My First All Grain

[Rudy]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to thank all you guys on this forum. I haven't posted much but read quite often. With all I have learned here my friend and I just completed our first all grain!

We made a Porter following the recipe in Palmer's book How to Brew. We scaled the batch size up to 25L, and dropped the efficiency to 65%. I substituted the American hops for English ones, and used an English yeast. This is what I ended up with into 25L:

Pale 2 row 38 ppg 5.9kg
Crystal 60 34 ppg 350g
Choc malt 29 ppg 340g
Black Patent 28 ppg 170g

20g Northern Brewer 10% 60 mins
31g Fuggles 4.5% 40 mins
19g Fuggles 4.5 % 20 mins

Wyeast 1335 British Ale II

I was a bit paranoid as my HBS said that is a lot of grain, and that it might not fit in my mash tun. I'd only done 4kg before. Cutting water back to 2.5L per kg I had no problems. Enough space for hot/cold water to adjust mash, however using Promash's calculator we nailed it! 69C as the recipe called. Sealed and checked after 1 hour, only lost 2C. Mashout, drained and sparged to 30L. 1.051 gravity, 72% efficiency. Everything working fine, making good time!

Boiled through hot break, added bittering hops, set timer etc. At the end of the boiler connected my new CFC, turn on tap, trickled then stopped! The hop filter (braid) on my kettle had blocked, with 25L of wort in the kettle! Much to the amusement of the 7 other uninvited mates who decided to show up and party! We bailed out the hot wort jug by jug, filtering through a musslin into a spare fermenter, then back into the kettle, through the cooler. HEAPS of hot side aeration

Added 2 litres of water to the wort, as the gravity was higher than we aimed for. 25 litres in the fermenter, 19 deg, aerated a bit, pitched the 1 litre yeast starter. Done.

Hydro sample tasted great, I hope the beer is ok! Big kraussen, bubbling away nicely

I'm concerned about the HUGE hot side aeration, and possible infection with a party in our brewery and blocked kettle at 1am! Was a good feeling to finally make an all grain after ages of collecting and making equipment. Wish me luck

 

[tangent]

good work.
don't worry about HSA, just wait until you taste your beer before you get too antsy.

 

[domonsura]

sounds awesome Rudy!

 

[matti]

Great stuff.
Have a read of this regarding hot wort aeration.
http://oz.craftbrewer.org/Library/Methods/...r/HSAmash.shtml

Don't worry too much and drink it early if you worried about stabilities.
Matti

 

[bugwan]

Top work Rudy! I think this site is responsible for popping more AG cherries than any other...it certainly inspired my first.

Nice choice on the Porter for the first one too - not only a superb drink at this time of year, it's quite a forgiving style - you'll be fine.

It sounds like you already know loads about AG brewing, keep up the practising, you'll never run out of new things to try. And then come the gadgets...

 

[T.D.]

good work.
don't worry about HSA, just wait until you taste your beer before you get too antsy.

Yeah, even if you did get HSA I dare say you will drink it too fast to see the effects anyway, as is customary with one's first all grain beer! :chug:

 

[Pumpy]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to thank all you guys on this forum. I haven't posted much but read quite often. With all I have learned here my friend and I just completed our first all grain!

We made a Porter following the recipe in Palmer's book How to Brew. We scaled the batch size up to 25L, and dropped the efficiency to 65%. I substituted the American hops for English ones, and used an English yeast. This is what I ended up with into 25L:

Pale 2 row 38 ppg 5.9kg
Crystal 60 34 ppg 350g
Choc malt 29 ppg 340g
Black Patent 28 ppg 170g

20g Northern Brewer 10% 60 mins
31g Fuggles 4.5% 40 mins
19g Fuggles 4.5 % 20 mins

Wyeast 1335 British Ale II

I was a bit paranoid as my HBS said that is a lot of grain, and that it might not fit in my mash tun. I'd only done 4kg before. Cutting water back to 2.5L per kg I had no problems. Enough space for hot/cold water to adjust mash, however using Promash's calculator we nailed it! 69C as the recipe called. Sealed and checked after 1 hour, only lost 2C. Mashout, drained and sparged to 30L. 1.051 gravity, 72% efficiency. Everything working fine, making good time!

Boiled through hot break, added bittering hops, set timer etc. At the end of the boiler connected my new CFC, turn on tap, trickled then stopped! The hop filter (braid) on my kettle had blocked, with 25L of wort in the kettle! Much to the amusement of the 7 other uninvited mates who decided to show up and party! We bailed out the hot wort jug by jug, filtering through a musslin into a spare fermenter, then back into the kettle, through the cooler. HEAPS of hot side aeration

Added 2 litres of water to the wort, as the gravity was higher than we aimed for. 25 litres in the fermenter, 19 deg, aerated a bit, pitched the 1 litre yeast starter. Done.

Hydro sample tasted great, I hope the beer is ok! Big kraussen, bubbling away nicely

I'm concerned about the HUGE hot side aeration, and possible infection with a party in our brewery and blocked kettle at 1am! Was a good feeling to finally make an all grain after ages of collecting and making equipment. Wish me luck

Great Rudi sure everything will be Ok mash temp a bit high or was that your sparging temp ?

Pumpy

 

[Tony]

It will be fine.

one of my best beers got treated like this.

I didnt know how to setup a false botton in an esky so i guessed. (pre-AHB years) the mash blocked it and i had to bucket it out into a bin, modify the pickup, bucket it back into the tun and run it out into the kettle.

mash temp dropped from 66 deg to 54 deg from memory and it was fine.

as said above, you wont have it long enough to wory about this HSA thing that i recon is a load of poop anyway. just my opinion

cheers

 

[stillscottish]

You can't call yourself a brewer until you've plunged your arm into a hot mash to reattach the braid to the tap!!

Campbell
been there, done that, got the third degree burns

 

[Tony]

yeah i tried that, 8" shifter in hand.

66 deg gives you about 6 seconds i recon to do the job. and i have a fairly high pain tollerance.

I even tries the wifes washing up gloves but that only gave me 8 seconds.

not long enough to find the pickup, letalone adjust a shifter to fir and undo it under the mash without seeing what your doing.

for those out there starting off.............. dont attempt this. learn form the idiots like me who thought they could do it.

just bucket it out!!!!!!!!

hehe

cheers

 

[tipsy_mcstagger]

I think this site is responsible for popping more AG cherries than any other...it certainly inspired my first.

Couldnty agree more, Inspired me. Drinking a nice banana hefeweizen now, the results of my frist AG. Still a bit flat but still VERY drinkable.

 

[Rudy]

Thanks guys for the reassurance. And if HSA only affects the shelf life of the beer then I reckon I'll be okay BTW the blockage was at near boil temp, not mash temp. And I found out how hot that is a few times, I need a longer spoon to stir with!

Planning next brew for the weekend, I have 5 more bottles of Wyeast 1335 to use (split 3 litre starter). Wasn't my yeast of choice, wanted to try 1028 but my LHBS was out of stock. Might try and IPA, again Palmer's recipe but I'll use Fuggles and Goldings EK.

Now to sort out that hop filter

 

[Polar Beer]

You can't call yourself a brewer until you've plunged your arm into a hot mash to reattach the braid to the tap!!

Campbell
been there, done that, got the third degree burns

I can't believe that
I did my first AG the other day (LCBA clone) and did exactly that. Dug the poor hand in for about 3 seconds, yanked it out and bounced around the kitchen like dying fly for the next few minutes. The language...my poor wife, boy and neighbours will never be the same h34r:.
Managed to avoid burns and had another go with dish gloves, then double dish gloves which gave me just enough time to connect it back again.

Should have bucketed it out alright, but at least I know I am a real brewer now. :beerbang:

 

[bonj]

But one question remains. How did you all know that the braid had come loose?

 

[KillerRx4]

Haha I think it was my 1st or 2nd mash I did the same thing. For some reason I expected my braid tied on to the threaded nipple with 50lb fishing line would stay attached.

I think the thought process was something like... its only 60 odd deg, not too hot. lol Went in 2 or 3 times before i decieded to find pots to dump the mash out into so I could reattach the braid.

Bonj, I knew because it came out wrapped around the paddle.

 

[bonj]

Bonj, I knew because it came out wrapped around the paddle.

Ahh... interesting. Mine is held in by stainless steel clamps. We'll know tomorrow if it remains intact. (It will be my first AG tomorrow).

 

[stillscottish]

But one question remains. How did you all know that the braid had come loose?

Because I said to myself, don't stir near the tap or youll knock the braid off - it was a bit of a jury rig with a couple of cable ties.
Of course I forgot and when I went to drain the mash tun I got a couple of spoonfuls of mash and then nothing, tap clogged with grain.

It wasn't as bad as I made out because, as I use a rectangular esky, I was able to tip it back so I didn't have to go that deep. Still bl**dy hot though.

Nowadays I just use a bit of a ss scrubby jammed into the end of the tap. Works a proper treat.

Campbell

 

[delboy]

stillscottish

if you go to rexel or lawrence and hanson you can get s/s ties for 2 bucks each or better still get 13mm OTK,s

as used on big beer line?

del

 

[Tim]

Hey,
My first post in a while as I have been living in the UK and doing a lot of drinking and not a lot of brewing!

When I first started all grain brewing my solution to a stuck sparge was to blow into the hose and clear out the copper manifold. You could blast a shot of CO2 into it of you are worried about any nasties.

Anyhow back to my local, which is a Fullers house!
Love the Pride!
Tim

 

[user 1153]

Yeah, even if you did get HSA I dare say you will drink it too fast to see the effects anyway, as is customary with one's first all grain beer! :chug:

and second, and third, and fourth, and fifth, and...........