eko
Well-Known Member
I recently made the step up to AG. After much planning and bargain hunting and shopping and planning, I finally got to brew. I moved out of the kitchen and into backyard. I learned some things in the process, and thought I'd share with the community. I hope those of you who have been around the block find this amusing, and those who haven't, well, your turn will come.
Top 10 things I learned from my 1st AG Brew Day:
10) Take time to completely finish any prep work so you don't slice through the first two fingers on your dominant hand on the sharp edges of a hole you drilled in stainless steel 60 minutes earlier. Really slows down and complicates the brew day. (Remains to be seen what blood & Neosporin's contribution is to flavor.)
9) Put your equipment together at least the day before. It's not fun when the kids' nap & quiet time is over and you've only just finished assembling things. It's even worse when you're unknowingly about to discover you have to start over because your mash tun is leaking. (Still, be thankful you haven't added any grain.) Which brings me to #8:
8) Test your valves and connections, run some water through before taking the time to heat 3.5 gallons of water to 172°F and pouring it into a leaky vessel. Plumbers' tape is your friend. Use it. Excessively.
7) It's not enough to think through your process 60 times over the prior 6 days. Practice it. Go through a dry run. No, go through a wet run. You don't need heat, grain, or anything but water. A couple gallons, transfer small amounts, enough to raise levels over any valves and test your connections (see #8), and enough to discover that when you have X gallons in your boil kettle, and Y gallons in your mash tun sparging Z gallons into a collection pot everything is fine. Your plan is working. And then because your collection pot is only half as big as the full amount that you need to boil, you need to transfer what you've collected into your boil kettle. You're still fine, you anticipated this, all part of the plan. And then you discover you can't put what you've collected into the boil kettle because it still has multiple gallons of extremely hot water in it that you need to finish sparging. Crap. Ok, quick, grab another pot. The biggest unused pot you have is less than a gallon. Double crap.
6) Improvise, improvise, improvise! In a pinch, that hop spider you built also makes an excellent post-sparge grain strainer. (Only necessary because you keep having to start & stop sparging because of your miscalculations resulting from not following #7.)
5) Plan on skipping dinner. (Or lunch if you do the reasonable thing and start at 8am.)
4) Keep plenty of bricks on hand (to make a taller tower). A 1 inch drop with tubing is likely not enough to get things flowing, especially when it's so long it goes up and down like a rollercoaster on its way to the collection pot.
3) If you must start a siphon post-boil, gargle with a strong liquor. Something you enjoy. But don't enjoy too much of it.
2) Holy cow, it's dark and raining! (Corollary: Start as early as possible. Midnight comes quick when you don't start assembling pieces until well after 3pm, and have as much to learn as I did.)
But the most important thing I learned:
1) Stop making excuses. Don't wait too long to brew. Preparation will only get you so far and you'll learn 100 times more by doing. More importantly - no matter whether you're going all extract, partial mash, or All Grain - real beer tastes much better than beer on paper.
Top 10 things I learned from my 1st AG Brew Day:
10) Take time to completely finish any prep work so you don't slice through the first two fingers on your dominant hand on the sharp edges of a hole you drilled in stainless steel 60 minutes earlier. Really slows down and complicates the brew day. (Remains to be seen what blood & Neosporin's contribution is to flavor.)
9) Put your equipment together at least the day before. It's not fun when the kids' nap & quiet time is over and you've only just finished assembling things. It's even worse when you're unknowingly about to discover you have to start over because your mash tun is leaking. (Still, be thankful you haven't added any grain.) Which brings me to #8:
8) Test your valves and connections, run some water through before taking the time to heat 3.5 gallons of water to 172°F and pouring it into a leaky vessel. Plumbers' tape is your friend. Use it. Excessively.
7) It's not enough to think through your process 60 times over the prior 6 days. Practice it. Go through a dry run. No, go through a wet run. You don't need heat, grain, or anything but water. A couple gallons, transfer small amounts, enough to raise levels over any valves and test your connections (see #8), and enough to discover that when you have X gallons in your boil kettle, and Y gallons in your mash tun sparging Z gallons into a collection pot everything is fine. Your plan is working. And then because your collection pot is only half as big as the full amount that you need to boil, you need to transfer what you've collected into your boil kettle. You're still fine, you anticipated this, all part of the plan. And then you discover you can't put what you've collected into the boil kettle because it still has multiple gallons of extremely hot water in it that you need to finish sparging. Crap. Ok, quick, grab another pot. The biggest unused pot you have is less than a gallon. Double crap.
6) Improvise, improvise, improvise! In a pinch, that hop spider you built also makes an excellent post-sparge grain strainer. (Only necessary because you keep having to start & stop sparging because of your miscalculations resulting from not following #7.)
5) Plan on skipping dinner. (Or lunch if you do the reasonable thing and start at 8am.)
4) Keep plenty of bricks on hand (to make a taller tower). A 1 inch drop with tubing is likely not enough to get things flowing, especially when it's so long it goes up and down like a rollercoaster on its way to the collection pot.
3) If you must start a siphon post-boil, gargle with a strong liquor. Something you enjoy. But don't enjoy too much of it.
2) Holy cow, it's dark and raining! (Corollary: Start as early as possible. Midnight comes quick when you don't start assembling pieces until well after 3pm, and have as much to learn as I did.)
But the most important thing I learned:
1) Stop making excuses. Don't wait too long to brew. Preparation will only get you so far and you'll learn 100 times more by doing. More importantly - no matter whether you're going all extract, partial mash, or All Grain - real beer tastes much better than beer on paper.
