Basic Ag With Pics For Noobs

[mr_tyreman]

Well today was brew #8 and i have my method pretty well sorted.

So i thought i'd post up some how too for anyone who is a little lost, like i was not so long ago.

This is not a definitive guide to brewing and i dont believe i have any idea on how to brew great beer, but this method does make beer and its a good start.

Here goes...

Step 1) Fill your vessel with approximately 17L of water, fire up the burner and get it up to approx 78 degrees

Step 2)

Transfer approx 13L of this water into your mash tun (Esky)
Add in your grain (Approx 5kg)
Stir and make sure the grain isn't clumped up

Step 3)

Check the tempreture of the mash, do this in several areas of the mash to get an accurate reading.
this should be approx 66 degrees, nice round figure for the beginner. A few degrees either way is fine.

Step 4) Close the lid and start your timer for 1hr, open the lid every 15mins or so and give it a stir and check the tempreture

Step 5) Depending on your burner with plenty of time to go before the 1hr is up, fill your vessel back up with water (approx 35L) and get this up to a temp of approx 90 Degrees, ready for when your 1 hr is up.

Step 6) When your 1 hr is up, open up your mash tun and add approximately 16L of water @ 90 degrees to the mash ( on top of the existing grain and water you added allready)

Step 6) Give this a good stir and make sure if your using a stainless braid, that it is sitting on the bottom, Close the lid and let this sit for 10mins

Step 7) After the 10 mins, Grab a jug and open the tap and fill the jug up, and pour this gently back into the mash tun, repeat this process a good few times to remove any bits of grain etc, that have made it through the braid.

Step 8) When your satisfied that the runnings are quite clear, open the tap and let the runnings flow into the kettle.

Step 9) When the flow stops, close the tap on the mash tun, and with the remaining water that you heated to 90 degrees, add 16L to the mash tun over the top of the grain bed, give this a good stir and check braid... close the lid and let rest for 10mins.

Step 10) After the 10mins, circulate this using the jug like last time, and drain into kettle.

Step 11) With mash tun now only containing the grain, and the kettle now ready to boil... Move your burner over to the kettle and fire it up, full blast

Step 12) Now that your firing up the kettle with some pretty intense heat, you will need to keep on eye on this (depending on your burner) because it tends to get to a boil very quickly and boil overs aren't much fun at all ). Get the wort to a boil and start your timer for 1hr.

Step 13) Measure your hop additions and add accordingly

 

[mr_tyreman]

Step 14) 10 mins or so before the end of the boil, put your immersion chiller into the boil... make sure you crank up the burner, because the chiller will bring the wort off the boil very quickly and you need to keep this boil going.

Step 15) Add your last hop additions before the end of the boil

Step 16) At the 1hr mark, turn off your burner, cover the kettle with aluminium foil or glad wrap and start running cold tap water through the chiller and continue til, water going into the chiller is the same temp as the water coming out.

Step 17) When wort is down to room temp, open the tap and fill your fermentor making sure that it aerates very well, pitch yeast and now.....and only now may you have a brew...hahaha

Step 18) Pack up, Clean up and grab another brew you deserve it

Clean up now so next time everything is ready to go, nothing worse than going into the shed and finding filthy kettles and mouldy mash tuns.

Of course you have many options such as Irish moss, Calcium sulfate, No chill etc etc.....


Hope this helps any new brewers get a feel for how it goes, and give experienced brewers a real good chuckle.

 

[clean brewer]

Good work mate..

Something wrong with your flame though, a shit load of black soot from that flame...

:unsure: CB

 

[chappo1970]

Good work mate..

Something wrong with your flame though, a shit load of black soot from that flame...

:unsure: CB

+1 CB was thinking exactly the same thing

What reg are you running? That puppy should be pumping blue flames and almost melting the ass outa that pot, yeah?

Cheers

Chappo

Edit: Lack of oxygen I suspect?

 

[bulp]

But boy do those pictures look cool :beerbang: (grunts like caveman) mmmm fire good beer makem

 

[Guest Lurker]

I think that is a Mongolian burner, and that is just what they do, smoke the crap out of what you put on them.

 

[mr_tyreman]

yeah, gotta keep the gas presure up to stop it sooting up the air, and a breeze going thru the shed to blow it away....and the soot build up on the kettles is horrid.....im just using the reg from my old 2 ring burner from bunnings.

 

[manticle]

Thankyou.

Looking at doing a primitive first AG between tomorrow and Wednesday and this helps a lot.

 

[chappo1970]

MrT I would seriously consider a med or high pressure reg. Demonsura did a thread a while ago [topic="14799"]here[/topic] which really shows how these guys should go although I'm not sure he gave the mongo a rattle?

BTW it's still a very good thread :icon_cheers:

Cheers

Chappo

 

[Stubbie]

I think that is a Mongolian burner, and that is just what they do, smoke the crap out of what you put on them.

Must be when they're not set up properly, because mine surely doesn't. <_<
The flames on mine looking nothing like in the photo.

 

[smollocks]

Haven't used the mongolian, but surely it has adjustable air intakes to get a hot blue flame?

 

[Barramundi]

I think that is a Mongolian burner, and that is just what they do, smoke the crap out of what you put on them.

my mogolian doesnt soot up anything , but i was thinkin those flames are quite different to mine , i only use a normal bbq reg with my burner.. what type is used i this setup ?

 

[Justin]

Definitely not running right. I'd start trying to work out what the problem may be because it definitiely shouldn't be burning like that. They should burn blue and clean. By the way, set up like that it will not be producing anywhere near the heat that it could be producing.


It definitely looks like a fuel/air mix problem but I'm wondering if possibly the jet size on the brass nozzles could be set up for natural gas? Natural gas jets are larger than LPG ones, so it's possible that you could have the wrong version of the burner. Just throwing theories around but I'd guess having a larger diameter jet would slow the velocity of the exiting gas which may make it less efficient at drawing oxygen (air) into the jet through a venturi effect.

Looks to me like the set up from grain and grape so I'd be chatting to those guys about it. I know these burners are available in two configurations (LPG/NG) so it would not be impossible that yours was labelled incorrectly from the manufacturer.

Get it sorted and you'll be a happier brewer, your equipment wont be black, times to boil reduced, maybe even less gas usage and it wont look like your going to burn your place down.

Good luck. Justin

 

[Zwickel]

It definitely looks like a fuel/air mix problem....

yeah, I think so too. Once I had a similar issue, although the burner worked very well until that date. I was searching like crazy and long time couldnt find out what the problem is. Finally I found a spider (dead) sitting in the tube between the gas/air mxing unit and the gas outlet holes.

Onother day the burner didnt work at all. That time I found some larvas sitting in the gas hose, right before the valve.

Just have an eye on that.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[Justin]

..... Finally I found a spider (dead) sitting in the tube between the gas/air mxing unit and the gas outlet holes.

Onother day the burner didnt work at all. That time I found some larvas sitting in the gas hose, right before the valve.

Just have an eye on that.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

These models of burners actually have all their jetting at the brass tubes/outlets of the burner, so there are multiple jets (eg. 10, 23, 32 depending on size) so it's unlikely to be blocked in all jets and produce results like that. Given there are no air vents to adjust on these burners (4 predrilled holes per brass vent) and the fact they are apparently designed to use standard low pressure regulators I'm still going to back the possibility of the wrong jetting used on this particular example.

Can anyone with a currently working mongolian burner have a go at measuring your jet size to compare with the OP's jet size?

I know NG jets are larger than LPG jets to allow more gas volume to be moved. This is because LPG contains roughly 2.5X the energy of NG for a given volume, hence for the same heat output NG has to be delivered at 2.5X the volume of LPG. I just have a funny feeling that there is plenty of gas being delivered but the larger jet holes dont have the velocity to suck sufficient air (venturi action) into the mix from the holes drilled in the side of the brass outlets (the air mix holes, which are non adjustable). Hence you have a large volume of slow moving LPG burning like a hand held lighter, thus producing a large yellow flame.

It's about the only plausible option I can think of. Good luck with it and let us know.
Justin

 

[mr_tyreman]

i think you guys are spot on with the jet sizing, i'll give em a buzz today....

just a note, it came with an adaptor to suit 1/4" Gas fitting........where as all my lpg stuff is 3/8".........could this be a clue?

and boil times are still incredibly fast, no complaints there, just the soot factor is annoying.

 

[Wisey]

might be made for butane? nfi.

 

[Batz]

Step 6) When your 1 hr is up, open up your mash tun and add approximately 16L of water @ 90 degrees to the mash ( on top of the existing grain and water you added allready)

You don't drain off your first runnings?

Batz

 

[buttersd70]

sounds like this step is just an addition to mashout, batz...in the next few steps he recircs, runs it out, then batch sparges, recircs and runs out again.

 

[mr_tyreman]

nah i just add the hotter water to the mash to get a mash out temp a lil higher...it all started with doc smuros golden ale, and i have just ran with it with all my brews.