1st All Grain Brew

[pscarazza79]

Well im currently in the progress of doing my first ever brew its mashing as we speak with sparge water heating up. I cant explain the buzz you get when doing this but its pretty cool. I will hopefully try to get a couple of pics up. It has taken me a while to get everything ready although my kettle stand is a bit primative :lol: but bricks will do till the budget gets there.
The recipe is a american pale ale based on recipe ideas from here and a little tweaking on beersmith.
All i can say to those who have helped here with gear is cheers and thumbs up for a great forum.
Well thats enough babbling i will get back to the brew and keep this post updated :beer:


Pat

 

[raven19]

Well done and congrats on AG #1.

Trust it all goes well :icon_cheers:

 

[clarkey7]

Well Done Pat and good luck for the rest of your brew night.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

PB

 

[pscarazza79]

Well its 12 15 am and the brew is in the no chill cube, was pretty straight forward for my first time but i do need to improve a couple of areas as such but thankfully no mishaps :beer:








I do have some questions though
1- when i added my water (should have been around 12 litres) i undershot the temp a little so i added an extra 1 litre to the mash volume would this have effected my mash, i also did compensate the extra 1 litre by removing it from the final sparge volume would this have mattered as well

 

[glennheinzel]

I do have some questions though
1- when i added my water (should have been around 12 litres) i undershot the temp a little so i added an extra 1 litre to the mash volume would this have effected my mash, i also did compensate the extra 1 litre by removing it from the final sparge volume would this have mattered as well

Congrats on your first brew.

Mash thicknesses to vary the end product, but I would imagine that the differences in this case would be negligible.

If you didn't squeeze the rest of the air out of the cube after you took that picture, then I'd look to pitch the yeast once the wort has dropped to a suitable temp.

Happy brewing.

 

[pscarazza79]

quote from rukh - If you didn't squeeze the rest of the air out of the cube after you took that picture, then I'd look to pitch the yeast once the wort has dropped to a suitable temp.


Yeah i squeezed as much out its a bit hard when its hot. I did check it this morning and the cube has sucked in so it looks all good so far

 

[fcmcg]

When the cube is hot , you need to get all the air out before capping the cube...you can use towels . Another forum member ,Spillsmostofit, showed a way at a demo i went to....
Put the hot cube against a wall....put a folded towel on the side closest to you...and use your knee to push the side wall of the cube in...applying enough pressure to force all the air out and the hot wort up into the mouth of the cube ( but not overflowing out the mouth...) The towel is your "safety device"!
When you've done this..then put your lid on tight...the walls of the cube might be concave...then turn the cube on its side , so the hot wort touches all of the cube and the handle( to help the heat kill any residual nasties after cleaning/sanitisng)
Hope this helps....
Cheers
Ferg

 

[Bribie G]

Hah another midnight brewer
Pat, how big is that cube? Or more to the point how big was your batch?

 

[pscarazza79]

Mate was supposed to be a 20 litre batch my cube is a 23 litre one i think from memory. As mentioned my brewing method isnt 100 percent just yet and its cool to get some helpful feed back.
Just a quick question how do people go about measuring their quantity in the kettle, too me there looks like there is a halfway line in the kettle my pre boil amount was just under this which i assumed would be around the 24 liter mark considering and dont quote me this is a 50 litre keggle.
Last nights brewing was pretty cool there was a full moon, a bit of of brewing happening and at the end a suasage sanga got love that.

Pat

 

[pscarazza79]

Well i got around to putting the wort from the cube in to the fermenter and pitching the yeast i found i only had 16 litres so i have to get my levels right next time still not a bad effort.

In beersmith it tells you after mashing and sparging to add water in the kettle to get your correct pre boil level does this dilute the wort i would have thought you added more when you were sparging.

My pre boil gravity was 1044 as per recipe but i found my start gravity was 1054, when it should have been 1052. Oh well cant wait for the next brew to refine things a little more

 

[Tony]

Adding more when sparging is a better idea. When you brew, write down all the volumes you put in, this will help you calculate your evaporation loss in the boil.

Say you use 5KG of grain, account a loss of 5 liters to absorbtion by the grain so if your mash is 3l/kg you will get 10 liters out of the mash. You will then need to sparge with enough water to give you your final volume plus any water that will evaporate during the boil.

So you want 20 liters final volume in the cube....... you have 10 liters from the mash....... account say 5 or 6 liters per hour boil off..... you will need to sparge with 16 liters if you boil for 60min. Sparge with 19 liters if boiling for 90 min.

WHen your done, measure what you have and you can work out exactly how much you boiled off..... its different for everyone. I boil off around 9 liters/hr.

As for your brick stand....... i have 2 brew rigs, one of a propper stand on wheels and the other is like yours, esky on the ground, and a keg on bricks. Works great

hope this helps a bit

cheers