Ag Brewing For Dummies

[Jakechan]

You know, I first started thinking about brewing AG only a few short weeks ago, and it was only a few short weeks before then (10th Nov actually) that I put down my first K&B after 20 yrs out of HB.
So naturally I searched the forums for guidance, and poked around the net here and there, hoping to find something that would make AG brewing all nice and easy for me. After all, I didnt want to have to work too hard to achieve this

But all I could really find was info for people who already know how to brew AG. Even the excellent guide written by Doc had me confused. Now you old hands will be looking at me thinking I must be pretty stupid - and thats probably a fair call - but I really had trouble understanding AG brewing in a nutshell.

Now that I have done it I really wish someone had broken the process down into 4 or 5 simple bullet points for me, because when you first start trying to understand it the whole thing can be pretty daunting.

For example, beer need only contain basic ingredients (no need to go into German Purity laws) - water, barley, hops and yeast. Now, this is plainly obvious! Isnt it? Nope, Im afraid not when you first start out its not!

If only someone had said "Mate, you just whack some barley in some water, heat it up to x for a bit, rinse it, drain it, boil it, coil it, whack in some yeast and let er rip!".

But this simple concept finally dawned upon me about a week ago because I was having trouble understanding just how simple process brewing really is in essence. I was making too much out of it. Sure, there is a whole lot more to it than that, but to make a basic beer, this is all you need know. And once you know this the rest just falls into place. All that other guff about Hop schedules, IBUs, culturing yeasts, racking, lautering etc can come later.

Someone started a thread about epiphanys, well I think mine was when I realised the simplicity of brewing as hypothetically quoted above. And the catalyst for this was actually talking to Ross from Craftbrewer, and then my subsequent order for 5kg of MO.

Anyway, I digress, for I have stumbled across an excellent website that tells you briefly, and succinctly how to brew beer. It wont make you a master brewer, but it will help someone like me to get started. I did a search for it but the search function did not return a single result so I figured the link had not yet been provided on AHB.

http://www.beerdude.com/howto_brew_allgrain.shtml

This is just my little story of how I got to brew AG, and hopefully the link may provide useful for someone else.
And Doc, now that I know how to brew AG, your excellent article is coming into its own mate. I have printed it out and am discovering some absolute pearls from it, thanks!

Cheers,
Jake

 

[Bribie G]

Great link, Jake.

I did my first AG (BIAB) exactly two weeks ago (still in sec but about to be gelatined and polyclared over the next few days, it's a Wyeast West Yorkshire that takes longer than most other ales as it was bred for lower temperature brewing in the stone square system, and seems to go on forever but worth it in the end) however I digress.

By the time I had it in the cube I kept getting worry-twinges that I had missed something out. No dissolving of extracts, additions of dextrose, carrying of water filled cubes for top up, etc.

So I had mashed it, hoisted the bag and drained, boiled with hop additions... too simple, something MUST be missing here ...... :huh: :huh:

Of course it took way longer than a K&K, but only in the sense that there were long periods spent waiting for it to do stuff, like mash and boil. That's why I'm an evening brewer, I know exactly how to fill in long periods spent waiting :chug:


Edit: one thing that does annoy me, the linky being a typical example, is that .. do the mere 300 million Yanks have any conception whatsoever of how 'backward' and in a way arrogant they appear to the other 6 billion inhabitants of the planet by failing to abandon their medieval system of weights and measures? They should really do themselves a favour.

 

[Offline]

I know its not practical for everyone but if you can find an AG brewer near you and tag along when they brew. Not only will they be able to show you how simple it really is, they will be able to explain what all the other terms and processes are and where they fit in to the brewing process even if their brew method does not utilise them.

What is hard to understand from reading a forum like this is that there are many ways to skin a cat, and they all have unique names and phrases but they reach the same end.

Its easy to make great beer doing AG especially if you have mastered all the other processes, like fermentation temp-yeast health and sanitation, which hold true to any method of brewing. The hard part is trying to produce exactly what you aimed to produce.

My advice would be to start simple, learn the process. Then head in the direction that excites you. For some people its gadgets for some its stainless steal others like the process, but all like the results

Offy

 

[katzke]

Great link, Jake.


Edit: one thing that does annoy me, the linky being a typical example, is that .. do the mere 300 million Yanks have any conception whatsoever of how 'backward' and in a way arrogant they appear to the other 6 billion inhabitants of the planet by failing to abandon their medieval system of weights and measures? They should really do themselves a favour.

As soon as you stop drinking pints mate.

And don't forget we had metric money way before you did.

 

[Barley Belly]

I thought this was a nice simple explanation of basic AG brewing, it was the straw that broke the "get into AG" camels back for me anyhow.

And also you don't have to read

YouTube Linky

 

[Aaron]

I still think you can't go past "How to Brew" by John Palmer. I learnt to brew by sitting down and reading that book. I used it to design and build my equipment and to direct me through the process. Even the free online version is fantastic. Every brewer should have a copy.

http://www.howtobrew.com

 

[Jakechan]

I still think you can't go past "How to Brew" by John Palmer. I learnt to brew by sitting down and reading that book. I used it to design and build my equipment and to direct me through the process. Even the free online version is fantastic. Every brewer should have a copy.

http://www.howtobrew.com

Thats an awesome book and so great thats its online for free, but when I was first starting out I found it had far too much info. They just need to cut to the chase man! The blanks can always be filled in later

Cheers,
Jake

 

[Bribie G]

As soon as you stop drinking pints mate.

And don't forget we had metric money way before you did.

Pints? As the old fellow (I think in the book 1984) said: "Half a litre isn't enough, but a litre makes you peeee"

Yup I'll concede on the pints

 

[mwd]

Pints? As the old fellow (I think in the book 1984) said: "Half a litre isn't enough, but a litre makes you peeee"

Yup I'll concede on the pints

He He at least you can still get pints of beer in the bars here in Australia. Biggest pity is that 99% of the time they come in those nasty pisspots with handles. Giveus a pint in a straight glass barkeeper.

 

[goomboogo]

He He at least you can still get pints of beer in the bars here in Australia. Biggest pity is that 99% of the time they come in those nasty pisspots with handles. Giveus a pint in a straight glass barkeeper.

 

[dr K]

Make yourself known to a local homebrew club.
If there is none then help create one, you and your new friends beer will with critical evaluation, only get get better.
It is very important, especially early on, to recognise that just because it does not taste like "megaswil" that it follows that it is better (beer) than megaswill, it almost certainly is not.

K

 

[Jakechan]

Make yourself known to a local homebrew club.
If there is none then help create one, you and your new friends beer will with critical evaluation, only get get better.
It is very important, especially early on, to recognise that just because it does not taste like "megaswil" that it follows that it is better (beer) than megaswill, it almost certainly is not.

K

Thanks for the advice K.
No homebrew clubs here, and I'm not really one for clubs anyway. I do believe there is an award winning brewer living nearby in Tannum Sands or Boyne Island, who is also a forum member, I'm sure I will stumble across him here sometime.

And so far even my K&B beers taste better than any mega swill you can mention (except the Cerveza but we wont go there ), but I do realise that it is too easy to think that anything you make must be wonderful, when in fact it might it be rather ordinary.
Good fun practicing though eh!

Cheers,
Jake

 

[JimInCollie]

Great link, Jake.

I did my first AG (BIAB) exactly two weeks ago (still in sec but about to be gelatined and polyclared over the next few days, it's a Wyeast West Yorkshire that takes longer than most other ales as it was bred for lower temperature brewing in the stone square system, and seems to go on forever but worth it in the end) however I digress.

By the time I had it in the cube I kept getting worry-twinges that I had missed something out. No dissolving of extracts, additions of dextrose, carrying of water filled cubes for top up, etc.

So I had mashed it, hoisted the bag and drained, boiled with hop additions... too simple, something MUST be missing here ...... :huh: :huh:

Of course it took way longer than a K&K, but only in the sense that there were long periods spent waiting for it to do stuff, like mash and boil. That's why I'm an evening brewer, I know exactly how to fill in long periods spent waiting :chug:


Edit: one thing that does annoy me, the linky being a typical example, is that .. do the mere 300 million Yanks have any conception whatsoever of how 'backward' and in a way arrogant they appear to the other 6 billion inhabitants of the planet by failing to abandon their medieval system of weights and measures? They should really do themselves a favour.

I agree with Bribie G on the weights and measures point. Only three (3) countried in the world still have the imperial system as their official weights and measures system: Libya, Mianmar (formerly Burma), and, of course, the USA. The sad thing is that with a population of 300,000,000 there are more of them putting info on the Internet that in most other countries, so, any recipe you look up, brewing or cooking (I am also a qualified chef) is likely to contain these archaic units of measurement based on some English king's anatomical parts: foot, yard (distance from kings nose to forefinger i.e. the length of his arrow), and so on. Cups. quarts, ozs (fluid oz <> gravimetric oz), inches, gallons - what a pain. In our system ("our" means all other countries, other than USA, Mianmar, and Libya) we have the elegant metric system.
Metric: 10mm = 1cm 1cm3 = 1ml 1ml water weighs 1g 1000ml=1Litre=1Kg water ... in each case the conversions factor is 10
so, if I want to make up a 0.8% priming sugar solution I can do it several easy ways:
8g sugar in 1L water
8g sugar in 1000ml water (measured in a measuring cylinder/jug)
8g sugar in 1000g of water (measured on scales)
80g sugar in 10L water (or 10Kg water) ... and so on. I can use volume or weight without changing the numbers.
"1/2 a cup of sugar in a quart of water?!!" what does that mean? I hate it!
James (Chef, Scientist, Brewer)

 

[yankinoz]

I agree with Bribie G on the weights and measures point. Only three (3) countried in the world still have the imperial system as their official weights and measures system: Libya, Mianmar (formerly Burma), and, of course, the USA. The sad thing is that with a population of 300,000,000 there are more of them putting info on the Internet that in most other countries, so, any recipe you look up, brewing or cooking (I am also a qualified chef) is likely to contain these archaic units of measurement based on some English king's anatomical parts: foot, yard (distance from kings nose to forefinger i.e. the length of his arrow), and so on. Cups. quarts, ozs (fluid oz <> gravimetric oz), inches, gallons - what a pain. In our system ("our" means all other countries, other than USA, Mianmar, and Libya) we have the elegant metric system.
Metric: 10mm = 1cm 1cm3 = 1ml 1ml water weighs 1g 1000ml=1Litre=1Kg water ... in each case the conversions factor is 10
so, if I want to make up a 0.8% priming sugar solution I can do it several easy ways:
8g sugar in 1L water
8g sugar in 1000ml water (measured in a measuring cylinder/jug)
8g sugar in 1000g of water (measured on scales)
80g sugar in 10L water (or 10Kg water) ... and so on. I can use volume or weight without changing the numbers.
"1/2 a cup of sugar in a quart of water?!!" what does that mean? I hate it!
James (Chef, Scientist, Brewer)

Metric system communist plot. MAGA!

 

[MHB]

I have always wondered if it’s thinking in an irrational system that makes the US crazy.
Bemuses me that they were so quick to throw out the old British money (non)system and replace it with a thoroughly rational modern system.
Try to do the same with other measurements and you’re the antichrist... go figure.
Mark

 

[clarkejw]

I have always wondered if it’s thinking in an irrational system that makes the US crazy.
Bemuses me that they were so quick to throw out the old British money (non)system and replace it with a thoroughly rational modern system.
Try to do the same with other measurements and you’re the antichrist... go figure.
Mark

I thoroughly agree! By the way, your right rear tyre's flat.

 

[MHB]

TY and Yep, its out of rego too, waiting for a part to arrive.
Mark

 

[clarkejw]

 

[yankinoz]

I have always wondered if it’s thinking in an irrational system that makes the US crazy.
Bemuses me that they were so quick to throw out the old British money (non)system and replace it with a thoroughly rational modern system.
Try to do the same with other measurements and you’re the antichrist... go figure.
Mark

Actions far apart in time. The US founding fathers were by and large rationalists, followers of the Enlightenment. The alt-right types who oppose anything furrin probably heard of it in school but chose to forget it..

Know-nothings, evangelical zealots and self-appointed superpatriots together make up less than 25% of the electorate, but a majority of Republican voters. Once they get their people nominated, it's up to Party strategists to find ways to swing other voters, This year it's inflation,, which Biden somehow caused all over the world, and critical race theory, a nebulous concept that isn't actually taught below university level. Always race runs as an issue..

Trump did not receive a majority of votes in 2016 or 2020. Gerrymandering, constitutional favouring of small states and rural districts, heavy political donations from wealthy persons and Fox (thank you, Australia, for providing Rupert and sons) play roles.