New to All Grain/have a few questions

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

ghank15

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2011
Messages
157
Reaction score
0
Location
Bloomingdale
Ok. So I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I have a few questions.

As the title dictates, I am looking to start brewing all grain around January-ish.

Now, I have been reading up on the processes and equipment necessary to do this for a few weeks. That said, I'm still a bit confused. I get the basics. I understand what the mash does. I know what a sparge is. And I understand that I need to do the process a few times so that everything can be made clearer. I just want to do the best job possible the first time, so that my next few tries will be successful.

Instead of asking a whole bunch of questions, I will give a run down of how I expect to do things, and any critique, advice or info that I can get in response will be extremely beneficial.

It is also important to note that I generally brew 4-4.25 gallon batches instead of the usual 5 gallons, due to only having 5 gallon carboys. They just can't handle a full 5 gallon batch.

I have a propane burner with a 7.5 gallon brew kettle to heat up the water.

I did some calculations, and to achieve a 1.050 OG, I'd need about 9 LBS of base malt. I would plan on adding 1-1.25 pounds of specialty malt. So, for simplicities sake, 10 Lbs of grain.

Step 1: Determine Strike water volume. 1.25(quarts) * 10 (lbs of grain)=12.5 quarts, or 3.25 gallons for Mash.

Step 2: Heat 3.25 gallons to mash temp. Transfer water to gatorade style cooler (as sold by northern brewer). Add grains. Mash for 1 hour. (Do I need to stir the mash? Won't heat get lost if I do this?)

Meanwhile, heat sparge water.

(Herein lies an important question. How much sparge water do I use? I have seen suggestions that say the amount should be equivalent to the strike water, twice the amount of strike water, or however much water is needed to go into the boil. For my extract batches, I barely get ANY boil-off. After heating 4 gallons of water, steeping the specialty grains, and adding about 5 pounds of DME, I end up with between 4 and 4.25 gallons of wort. I did some searching, and I figured out that the DME addition would add about 0.37 gallons to the total volume. Thus, my boil-off rate would be between 2.75% and 9%.)

Using the third option for amount of sparge water, I can assume I would have about 0.48 gallons of water absorbed by the grains. This would leave me with 2.72 gallons. Thus, as per my previous boil-off rates, I would sparge with 1.65 gallons of water.

With a boil-off rate this low, I can't reasonably expect to end up with 4-4.25 gallons of wort to go into the fermenter if I do a sparge with more water than this. However, I am afraid my efficiency would suffer if I only used a gallon and a half of water for the sparge.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Step 3: Sparge

Now, I remember reading that I should recirculate some of the initial wort through the Mash tun (which i guess would now be the lauter tun?). Should I do this? Or should I just add the sparge water?

Step 4: Bring Wort up to temp, start the boil, and brew as usual.

As previously stated, any input would be useful. Any critique or advice of my process would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!:mug:
 
Step 1- yep.

Step 2- yep. Sort of. Go up to "strike temp", not mash temp. Today I used 14.5 pounds of grain and my mash temp was 152. I needed my strike water to be 167 to hit it, because my grains were in the basement. Software helps with this, but you can figure it out by hand if you have to. My preference is to add the strike water to the mash tun to heat it up (so you don't lose tempe, since the MLT would then be preheated and hold temp better) and then wait until the temp drops to my strike temp. Today, I added 180 degree water to my MLT, and it took about 15 minutes for it to drop to 167. Stir very well, to ensure no doughballs and that each grain is thoroughly wetted. Check the temperature in several places, and if it's different, stir some more. Once it's equalized, cover and walk away for an hour. No need to stir again.

Your sparge volume will be whatever you need to reach your boil volume. What I mean is this- let's go with your 10 pound grain example. You mash in with 3.25 gallons. The grain will absorb about .125 gallons/pound. So, say 1.25 gallons. That means you'll get approximately 2 gallons out of the mash. If your boil volume is 5.5 gallons, you'll need 3.5 gallons of sparge water.

Percentage of volume as a boil-off doesn't work. In the same pot at the same temperature, your boil off won't change whether you're boiling 2 gallons or 10 gallons. If you boil off .5 gallons an hour now, you will later, too. I'm concerned that you have no boil-off, though. Certainly if you boil an hour you must have some. If not, you're either living in a humid sauna or not boiling hard enough! You need a rolling boil for a number of reasons. It doesn't need to rock hard, but it needs more than a hard simmer. It must boil!

Step 3- The easiest way to sparge, at least in the beginning is to batch sparge. What you'd do is drain the mash runnings. Measure them. Subtract that from your boil volume and use the difference for the amount of the sparge. Dump it in, and stir like your life depended on it. Vorlauf (recirculate a couple of quarts until the grain bed sets up like a filter and most of the big chunks of husks don't come out!) and drain to the boil kettle with the first runnings.

Step 4- Yep!
 
Thanks for the input Yooper.

Ok. So, basically, I have a solid game plan? Only modifications to my original plan should then be to heat the water above mash temp so that the temp will drop down when I add the grains, and to do a calculation for grain absortion at .125 gallons/lb of grain?

So I should heat the strike water. Mash in. Mash. (About 1.25 gallons absorbed by grain) Then sparge with about 2.5 gallons of water (to get to 4.5 gallons, more on this next)

I am doing another extract batch tomorrow. Usually, I keep the heat on the propane burner as low as possible to where it still looks like it is boiling. But it is boiling. Looking on these forums, it is clear that I don't get as much boiloff as others. I do live in Jersey, so i guess i do live in a sauna :). The humidity right now is about 75%. Tomorrow it will be a little bit lower, around 60%. Could this affect my boil-off as much as it seems to?

Or do I just need turn up the flame? When brewing with extracts, I was always conscious of cooking too hot, to avoid scorching the extract. Do I not need to worry about this as much when brewing all grain?

For arguments sake, let's just say that my boil-off rate is what it is. Will sparging with only 2.5-2.75 gallons of water affect my efficiency?

I also forgot to mention before that when I calculated the grain bill, I was assuming 70% efficiency. Is this too high to expect on the first go round?
 
Also, do I add the grain to the mash tun when the strike water is at strike temp, or do i wait until it is at mash temp?
 
Thanks for the input Yooper.

Ok. So, basically, I have a solid game plan? Only modifications to my original plan should then be to heat the water above mash temp so that the temp will drop down when I add the grains, and to do a calculation for grain absortion at .125 gallons/lb of grain?

So I should heat the strike water. Mash in. Mash. (About 1.25 gallons absorbed by grain) Then sparge with about 2.5 gallons of water (to get to 4.5 gallons, more on this next)

I am doing another extract batch tomorrow. Usually, I keep the heat on the propane burner as low as possible to where it still looks like it is boiling. But it is boiling. Looking on these forums, it is clear that I don't get as much boiloff as others. I do live in Jersey, so i guess i do live in a sauna :). The humidity right now is about 75%. Tomorrow it will be a little bit lower, around 60%. Could this affect my boil-off as much as it seems to?

Or do I just need turn up the flame? When brewing with extracts, I was always conscious of cooking too hot, to avoid scorching the extract. Do I not need to worry about this as much when brewing all grain?

For arguments sake, let's just say that my boil-off rate is what it is. Will sparging with only 2.5-2.75 gallons of water affect my efficiency?

I also forgot to mention before that when I calculated the grain bill, I was assuming 70% efficiency. Is this too high to expect on the first go round?

I'd double check that you are getting a nice hard boil. Not only do you need the boil for hops utilization, it's important with AG to get a really good solid "hot break". What happens is the wort foams up like crazy, to the point of boiling over, and you have to stand there with a squirt bottle of water and be ready to turn off the flame, and then suddenly- POOF! the hot break happens and the proteins responsible form into little pieces that look like egg drop soup in the wort. This HAS to happen, especially with AG. What you can do is start with less wort in the boil pot until after the hot break and then add some more wort to get up to a decent boil volume. Once you have a good hot break, you probably won't have to worry about boilovers again. Until you add your first hops. Adding the first hops causes some foaming and rising up. But thereafter, you should be in the clear! Most people (even in New Jersey) boil off about a gallon an hour. If you're not, you may not have a hard enough boil. If you're in AZ, it would be more due to the low humidity.

You can probably use 65-70% as a reasonable efficiency. If you're too low, you can add a pound of DME. If you're too high, you can dilute with some water. It's all good.

When you mash in, keep some ice cubes handy and some boiling water. That way, if you miss your temp, you can adjust quickly. BUT- don't do anything right away. Stir well, and then stir some more. Stir again, and THEN check the temperature. If it's more than 3 degrees too high or low, you can adjust. But do it very slowly, like three ice cubes, because it does take a while to equalize and too many brewers have it too hot, then too cold, then too hot, as they mess with it. Even if you're WAY too high, it's not like the enzymes will denature in 5 minutes! Give it some time, stirring well, and often that will fix it. If the temperature is too low, a little boiling water may be all you need. But again, don't rush it. Nothing bad will happen if you sit at 147 for 10 minutes!
 
Also, do I add the grain to the mash tun when the strike water is at strike temp, or do i wait until it is at mash temp?

You want to add the grain when you are at strike temperature, assuming the grains are room temperature and the strike temp is in the mid 160s.

If you add 4 gallons of 166 degree water to 9 pounds of grain that is 65 degrees, the temp WILL equal 152 in the mash, in my system. Brewing software helps alot with this, but the first time is always a bit of guesswork.
 
I'll only add that it can be handy to have ice and hot water ready just in case you are too hot or too low on your mash temp. Once you get used to your system you may not need to do this. When I first started AG a lot times I was off a little bit on the mash temp. Once I started using a brewing software and got comfortable that the software I almost never miss now.
 
thanks so much. this makes alot more sense now. I think listing it out and getting some feedback was quite helpful.

Now I just need to figure out what equipment to get.

I was definitely planning on getting one of these although perhps i should get this instead because it has basically everything, plus the second container so I could keep my sparge water at temp.

Definitely getting a new thermometer. Mine is glass, and it is slow. I want an electric one. Definitely getting a barley crusher.

I also plan on getting a refractometer so I can check gravity on the fly.

Any other useful investments I'm forgetting?
 
I'd suggest considering the 10 gallon coolers. The reason is that a 5 gallon cooler will max out with maybe 12 pound of grain in a mash. That's usually fine for many 5 gallon batches, but not if you want to do beers above 1.060 or so. You could do a 10 gallon MLT and a 5 gallon HLT (for the sparge water) if you're buying both.

I didn't have an HLT for a long time- just heated up water and poured it in when I needed it. It's not hard, but it's a lot nicer to have an HLT if it's in your budget.
 
I would recommend the 10 gallon mash tun. With a 10 gallom MT you easily do high gravity beers. For example the Wee heavy I am brewing tomorrow calls for 23 lbs of grain and I think 28 quarts of water no way that fits in a 5 gallon.

My current setup is simple.

10 gallon mash tun
10 gallon boil kettle
2 fermenting/bottling buckets
5 glass carboys for secondary (if I need to secondary)
1 large pickle jar (the big one from Costco) for making large yeat starters
1 analog thermometer (I switched back from digital b/c I kept breaking them)
For winter brewing I just purchased a digital temp controller, thermowell and therm wrap to maintain temp.
 
One thing Yooper didn't mention is step 2 is never boil with the lid on. Keeping the lid on would reduce the amount you boil off, but it would also allow those nasty things that you want to boil off to condense and drop back into the kettle.
You add the grain at strike temperature. Mixing the strike temp water with the cooler grains should leave you at mash temperature. If you don't know what the strike temperature should be, check out http://rackers.org/calcs.shtml/ and use the strike temperature calculator.
Note:
The second line of the calculator
Desired Strike Temperature (deg F or C)
should read
Desired Mash Temperature (deg F or C)


-a.
 
a 13.75 lb grain bill and 4.3 gal of water don't
fit in a 5 gal mash tun (like someone's recipe said
it would) ask me how I know ....
 
Back
Top