New to beer

[Ryue]

Hey ya'll, I've been fermenting my own mead for a bit over a year now. Had some success and some failure. I really want to get into all grain brewing, while I understand that extract brewing is probably easier to start out with I am less interested is that.
My big question is this - what all do I need (equipment wise) to get started? Every time I try to google it I end up confused by a large array of different information as well as a lot of terms I do not understand... So forgive me if this is a stupid question.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Kent88]

Well it depends on what route you want to go.

You probably already have the buckets, carboys, airlocks, siphon tubing, sanitizing geat, etc. Not sure how you're packaging your mead, so you might want to consider that.

You'll need a kettle to boil in. You'll want it to be of a capacity that is a little bigger than the sum of what size batches you'll be making plus the amount you'll be boiling off (so perhaps a 5 gallon kettle for 3-gallon batches, or an 8 gallon kettle for 5-gallon batches). Having a couple of spare, smaller kettles is helpful.

And the rest of it depends on how you want to go about mashing. I'm sure the BIAB crowd will be here shortly. BIAB is a great way to try it out with minimal equipment costs because you're just mashing in the boil kettle (which might mean you need a bigger boil kettle) and all you need is a mesh bag. My first couple "partial-extract"/mini-mash/partial-mash brews were BIAB and they were fine.

I personally switched to the more traditional system with a mash/lauter tun because I wanted more control over my efficiency and I wanted something that could hold heat better. When I would BIAB on the stove-top I found myself fiddling with the heating element controls too much and I just wasn't comfortable with how I was sparging (and some BIABers will probably tell me that I should've been doing a full volume BIAB with all my mash and sparge water in the kettle during the mash, and they're probably right, but I don't have a kettle that big).

So give it some thought, look around at what others are doing, and try out what makes sense to you.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Reading between the lines of your post, I would say you should get a cooler and a Wilserbrewer bag to mash in a cooler. You need a brew kettle and fermentors that are probably bigger than your mead ones. Then get a fridge off of craigslist and use an inkbird controller to give you temp control to ferment your beers.

Give is all a little more info about the volume you want to brew, how much you are willing to spend and how often you want to brew, then people will be able to better help you with what you should get.

 

[Ryue]

Thanks guys,
So a little more detail, I currently have a 15 gallon Bayou Classic kettle and propane burner I use for my batches of mead. I also have (3) 5 gallon glass carboys, a couple 1 gallon carboys, and plenty of siphoning hoses, hydrometer, etc.
I would like to do 5 gallon batches to start, and once I have really gotten the hang of it I may kick it up to 10 gallon batches.
I would like to to stay somewhere in the middle as far as price range of equipment.
If I go with BIAB, could I just get something like this wort chiller to put in my 15 gallon kettle after removing the bag of grains and remove the need for a secondary cooler?

NY Brew Supply W3850-CV Super Efficient 3/8 x 50' Copper Wort Chiller https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C856JQI/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[ong]

Yes, if you go BIAB you will add your full volume of water, bring it up to a few degrees above mash temp (~154-160°), add your bag (I fasten to the rim of the kettle with binder clips), put in your grain and make sure it’s all stirred in. After the mash is complete you pull out the bag and start boiling in the same kettle. When boil is nearly completed you put the chiller in to sanitize it, and then after your boil you turn off the gas and start running water through the chiller. It’s all in the one kettle (and a 15 gallon is a great size for 5 or even most 10 gallon batches, although high-gravity 10 gallon batches will be a bit close).

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Yes, if you go BIAB you will add your full volume of water, bring it up to a few degrees above mash temp (~154-160°), add your bag (I fasten to the rim of the kettle with binder clips), put in your grain and make sure it’s all stirred in. After the mash is complete you pull out the bag and start boiling in the same kettle. When boil is nearly completed you put the chiller in to sanitize it, and then after your boil you turn off the gas and start running water through the chiller. It’s all in the one kettle (and a 15 gallon is a great size for 5 or even most 10 gallon batches, although high-gravity 10 gallon batches will be a bit close).

This is a great way to go. I brew smaller batches and use a single vessel as Ong described. The upside of this is less transferring your wort and just general ease. The down side is BIAB doesn’t lend itself to fly sparging if you want to do that. Fly sparging is sprinkling water on top of the grain bed in your mash tun to extract the sweet wort that is still in there after you have ran off the first wort. Some brewers like to do this because the grain bed filters out all the little specs of grain dust that get through a BIAB. With BIAB you can mix sparge water into your kettle after you run off the first wort. You mix you grains and the sparge water and then run that off, maybe squeezing your bag to get a little more out. Maybe mixing and running off a second round. This is called batch sparging. Some BIAB people just add a little more grain in at the beginning, put all their water into the mash and then run off the wort without sparging at all. Also, it takes more work to keep your mash temps stable if you single vessel BIAB because you have to either wrap your vessel in good insulation or constantly monitor your temps and adjust with heat from your burner. For me inside on the stove it’s kind of a pain, but I’ve heard that it can be harder with a bayou burner, because its hard to control your flame with enough delicacy, but people with propane can correct me if I’m wrong about that. I have never used propane.

If you single vessel BIAB it is easier, so you may want to start there, but since this isn’t your first rodeo, you may want to look into a separate mash tun so you can take advantage fly sparging if that’s what you want to do. One other thing, if you are one of those psycho LODO people then I think you would want to use a separate mash tun, but those guys are nuts, so I wouldn’t make any decisions based on what they say. But seriously if you study up on LODO and it sounds like something you feel you need to do, then that may change what your gear would be. LODO is a whole thing and too involved to get into on my already rambling reply.

 

[Ryue]

This is all awesome information, guys, thanks again!
So I am gonna start out with the single vessel BIAB to get my feet wet, and may change things from there.
What is the best kind of bag to use? Preferably something I might find on Amazon? [emoji482]

 

[LittleRiver]

The bag I use is from Wilser. Great prices and the quality is also great.

As soon as you can, invest in a grain mill. The Cereal Killer is a good value. You can start with the grind you get from a local or mail order grain supplier, but your results will be much better when you can control your grain crush. With BIAB you can, and should, grind much finer than other methods. I get great results with a .025 mill gap setting.

An overhead lift point for your bag is well worth setting up (the hoist kit Wilser sells works great). That way you can hoist the bag and let gravity drain it into the kettle while the wort is heating to a boil. I don't squeeze the bag, I let gravity do that for me.

Sparging (by any method) is entirely optional. I don't sparge and I consistently hit or exceed the target ABV of recipes. If I want more alcohol content I could do a sparge, but normally I just don't bother.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

This is all awesome information, guys, thanks again!
So I am gonna start out with the single vessel BIAB to get my feet wet, and may change things from there.
What is the best kind of bag to use? Preferably something I might find on Amazon? [emoji482]

Wilserbrewer, I don’t know if he’s on Amazon but I have never heard anyone speak poorly of his bags. It’s what I use and I’m very happy with mine. He is an active member of this forum and will respond personally to questions about his product. I am not affiliated with him in any way except that I am a loyal happy customer.

 

[Ryue]

Okay, so I will have to order one of those bags when I get the chance, as well as the wort chiller. As soon as I have the extra cash (been slow at work lately.. [emoji53]) I will order a grain mill and go from there, but that sounds like a good start.

Also, tell me if this is a horrible idea, but I was planning on using a mixture of corn, oats and barley for a first attempt - be it a fault or virtue, but I prefer to come up with my own brews than follow someone else's recipe, be it successful or not. I know that different ingredients have different boil temps (though I dont know off the top of my head what those are), so what is the best protocol for having multiple in the same mash? Unless they are too close to be concerned about..?

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Oats and corn need to have a cereal mash to gelatinize the starch’s and make them available to the alpha amylase enzyme in the mash. Because a cereal mash is done at a temp that will denature the alpha amylase, it has to be done separately before the mash. Alternatively if you use “instant” oatmeal and grits, you can skip the cereal mash and put them directly into your mash with the barley malt. There is a limit to how much of these adjuncts you can put in your beer though because there needs to be enough enzyme from the barley to go around for the corn and oats. Check out the Brewers Friend recipe, Cream of Three Crops as a base. It uses about 30% corn and rice. In your case, you could substitute the rice for oats.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/10545/cream-of-three-crops.

I think that the oats will thicken up your beer while the corn will thin it out. Between the two you could have a nice balance while getting the flavors from those grains.

 

[wallyLOZ]

Don't have any experience with Wilser bags. I've used Brew Bag with good success. They make a very sturdy bag with handles on the top to lift and hang for draining. Very useful. Fast shipping and great to work with. Link below. Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

https://www.brewinabag.com/

 

[Ryue]

Oats and corn need to have a cereal mash to gelatinize the starch’s and make them available to the alpha amylase enzyme in the mash. Because a cereal mash is done at a temp that will denature the alpha amylase, it has to be done separately before the mash. Alternatively if you use “instant” oatmeal and grits, you can skip the cereal mash and put them directly into your mash with the barley malt. There is a limit to how much of these adjuncts you can put in your beer though because there needs to be enough enzyme from the barley to go around for the corn and oats. Check out the Brewers Friend recipe, Cream of Three Crops as a base. It uses about 30% corn and rice. In your case, you could substitute the rice for oats.

So what is the mash temp of corn and oats vs. barley? Could I hit the temps of the oats/corn and then add the barley and amylase once the temp drops? Assuming I am understanding things correctly to begin with...? Lol
I was hoping to start out with 60% barley, 20% corn and 20% oats, if you think that's do-able? Or any suggestions on how I should change that?

 

[abdominousabel]

So I recently started All grain brewing. And I took this route

Extract kits >> BIAB >> All grain

Every transition I had to get new equipment, some small transitions some larger. But I recommend you just go straight into All grain equipment for 10Gal batches. I regret not doing this myself, but I was intimidated.

Just my input. But you can get a 15gal mash tun either cooler or insulated stainless steel mash tun. Things you have to consider however is the dimensions of the mash tun because the width of the mash tun is important because if it’s suited for a 10gal batch the grain bed may be deep enough but if you try making a 5 gallon batch the depth will be cut in half and that might be too shallow.

Just consider:
If you want to be upgraded equipment as your enthusiast heightens
Your budget
The pros and cons of different mash tuns
What abv you want because if your mash tun is 7gals on a 5gal batch you can only fit so much grain, and your ABV will only go up so high
This also applies to BIAB you can only fit as much grains as your bag allows you(which is usually pretty big but I don’t know if it can hold 20lb grain bills)

 

[ong]

I would recommend that you start with some more straightforward recipes before trying to convert a large volume of adjunct grains. Maybe look into doing a single malt, single hop batch (SMaSH). It’s a great way to learn about what hops and grains are contributing what flavors, and a nice simple way to get familiar with your equipment.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

So what is the mash temp of corn and oats vs. barley? Could I hit the temps of the oats/corn and then add the barley and amylase once the temp drops? Assuming I am understanding things correctly to begin with...? Lol
I was hoping to start out with 60% barley, 20% corn and 20% oats, if you think that's do-able? Or any suggestions on how I should change that?

That’s a lot of oats. Even 10% would be a lot. I think it would be reasonable to use 70/20/10, Thats still a lot of oats, but with the corn you may be able to get away with it. I’ve always used flaked/torrified adjuncts so I could skip the cereal mash, so I’m not sure what the cereal mash temp is, but if it was me, I would cook them like you normally would rolled oats or stone ground grits. When you cook those porridges to eat, you are doing a cereal mash to make the starches available to your body.

Then cool the cereal mash down and mash the corn and oat mixture with the barley. You don’t have to add amylase, it is already in malted barley. 99% of beer information focuses on using malted barley as the source of amylase. If you used unmalted barley, you would have to use an amylase product. I can’t advise you on which amylase product to use and how. I have never used them. Malted barley is so available, convenient and a cheap source of amylase, the only reason I wouldn’t use it is if I wanted to make a gluten free beer. Or perhaps if these products were coming from my own farm in which case I would learn how to malt barley myself.

You should heat the water before you put in your grains, so bring it up to 160 degrees or so and then add the water to the grains or the grains to the water. Mash the barley, corn and oats at 150 degrees, but for your first time just shoot for anywhere between 145-155 degrees. The higher temp will arguably leave more unfermentable sugars in your wort leaving more body and residual sweetness and the lower temps should convert more to simple sugars that will ferment away and give you a dryer beer.

Measure your temp in the middle of your kettle while mixing your wort a little. If you over-shoot your temp a few ice cubes will bring it into line quickly. Mashing for 1 hour is a good place to start. You can use test strips to see if all the starch has been converted, but I’ve never done that. I just taste it and if its super sweet, I figure I’m good. Besides the Brülosophy guys have done a lot of short mash time exBeeriments and found them to be adequate as quickly as 15 minutes, but for you with all the adjuncts, I wouldn’t mash for less than an hour.

After the hour bring the temp higher than 170 degrees for 10 minutes to denature the amylase that way if you choose to sparge the wort will not continue conversion during your sparge.

Sparge, then remove your grains and bring the sweet wort up to a boil, add hops boil 60 minutes at 15 minutes put in a pinch of Irish moss if you want. Add more hops at the end for flavor and aroma.

 

[Pappers_]

So what is the mash temp of corn and oats vs. barley? Could I hit the temps of the oats/corn and then add the barley and amylase once the temp drops? Assuming I am understanding things correctly to begin with...? Lol
I was hoping to start out with 60% barley, 20% corn and 20% oats, if you think that's do-able? Or any suggestions on how I should change that?

Wanted to double check that you're going to be using barley *malt*. These days, you can also find malted oats, too. You have to use malt to brew beer. As others have noted, 40% adjuncts (non barley malt) is high. But if you're not using a recipe, I guess you should do whatever you want.

One pitch for using a recipe - there are a lot of variables in brewing, for example, we haven't even talked about hops, yeast and fermentation. Especially when starting, removing as many variables as possible will help you dial in your process. For example, lets say your first batch is 'ok' but not great - if you use a tried and true recipe, then you'll know that wasn't the problem and you can focus on other aspects. Just my two cents.

 

[Ryue]

I depending on how this goes, I may end up trying a recipe.
As I dont know much about gravity when it comes to grains (straight sugars -honey, etc.- is much easier to calculate), if I am aiming for a 5 gallon ferment and an abv of say 5-7%, how many lbs should I use if I go 70% barley, 20% corn and 10% oats?

 

[Tribe Fan]

I depending on how this goes, I may end up trying a recipe.
As I dont know much about gravity when it comes to grains (straight sugars -honey, etc.- is much easier to calculate), if I am aiming for a 5 gallon ferment and an abv of say 5-7%, how many lbs should I use if I go 70% barley, 20% corn and 10% oats?

7#,2#, 1# respectively get you to 1.053 with a 72% efficiency, about 5.3% ABV.

After that each additional pound get you circa .5% ABV. Personally, I would add more barley and leave the corn and oats at 2# and 1#.

 

[Ryue]

Alright, well I am getting ready to order the last pieces of equipment, as well as malted barley, malted oats and and whole corn kernels, all of which I will crack to .025. So my last question before I embark on this journey, is can ya'll recommend a good yeast to compliment this combination?

 

[Tribe Fan]

WLP001 is standard american ale. WLP051 is Sierra Nevada ale yeast, a little more fruity. Both of those are good benchmarks if you want to compare grain bills from recipe to recipe.

You can use any style yeast you like though, really. It's like asking which car to buy.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I’m partial to dry yeast because it is so easy to use. I love Nottingham, but some brewers say they get a funny flavor from it that they don’t like. If I taste whatever that is, I can’t identify it. Also, most people like one thing and don’t another, so you can’t really predict what someone will like. Fermentis US-05 is great, clean and doesn’t leave a lot of yeast flavors in the beer. The down side is that it takes a lot longer to clear than other yeasts. You could try Fermentis S-04, but you’ll want a place that has a very specific temperature like around 63 degrees. I’ve gotten peachy phenols that I didn’t like when fermenting below 60 with S-04 and the recommended upper range is 68, so considering the beer can be as much as 5 degrees warmer than ambient temps and that is a pretty narrow range. But I’ve never heard anyone say bad things about S-04, though I myself have not had good experiences with it.