb ratio to get a good consistency. I've gone as low as .75qts/lb and has high as 2. It really depends on the beer.

I wouldn't mess with your water at first. Try using your tap water and if you have off flavors, then concider adjusting it. Get the all-grain process down first before you try to complicate it more with water adjustments.

 

[sheeshomatic]

I'd like to add that if you don't already have brewing software, like Beersmith, I'd highly recommend it. It's been incredibly accurate for me with regards to water volumes and you can tweak it very well according to your individual equipment. It's taken a lot of the mystery out of the brewing process as when you change parameters, it will tell you what should happen to the final product. I think its also 20 bucks right now for the holidays /end sales pitch.

I also use hopville.com which is free because its an easy way to share recipes and get ideas. I usually build my beer in Beersmith and then copy it over to hopville

Lastly +1 on using tap water if decent. I've read my water report and have used aquarium test strips to get a rough idea of where my numbers are at. I use my original 5 gallon mash tun as my HLT now and the 10 gallon as my MLT and I just fill them both up with the amount of water I'll need for brew day about 24 hours prior to brewing. Any chlorine will degas in that time.

And have fun!

 

[ResumeMan]

Just to throw out a couple of things that could potentially cut down on the new equipment and process even more, should you choose:

1. Batch sparge, where you simply dump the sparge water into the mash tun in two increments, then run each one off, rather than the steady drip-drip of traditional sparging. If you get a really big cooler, you can even just dump all the water in right at the start of the mash and do NO sparging at all. This makes everything a lot simpler -- no grain bed channelling, no tannin extraction from dilute grains, etc.

2. Brew-in-a-bag, where your boil kettle is also your mash tun, so you don't even need that separate piece of equipment. You put the mash water in the kettle and put the grains in a mesh bag in the kettle. Then you take out the bag at the end of the mash and you're ready to start the boil.

Both of these methods reduce your extraction efficiency relative to fly sparging, so you will spend a bit more in grain.

I do batch sparge, but I had never even heard of BIAB until about two weeks ago (when I started reading this forum regularly). I'm starting to investigate my options on that score to simplify things (especially cleanup...) even more. If I was starting AG now, I would almost certainly skip the mash tun and go right to BIAB.

 

[1MadScientist]

Many are happy with the HD 10 gallon beverage cooler. I have one...made it based on FlyGuy's sticky.

...but, I have been into BIAB now and recommend this. I have a little photo stream going on with my adventures in beer making. Happy AG'ing.

 

[kcpup]

I BIAB now, and appreciate it's simplicity. It can be a challenge to keep mash temps steady for 60-90 minutes in an uninsulated pot, especially in the winter. I just picked up a 10 gallon round cooler cheap recently. I am going to experiment with placing my bag in the cooler to keep mash more steady. This will take some experimenting. I shared this info to highlight that using a cooler and BIAB aren't always mutually exclusive. Most all grain brewery choices are driven by the brewer's specific situation and priorities.

Cheers