Yet Another AG NEWB (long)

[raceskier]

Well after a half dozen successful extract/steep brews under my belt and seeing that ski season was finally over, I figured why not try AG. After all, how hard can it be?

So, my first effort was a Newkie Brown clone based on the Clone Brews recipe. Got all the equipment together. A 10 gal Rubbermaid with a KewlerKitz and a homemade stainless water hose jacket manifold. (circular) I also have a homemade hopstopper in my 9 gal kettle. (more on this later)

Grain Bill

9.50 lb Pale MO (a little extra for efficiency loss)
4 oz British Crystal 55
2 oz Chocolate
1 oz Black Patent

I used 2 tsp of 5.2 plus a pinch of KMS to 13 quarts of strike water. Temp came out a little low. (I had just rinsed out the MLT with the garden hose and it may have been cool.) Added 1 quart of boiling water and it was right at 152F. Poifect.

First glitch was that I had been really struggling with water quantities. I have both BeerSmith and ProMash and I thought both were telling me to use too much water. (I have a tall skinny brewpot.) My LHBS gave me the RDWHAHB spiel. But I still fiddled and in the mean time my mash went 1.5 hrs while I waited for my second infusion water to heat. On the advice of my LHBS, I added the total water amount needed to the mash to hit 170F. Missed by a few degrees, 167F. Again added 2 tsp 5.2 and a pinch of KMS. the 10 gal cooler was filled to the rim. On the advice of a recent thread, after a 5 minute rest, I cranked the valve and let her rip. I got stuck with about 2 gal to go. A simple stir and recirculate solved that. Now, my 9 gal brewpot was looking dangerously full. I got scared and dumped 2 quarts plus. Pre-boil gravity was 1.033. Volume at 7 gal.
My new Cajun Cooker worked great! Got my boil going with no boilover! I started skimming off the white scum (protein, hot break?) before it boiled and never had a problem. The rest of the boil was very uneventful. Put the IC in and started my sanitization.

As I mentioned I have a homemade hopstopper. I've used it on 3 extract brews. The first with pellets, the second with whole and the third with pellets. The first two went perfectly. On the third, I didn't tighten the compression fitting adequately and it came loose. No big deal, but I got some pellet residue inside the hopstopper. Oh well. OK, the wort is down to 78F. I open the valve, get about 4 oz of wort and Boom. No more. It was totaly stuck. Tried stirring, nothing. Oh F%#K! Rapidly sanitized my Easysiphon and drained the pot with that. I dumped the rest of the pot, trub, hops and all to get 6 gal. 1.046 SG.

I put the carboy to bed in a tub of water at 62F. Plugged in a blowoff tube. Added a 1 liter starter of Wyeast 1098. It's now 3 hours later and she's just starting to phart.

All in all, not a horrible first experience. Again, I'm still learning BeerSmith and ProMash, but my efficiency numbers look pretty good. Now I just have to sort out the water volumes.

Thank you to all of the experienced posters here, who answered many of my questions, before I asked them!

 

[z987k]

Wheres abouts do you call you local hill?

 

[boo boo]

Always have lots of hot water on hand. It don't go astray sometimes.

You opened up your valve too fast causing the grain to compact..tada..stuck sparge. Next time open your valve to get a slow flow and recirculate your first Qt or so until the runnings look reasonably clear of particles. Then you can slowly open your valve to get a good flow. In my case it still don't mean that I have to fully open my valve.

It sounds like you added all your sparge water to the tun before you drained your first runnings. You will miss a lot of efficiency points doing this partigyle style mashing. Best IMO is batch sparging. Drain your first runnings before adding the sparge water to the tun. And if you are doing a 5 gallon brew then 9 gallons seems like it is a bit thin. Use enough water to get your anticipated wort for fermenting and then factor in the losses from evaporation, grain absorbtion, kettle losses etc. to get the total amount of water needed.

The different mash programs also are slightly different in the amounts needed so stick to one or the other and refine your methods.

And yes I find using pellets a pain to use but use them I do when I can't get whole hops.

Hope your next experience goes a little better.

Cheers

 

[abracadabra]

Where did you get your new castle recipe?

I tried the one in BYO 150 clones where you make 2 each 5 gal. brews, the first is a big beer aged 3 months and the second is a little beer conditioned for 1 month then they are combined. I liked the big beer so much I decided not to do a little beer and combine them. My recipe included corn to boost the alcohol.

 

[raceskier]

Yeah, I figured that I'll have to slow the outflow down in the future to prevent a compacted grainbed. Adding all of the water was a suggestion I got from my LHBS. It probably costs a bit of efficiency, but saves time. Again, the efficiency didn't look that bad. I'm going to try building a new hopstopper with finer mesh. The recipe is from the Clone Brews book by Szamatulski. I saw the BYO recipe, but wanted something simple for my first AG try.

 

[thedaler]

Is there any reason to let the wort drain completely from the mash tun before adding the sparge water? My last brew I followed howtobrew.com's method. They basically said drain the mash tun until there is about an inch of water above the grain, then start adding the sparge water. Will I get better efficiency if I drain the tun completely and then add all the sparge water?

 

[Ó Flannagáin]

Is there any reason to let the wort drain completely from the mash tun before adding the sparge water? My last brew I followed howtobrew.com's method. They basically said drain the mash tun until there is about an inch of water above the grain, then start adding the sparge water. Will I get better efficiency if I drain the tun completely and then add all the sparge water?

No, you will get fine efficiency, what you are doing is fly sparging, but its hard because you have to keep the drain out and pour in at the same rate and you don't want to pour hard so you develop channels, youw ant to sprinkle the sparge water over.

Batch sparging is draining all the wort out, filling up with sparge water, letting sit and then draining again.... way easier and just as good efficiency.