Its All Your Fault!

[Jerry]

I was warned about the slippery slope but I obviously didn't listen because yesterday my first All Grain was born.

Thank you to everyone on this forum for your knowledge and information which enabled me to have a 'relatively' stress free day. :beerbang:

It was great to finally get stuck into it after spending so much time thinking about it.

The recipe was -

4 kg JW Ale malt
500g Munich malt
250g Medium crystal malt
250g Wheat

20g Pride of Ringwood hop pellets (60 mins)
30g Amarillo hop pellets (30 mins)
45g Cascade hop pellets (5 mins)

Safale US 56

Grains were mashed for 60 mins in 15 ltrs water and temp settled at 66 deg. Mashtun lost 4 degrees over the hour.
I batch sparged with 2 lots of what I thought was 10 ltrs but looking back I think I probably only ended up with around 25 ltrs in the kettle.
I needed to leave the lid on (slightly ajar) to maintain a rolling boil even though I have a 4 ring burner. I only have a normal regulator; perhaps a high pressure one will give me more heat.
Having said that though I lost a fair bit through evaporation as I only ended up with 19 ltrs in the fermenter.
I was expecting a final volume of around 25 ltrs and upped the hops slightly in anticipation of this, so it may be little overhopped. Lucky I like hops.

I topped up with another 3 ltrs water to give me 22 ltrs and ended up with SG of 1.048 which I'm pretty happy with. Would this be around 65 - 70% efficiency?

All in all it was a great day. I think my brew days have changed forever.

Cheers and thanks again. :beer:

Scott

 

[DJR]

You'll never look back. Efficiency is probably about the 65-70% mark as you say which is good for starters. Time will tell whether that stays, your methods will get better as time goes on and your efficiency will go up.

Looks like a tasty brew - let us all know how it turns out.

 

[razz]

Great stuff Jerry ! If you want to check your efficiency you can download a trial version of Promash or maybe Beersmith.

 

[Fents]

Great stuff Jerry ! If you want to check your efficiency you can download a trial version of Promash or maybe Beersmith.

I downloaded Beersmith last night and had a play i find it very confusing and American'ised. No Australian grains etc etc. I know you can add grains and stuff but it looks like hard work.

Nice work on the AG Jerry, sounds tasty!

 

[Jerry]

Cheers guys,

Had a lot of fun doing it and it was great to hear the familar airlock sounds this morning. Smells good too!

razz,

I'm going to organise one of the brewing software programs when I sort out some computer issues at home.

Scott

 

[Batz]

Great stuff Jerry ! If you want to check your efficiency you can download a trial version of Promash or maybe Beersmith.

I downloaded Beersmith last night and had a play i find it very confusing and American'ised. No Australian grains etc etc. I know you can add grains and stuff but it looks like hard work.

Nice work on the AG Jerry, sounds tasty!

I have the Australian grains for Beersmith,PM me your email and I'll send you the import

Batz

 

[Aaron]

The Australian grains for Beersmith and Promash can be downloaded from their respective web sites. The Beersmith one is easy to find, in the updates section i think. The promash one is not so easy to track down, it is something like promash.com/dowmloads/maltcraft.??? If you do a search you can find the links on here.

 

[Screwtop]

Congrats Jerry, good on you'

That recipe can't fail. You will be back on here in two weeks (if you keg) telling us how much you enjoy your first AG.

 

[Jerry]

Thanks Screwtop.

Yeah I do keg and I have a spare keg waiting for it.

This weekend will be spent racking it and making room in the fridge for it. :chug:

It will be in the keg sooner rather than later.

Scott

 

[len]

The Australian grains for Beersmith and Promash can be downloaded from their respective web sites. The Beersmith one is easy to find, in the updates section i think. The promash one is not so easy to track down, it is something like promash.com/dowmloads/maltcraft.??? If you do a search you can find the links on here.

Just found it - http://www.promash.com/data/maltcraft.mim.

It's got Weyermann's, Joe White, Thomas Fawcett & Hoepfner.

No Powells!

 

[Fingerlickin_B]

Just found it - http://www.promash.com/data/maltcraft.mim.

It's got Weyermann's, Joe White, Thomas Fawcett & Hoepfner.

No Powells!

All I got was a compressed text file.

*Edit* Databases/Grain, Extract, Sugars/Import :super:

PZ.

 

[Jerry]

Well, 4 days after entering the keg yesterday it began leaving it.

And I must say I'm VERY happy with the outcome. I'm not terribly good at describing beers but I'II give it a go.

Its quite bitter but not too much and seems to be well balanced. And the hop flavour and aroma is fantastic. The colour is a lot darker than I was expecting, probably mid to dark amber. Would this be from the Munich malt?

I think the most noticable difference I found when I compared it with my extract brews was it came across as having a 'cleaner' taste.
I'm not unhappy with my extract brews and I'II probably still do the occaissional one for casual quaffing, but I suspect my brew days will be of the longer variety.

Cheers

Scott

 

[beerbelly]

Jerry in regards to your 4ring burner try putting something shiney under the burner.With mine i wrap aluminum alfoil around and old bbq plate, you will be surprised at the extra heat it will generate.no trouble getting 33liters to a rolling boil.Hope this helps.
Regards Kev

 

[Jerry]

Thanks for the tip beerbelly.

I'II give it a go next brew (Wednesday week) with a better wind barrier as well.

Cheers

Scott

 

[PistolPatch]

Nice work Jerry! It's great to be able to have beers that you can drink so soon after fermenting, eh?

Did you see anyone else do an AG before you had a crack or did you just dive in? I'm always fascinated by those who do their first AG without one on one help. If you did do this, I'd love to hear what info, experience etc, gave you the confidence to have a crack.

Top stuff to you and all the others (most of whom I've missed) who have recently have had a crack.

Cheers
PP

 

[Jerry]

G'day PP.

No I didn't actually see anyone else do an AG before my attempt.

When I got back into brewing a bit over a year ago I had no intention of doing AG's. But over time I just felt that while I was happy with my extract brews it could somehow be better. I ended up doing a few partials and was extremely happy with these. But they were taking me around 4 hours and I thought if I'm going to spend that much time I may as well 'go all the way'.

It was then just a matter of getting the equipment together and doing lots of reading and thinking. The thing I found the most daunting was sparging; trying to work out the best way. Everyone has their own way and I found that in the end the more I read the more confused I became. The turning point or when the penny finally dropped was when I found a post that Jayse had written a couple of years ago on Grumpy's about batch sparging. The way he explained it just made sense to me. BTW, thank you Jayse! Like the title of this thread - Its all YOUR fault!

Once I'd got my things together it was time to stop thinking about it and just do it. I treated the first one as a bit of an experiment to see how everything worked. My mash tun is a simple 44ltr esky with a single length of SS braid and I was worried about how effective it would be. The end result is it worked better than I had hoped.

The rest of the process is all pretty simple and I think this is where doing 1 hour extract boils and experimenting with hops really helped.

In the end its just a lot of fun and I really do enjoy the process as much as :chug: it.

Gee that might do. This post is starting to look like some of you efforts.

Cheers and thanks for the compliments.

Scott


Edit - spelling as usual