All Grain Set-up

[Tomo87]

Hello All

I have been brewing for nearly 2 years now started off with Kit cans and bottling them then to kegging them and now since tasting one of my mates beers (which was all grain) and many batches of the Kit cans I have made (some not tasting that great way to malty) I've decided to give all grain brewing a go.

I have attached photos of my keg set-up and also my fermenting fridge which is temp controlled via the fridge and the 100 watt globe in there.

I have also attached photos of my set up so far of my esky Vessel that I plan to use to do the mash. You will also see a stainless steel keg in the photo's that i plan to use as my boiling vessel which I plan to weld up this weekend and plan to do my first all grain batch next weekend.

If any one has any tips please let me know that would be greatly appreciated.

I'll keep everyone posted on how it all goes and if it all works out.

Cheers Thomas

 

[Blackapple]

Looking good.
Mash tun needs a clean.

Don't look back

 

[bignath]

Yeah, you could make beer with that. I'd give the mash tun a bit of a spruce up, but otherwise what you plan to do sounds the goods to me.

 

[ekul]

or you could get yourself a piece of voille and get brewing tomorrow.

 

[dkaos]

or you could get yourself a piece of voille and get brewing tomorrow.

Damn right! Dont wait for perfect conditions, just get brewing

 

[Muscovy_333]

Do you have a manifold for your Mash Tun?
If you dont you should look into it. Helps drain your wort far more effectively after mashing out your grain.
I only have a couple of Ag's under the belt, but my home made manifold has already made a massive difference to speeding/improving the process.
There is a manifold thread running at the moment on the forum.

Muscovy

 

[Diesel80]

Do you have a manifold for your Mash Tun?
If you dont you should look into it. Helps drain your wort far more effectively after mashing out your grain.
I only have a couple of Ag's under the belt, but my home made manifold has already made a massive difference to speeding/improving the process.
There is a manifold thread running at the moment on the forum.

Muscovy

Muscovy,

i think he has a braid manifold in that pic above. Simplest way to get started me thinks.
I will be trying to set up almost identical esky this weekend.

Cheers,
D80

 

[ledgenko]

Tommo and Diesel .... if you have the esky already set up like above .... try making a smallish hole in the side of a colander ($2 shop ... metal one will be tops) insert the draw pipe through .. cover all in voille and the grain bed should not move .. sweet as ... and pics should be in the ghetto forum by next week ...

Diesel .. I am in Trigg.. I can help you out if you want some advice .... although I still have a lot of questions and need help working some stuff out have made some pretty awesome all grain beer ( wel over 250 litres this year)..

Matt

 

[ledgenko]

Thomo .... BTW .... keep an eye on the keg ... some one may just be looking for it back .... even if it is a Carlton one ;-)

 

[Tomo87]

Well did my first all grain brew today, all was going smoothly until I went to pour the mash out and nothing! Seemed to just get block up so we made some bigger holes and all was a little better (might get some copper and put some hack saw cuts in it that may work better all trial and error!) temp keep very well in the mash only drop 1 degree in whole hour! My real problem was the amount of water I used and the end hydro meter reading I got which was 1.040 I was chasing something around 1.048. I mash 5kg of pilsner malt with 17 liters @ 66 and then fly sparge around 26 liters @ 75! It come to around 37 liters I boiled it for an hour and ended up with around 27 liters however I only wanted around 23 I guess there was to much water in the fly sparge?

Any tips would be handy I'll see what it gets down to but my guess is I'll only get around 4.2% at the best!!

Oh one other thing I tried using an air stone to aerate the the wort however it just foam up so I only got around 30 seconds in I hope that's enough?

Any way I can get around it foaming up or is this just how it is?

 

[Diesel80]

View attachment 49659Well did my first all grain brew today, all was going smoothly until I went to pour the mash out and nothing! Seemed to just get block up so we made some bigger holes and all was a little better (might get some copper and put some hack saw cuts in it that may work better all trial and error!) temp keep very well in the mash only drop 1 degree in whole hour! My real problem was the amount of water I used and the end hydro meter reading I got which was 1.040 I was chasing something around 1.048. I mash 5kg of pilsner malt with 17 liters @ 66 and then fly sparge around 26 liters @ 75! It come to around 37 liters I boiled it for an hour and ended up with around 27 liters however I only wanted around 23 I guess there was to much water in the fly sparge?

Any tips would be handy I'll see what it gets down to but my guess is I'll only get around 4.2% at the best!!

Oh one other thing I tried using an air stone to aerate the the wort however it just foam up so I only got around 30 seconds in I hope that's enough?

Any way I can get around it foaming up or is this just how it is?

If you accurately measured the amounts of sparge and mash water and know what was in the kettle as you were ramping up to the boil (i assume 60Min boil and about 20mins getting to boil?) then you should be able to fairly accurately work out the boil off / evap rate of your setup.

What you could do next time is use exactly the same amounts of water, and then increase the boil time to evap out the extra water. That way you are only changing one brewing variable between first and second batch.

Remember not to add your hops till further into the boil if planned for 60/x/x.

If that works and you get closer to target vol at end of boil, then you can look at changing the amount of sparge water etc.

Don't change too much all at once or you won't identify the factor that is causing you to miss targets. Also, you will need to know things like preboil vol and evap rate to configure any brewing software correctly. Until you have a pattern emerging over a series of brews you can't configure this software correctly.

Highly unrealistic to expect your setup to correlate directly the brewing software standard params. Everyones mileage varies

Hope it was fun mate, just did my first AG 2 days ago as well, i went BIAB though.

Cheers,
D80