Sleepless Nights - Canberra All Grain Brewer Needed

[Carboy]

Hello fellow brewers (predominantly in the Canberra region),

First up I apologies for the jibber below, but I want to give you the background before I get to my question.

I've been brewing for 9 months now. I joined AHB forum in March 09 and not a day goes by where you guys don't amaze me with your knowledge' theories, observations and readiness to help anyone who needs help with their home brewing.

Over the past 9 months I have put-down 31 different brews, so I can pretty well say I'm hooked big time. My family and friends really love my brews, especially my wife and she's never liked beer.

More recently I find myself having sleepless night all because of these two words "All Grain". It's frustrating me no end, it's in my brain day and night, while I read the AHB forum, eating dinner, drinking beer, fishing, driving, everywhere, anytime these bloody two words "All Grain" are turning me into a nervous wreck.

Now I ask you, are these two words"All Grain" some sort of special message sent to me by the AHB God with only objective in mind, and that is to convert me to an "All Grain" brewer.

All Grain looks very interesting and a lot of fun, but I really have no idea how All Grain is done and how much equipment and work is involved. I've read the forum and a few books, but that's never as good as practical/ hands-on learning from an expert.

My first port of call was to attend a Canberra Brewers Club meeting, but my work for various reasons has stopped me from attending a meeting this year. That said here's my question...

Is there a Canberra All Grain Brewer out there who would be willing to let me watch you make a brew and explain all the equipment and the science of blending grains/hops etc

I live on the north-side of Canberra, but I'm willing to travel within a couple of hours to learn what all the fuss is about with All Grain, and I'm happy to bring the beers and munchies.

Please PM me if you can help, as these sleepless nights are driving me insane :wacko: .

Cheers
Carboy :icon_cheers:

 

[pdilley]

Couple hours? You could be in Victoria by then!!!

20 minutes and you could have gone from north of the ACT and driven all the way down to the south end of ACT an popped into Collins Brew Your Own At Home shop in Kambah to pick up 5 kilos of Pale Ale Malt to do your first All Grain brew!

That was a hint mind you

Im in the North side but not putting down a brew as I got some already done and fermenting and spending my immediate time building a grain mill bench to crack my own grain fresh into the pot.

Canberra Brewers club president just put on a Come watch AG Beer beeing made brewing event one or two Sundays ago. I missed 3 months of meetings and joining due to work issues and look at what you missed already! Second hint, send the excuses out the window and get yourself to the next meeting, you'll thank yourself a million times over. Jus do it You are missing out on discounts on your brewing purchases by not joining
so you are costing yourself money by not joining!

I do BIAB brewing so I use about 1/3rd the gejar AG brewers who kitted out before BIAB was well known had to buy. Basically all you buy is a large restaurant sized stockpot from allquip and have it shipped to you in a day or two and you are set. All you need to get in the time you wait for the pot to arrive is a thermometer to measure water temperatures and a square metre of polyester swiss voile from Spotlight.

Thats it. You dont even have to sew it into a shaped bag just dump 5 kilos of grain in the centre and gather up all the ends and tie it up with twine like a jolly big pudding bag.

You warm up water in the pot then dunk you big grain bag in. The water is warm and not boiling hot. Dunk your bag like a giant tea bag if you want. After an hour or so take the bag out. Now heat the pot until the water boils and boil for an hour or so and tossing in hops near the end and wirlfloc tablet you are done. Siphon into nochill cube you bought at Brew Your Own in Kambah as its in stock and best price and you are done. Cool overnight, dump into your fermenter, toss in yeast and you are done.

You know how to take it from there.

See, I used no fancy scary words and its a simple process and now you see it is so. Add the fancy words, confusion and lots of details and you'll be scared and confused.

AG is a piece of piss. Your first AG will taste better than your best of your 31 brews you have done and you will be so impressed you will do nothing but all grain ever again -- generally speaking.

Done. Can you make a cup of tea? Can you boil water? Yes? Then you can AG brew using BIAB method. Full kit out adds more equipment and steps but after knowing how easy this is to then learn the new gear and methods isnt too hard either...


You have an amazing brewig future ahead of you. Grasp the AG!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

PS if any of the guys I know are brewing using full gear I can let you know. I might not see them until next meeting so just get to the next meeting Do Or Die!

 

[Maple]

If your work (or whatever) brings you to Melb, let me know. Happy to run a batch or 3 through the process with ya. But surely there are some other dark forces out there in Canbeera, willing to take another soul to the promised land...

BTW, the dark side is good... welcome to the gate, come in, you'll never want to leave.. but be warned, you will have to make sacrifices...

 

[Carboy]

Brewer Pete,

Thank you for the great advice. With a smile on my face I feel the pain easing, the darkside is not looking so scary now :super: .


Maple,

Thank you for the offer. All my family live in Melbourne, you might just get a PM one day to let you know I'm coming to visit .

Cheers
Carboy :icon_cheers:

 

[Maple]

Maple,

Thank you for the offer. All my family live in Melbourne, you might just get a PM one day to let you know I'm coming to visit .

Cheers
Carboy :icon_cheers:

No worries, just look me up. :icon_cheers:

 

[sm0902]

Carboy ... make the jump to AG.

I had done several brews; Kit & Kilo then Extract with Grain ... but the first AG I made was just so much better.

Actually, I found it almost impossible to drink one of my previous beers after changing to AG. In fact, I tipped 60 bottles out I was that disappointed with 'the old way'.

And, if you're not kegging - change to that at the same time. The time saved in washing bottles can be invested into brew day.

My 2c

 

[seemax]

I live on the north-side of Canberra, but I'm willing to travel within a couple of hours to learn what all the fuss is about with All Grain, and I'm happy to bring the beers and munchies.

Seriously, there is no FUSS with all grain. Once you have done it once it's like an epiphany. It really is that EASY.

Brew in a bag (BIAB) is so simple. As a few people have said, get a large pot, large piece of swiss voile (curtain section of Spotlight). Fill your pot up with water, heat water to 75C approx, add bag (swiss voile), add grain, mix well, cover, wait 60mins. DONE! That's the mash. I would really urge you to get Beersmith (or similar), it just makes your life so much easier.

Lift bag, squeeze and drain. Bring up to boil... add hops... DONE! You have made hopped wort.

Then drain into a cube/plastic container/etc and throw it in a fridge until it reaches pitching temp. Pour into your fermentor, keeping all the hops and trub behind, add yeast... voila.

No magic or mystery to it. Have a crack.

 

[pdilley]

Except for measuring mash temp before and after you dunk your grain bag in you could honestly never take another reading; not even take a hydrometer reading *ever* and still have the end beer come out better than what you have made so far.

Make it ultra easy to ease the pain, then add in all the measurement tools, controls and software and other things nkt needed but let you take it to the next level to craft brewing or scientific brewing depending on how much your bent is towards science track or the arts track or bit of both.

But it really is as simple as fill water in my pot to between the two rivets that keep the handle on the pot. Warm to temp, dunk bag of 5kg malted pale ale malt grain, after hour to 90 mins remove, boil it for an hour, toss in 35 grams of fresh POR pellets, a wirlfloc. Flame off, siphon to no chill. Next morning tip into fermenter with lots of splashing now allowed and encouraged, toss in US-05 yeast and ferment it clean at controlled Ale temperatures and wait two weeks. Bottle and wait 2-4 weeks and drink.

That easy and in plain English.

Change one thing the next brew only. Maybe dunk your bag up and down all the way through mashing. Maybe change hop variety. Then on 3rd change only one thing. Near 10 you'll get sick of same old and want to push out into new styles or try liquid yeasts. Unless you are used to real Ales you may find the esters initially remind you of infection and you may not like that first hit on first sip -- puts many Aussie mega swill drinkers off craft homebrew. So ultra clean fermenting yeat like US-05 your best bet for first few until or unless you are ready to get serious!

It only gets better the more time, effort and skill you slowly learn and apply to your AG brews.

Because of the scariness of first AG brews I would not add learnint all the terminilogy and building effort behind kegging if you are already overwhelmed. Become easy with the new mehods and naturally the dark side will suck you in so hard because of your ultra tasty beers you'll drink them so fast you need to make double baches!! tripple batches!!! and only then you'll say Buggar thats a lot of beer to bottle in one go! Then you'll know the dark side has you firm and will guide you to the store to get kegging gear! Muhahah... erm welcome to the AG world!

Its a lot of work to make a kit beer taste good. Its a lot more work to make an AG beer taste bad!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Carboy]

Seriously, there is no FUSS with all grain. Once you have done it once it's like an epiphany. It really is that EASY.

Brew in a bag (BIAB) is so simple. As a few people have said, get a large pot, large piece of swiss voile (curtain section of Spotlight). Fill your pot up with water, heat water to 75C approx, add bag (swiss voile), add grain, mix well, cover, wait 60mins. DONE! That's the mash. I would really urge you to get Beersmith (or similar), it just makes your life so much easier.

Lift bag, squeeze and drain. Bring up to boil... add hops... DONE! You have made hopped wort.

Then drain into a cube/plastic container/etc and throw it in a fridge until it reaches pitching temp. Pour into your fermentor, keeping all the hops and trub behind, add yeast... voila.

No magic or mystery to it. Have a crack.

Thanks Seemax,

AG is looking and sounding easier with every post I read.

Just two questions please...

1) How do I know what grains go with what, and the same for hops? It can't be a simple as kilo of this and a kilo of that. Will Brewsmith help me with that? I see CraftBrewer has it for $29.95 I will order it tomorrow. and

2) Your post and the guys before you all mention one pot, so what are these fancy three tiered things with flame throwers and eskies attached?
Reading these posts I'm guessing I don't need that fancy equipment.

Thank you
C :icon_cheers:

 

[seemax]

All grain (from here on known as AG) is as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Got time and money? Start researching HERMS, RIMS, PIDS, etc.

Want simple to make great tasting beer? BIAB!

Eskies are used as mash tuns simply because they insulate well.

If you don't think you can manage to bring 20+ L up to boil then you need to consider a partial (half extract, half all grain).

What sort of beer do you want to make? Aussie style lagers? UK bitters? American Pales? Let me know and I'll make up a recipe for you.


Cheers...
Stef

 

[cozmocracker]

Hey Carboy,

i will be doing my version of an AG brew within the next week or so (2 vessel BIAB) so if you would like to come and help feel free, my schedule is flexible so let me know, i live in Hall so not to far for you to travel.

Also you can make AG brewing as simple or as complicated as you like, i did my first AG on my 12th brew, no stopping me now!

cheers cozmo

 

[Carboy]

All grain (from here on known as AG) is as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Got time and money? Start researching HERMS, RIMS, PIDS, etc.

Want simple to make great tasting beer? BIAB!

Eskies are used as mash tuns simply because they insulate well.

If you don't think you can manage to bring 20+ L up to boil then you need to consider a partial (half extract, half all grain).

What sort of beer do you want to make? Aussie style lagers? UK bitters? American Pales? Let me know and I'll make up a recipe for you.


Cheers...
Stef

Stef,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

I can get a big pot easy (what size?), and I have an old round BBQ cast iron gas burner so heating won't be a problem, plus I have a conditioning fridge to chill the mash (it has a lager in it at the moment)

My AG beer preferance would be in this order... 1: American Pale Ale (I've never tried a true APA) 2: UK bitter (Love them) 3: Something similar to a Hoegaarden.

Thank you
C :icon_cheers:

 

[Steve]

Carboy

Have a look at this site. Follow the pics at the bottom of the page. This is what I used to get my head around AG Brewing. I still use the same process. More than welcome to come round to mine to see one done. I normally start at 6.00am though. If your interested I could do an afternoon brew one Sunday arvo in a couple of weeks time? Honestly its a piece of piss. Regarding recipes, follow tried and tested recipes first up (from the AHB database). Once you get a feel for what goes with what i.e. grains and hops then you'll soon be formulated your own recipes. Nothing wrong with one grain one hops brews either. Get yourself to see Col at brew your own at home in Kambah and ask how to join the Canberra Brewers.

http://cruisenews.net/brewing/infusion/

Cheers
Steve

 

[therook]

Carboy,

PM the bloke in the link i have given you, he often brews live on the net and he is in Canberra, i have little doubt he would show you how to A.G

Link

Rook

 

[cozmocracker]

Good to see fellow brewers offering their experience, I have made an offer for carboy to help me with my next brew day next week, we just need to finalise a time, but you can never have enough information, i will be showing carboy how simple BIAB can be!

 

[HoppingMad]

2) Your post and the guys before you all mention one pot, so what are these fancy three tiered things with flame throwers and eskies attached?
Reading these posts I'm guessing I don't need that fancy equipment.

C :icon_cheers:

I have a 3 tiered thing. It sounds like you've seen the pics in the gallery section. A good example of this kind of set-up is owned by Brendo if you're curious. His set-up is famous in these parts. Have a peek at it if none of the below makes sense.

For three tiers you have three pots.

Pot 1: The top pot or vessel and the first you use is your Hot Liquor Tun (HLT) - You heat up your water to use with this. No grain touches it.

Pot 2: The middle vessel is your Mash Tun - This is the esky you refer to - hot water goes in here followed by cracked grain. Most have some sort of device on the bottom for straining.

Pot 3: The last vessel or bottom vessel is the boiler. This is where your run-off of hot water and grain goes for the final boil. This is also where you add your hops- into this vessel.

There's plenty more variables to it but that's the basics.

I highly recommend you getting your hands on a copy of John Palmer's How to Brew, which explains in good detail everything - or watching some of the 'From grain to glass' with Joe Polvino videos on YouTube. His setup uses a pump which is a little more elaborate, but it gives you an understanding as to how these things work and how the process works.

There are cheap and expensive ways to build your equipment - some here use their stove tops to heat stuff up, others use urns. Some have expensive pots with stainless strainers, others use food grade plastic buckets with holes drilled in them. Some use only two vessels, others use three. As long as you get hotwater runoff from grain you're sweet - there are heaps of ways to skin a cat.

To work out what's going to be best for you I advise you to get to a Club meet. You'll get a clear view from experts as to what all your options are. For me, joining a club was the best thing I ever did - I have to drive for ages and it is a mad rush after work, but once you're there it's awesome.

All the best on your journey to the dark side h34r:

Hopper.

 

[Dave70]

But it really is as simple as fill water in my pot to between the two rivets that keep the handle on the pot. Warm to temp, dunk bag of 5kg malted pale ale malt grain, after hour to 90 mins remove, boil it for an hour, toss in 35 grams of fresh POR pellets, a wirlfloc. Flame off, siphon to no chill. Next morning tip into fermenter with lots of splashing now allowed and encouraged, toss in US-05 yeast and ferment it clean at controlled Ale temperatures and wait two weeks. Bottle and wait 2-4 weeks and drink.

Forgive me, but in spite or Brewer Pete's comprehensive description, theres one more thing I need to know. Say we are doing a 25L batch, dose the volume of liquid matter ( within reason, of course ) as long as the grain quanity is there?
What Im getting at is can I do the the mash in say 10L of water, drain, boil, chill, add to the fermenter and then just top up to 25L to make up the volume as you would with a kit / extract? Or is not doing a full boil missing the point of the excercise?

 

[seemax]

Two issues with that method, low efficiency and therefore lower than expected SG and hop utilisation (that rate at which bitterness is extracted from hops).

Big W has 16-20L pots for $20. Grab 2 pots. 2m of swiss voile, $20, cut in half.

For 23L batch, try about 5kg grain. Heat 15L water in each pot to strike temp (say 74C).
Line pots with bag, add half the grain to each, stir, etc... mash is done. Lift and drain each bag.
Boil each separately, you could in fact split the hops too or not... it's the IBU for the batch size that matters.

Post boil, drain the two pots carefully into a no-chill approved container... done!

 

[Steve]

Forgive me, but in spite or Brewer Pete's comprehensive description, theres one more thing I need to know. Say we are doing a 25L batch, dose the volume of liquid matter ( within reason, of course ) as long as the grain quanity is there?
What Im getting at is can I do the the mash in say 10L of water, drain, boil, chill, add to the fermenter and then just top up to 25L to make up the volume as you would with a kit / extract? Or is not doing a full boil missing the point of the excercise?

are you talking BIAB or mashtun?

 

[Dave70]

Two issues with that method, low efficiency and therefore lower than expected SG and hop utilisation (that rate at which bitterness is extracted from hops).

Big W has 16-20L pots for $20. Grab 2 pots. 2m of swiss voile, $20, cut in half.

For 23L batch, try about 5kg grain. Heat 15L water in each pot to strike temp (say 74C).
Line pots with bag, add half the grain to each, stir, etc... mash is done. Lift and drain each bag.
Boil each separately, you could in fact split the hops too or not... it's the IBU for the batch size that matters.

Post boil, drain the two pots carefully into a no-chill approved container... done!

Sweet, that's me sorted.
Hopefully my next post will see me with a beer glow and gushing about how great my brew turned out.

cheers!