The Wheels Are In Motion

[Maeldric]

Well after several years of extract brewing and countless hours of reading and research i finally made the decision to get my act together and start doing AG. So a couple weeks ago bought my 55L esky and ordered a false bottom from beer belly. Just gotta work out what pot and burner im gonna need and will be all set. However in the meantime of buying and waiting I decided to do a mini BIAB of 10L to test a recipe for when i can go the whole way . Started off with pretty much the same ingredients as Nick JD in the Move To All Grain For Thirty Bucks thread. Though i used weyermanns grain instead of aussie. Started with the 2.17kg of grain, heated my 13L of water up to 70 degrees then chucked in the grain, wrapped the pot with some alfoil and threw a mountain of blankets on top . Had to go to the shops so by the time i came back to check on my mash it had been an hour and a half. To my surprise the temp had only dropped half a degree! Went from 66.5 to 66 in the hour and a half, awesome!. Lifted the bag and let it drain, giving a good squeeze and started the boil. Threw in 10g of amerillo for the 60 min addition, 5g amerillo 30min and 10g amerillo at flameout. Aimed to have about 9L of beer at the end and would have hit it perfectly if i would of remembered to allow for all the crap left in the pot at the end of the boil. So ended up with about 7.5L of beer with an OG of 1054. Bloody awesome effort for a first time AG'er i reckon. No chilled it over night and had a taste this morning while transfering to the fermenter, damm nice! The only sad part is seeing a meesely 7.5L of beer in my fermenter. Now i really need to get my act together and work out which burner and pot to buy as i well and truely have the AG bug now!

 

[BjornJ]

Good stuff!

Great feeling doing the AG thing, making beer from scratch, isn't it!

Makes me want to go and buy the malt from a farmer and grow my own hops, just to REALLY do it from scratch, hehe.



thanks
Bjorn

 

[Wisey]

Lol, the grain off farm isnt ready just yet, you gotta put it through the malting process first

Wet it, Turn It, Sprout it, Kiln It

Now you can use your malted barley

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Well after several years of extract brewing and countless hours of reading and research i finally made the decision to get my act together and start doing AG. So a couple weeks ago bought my 55L esky and ordered a false bottom from beer belly. Just gotta work out what pot and burner im gonna need and will be all set. However in the meantime of buying and waiting I decided to do a mini BIAB of 10L to test a recipe for when i can go the whole way . Started off with pretty much the same ingredients as Nick JD in the Move To All Grain For Thirty Bucks thread. Though i used weyermanns grain instead of aussie. Started with the 2.17kg of grain, heated my 13L of water up to 70 degrees then chucked in the grain, wrapped the pot with some alfoil and threw a mountain of blankets on top . Had to go to the shops so by the time i came back to check on my mash it had been an hour and a half. To my surprise the temp had only dropped half a degree! Went from 66.5 to 66 in the hour and a half, awesome!. Lifted the bag and let it drain, giving a good squeeze and started the boil. Threw in 10g of amerillo for the 60 min addition, 5g amerillo 30min and 10g amerillo at flameout. Aimed to have about 9L of beer at the end and would have hit it perfectly if i would of remembered to allow for all the crap left in the pot at the end of the boil. So ended up with about 7.5L of beer with an OG of 1054. Bloody awesome effort for a first time AG'er i reckon. No chilled it over night and had a taste this morning while transfering to the fermenter, damm nice! The only sad part is seeing a meesely 7.5L of beer in my fermenter. Now i really need to get my act together and work out which burner and pot to buy as i well and truely have the AG bug now!

Thats how easy it is - you will find you mash tun isn't a lot harder either. Just different. Well done on your first AG... doesn't matter ow small a batch it is, its still beer from scratch. Nice.

7.5L of 1.054 wort... would give you 9L of 1.045 - and that'll give you "normal" strength beer. So just adding water will give you 4 or so more stubbies.

The other thing you can do to be tight arsed about your volumes in small batch brewing - is to filter your trub. I occasionally run my kettle leftovers through a tea towel or some calico in a big funnel. That clears out all the hops and most of the break material. It takes an hour or two to drip through, but then - a quick re-boil to re-sanitise and let it cool down in its pot (lid on) overnight. Add it to your fermenter with the main batch.

If that sounds like a bit too much buggering about - just boiling your hops in a hop bag (made out of BIAB material) can cut your kettle trub losses considerably vs boiling them loose.

Good luck with your future brewing.

Cheers

Thirsty

 

[Wardhog]

let it cool down in its pot (lid on) overnight.

Does it make it really difficult to get rid of the tide line on the pot the next day? I have an 80L aluminium pot that I frequently do double batches in, and no-chill in some fermenters overnight - cubes if I'm not pitching yeast the next day - and it would be a whole lot easier to let the wort cool in the pot overnight, but I'm worried about getting the baked-on scum lines off the next day.

 

[under]

I went with the italian spiral burner and adjustable med pressure regulator from beersmith. My pot is a 50L keg, with the top cutout, a weldless bulkhead, with a 1/2" 3 piece ballvalve and 1/2" tube compression fitting with a copper pickup tube. Im BIAB.

 

[Supra-Jim]

Wardhog,

I have an ally kettle and cleaning the 'tide lines' the next day (on the odd occasion when a brew finished very late, and me quite tipsy! h34r: ) is pretty easy. I just wet them down with plenty of water and give a good rub with a regular sponge. Once their off, continue cleaning as normal.

Cheers SJ

 

[Wardhog]

Wardhog,

I have an ally kettle and cleaning the 'tide lines' the next day (on the odd occasion when a brew finished very late, and me quite tipsy! h34r: ) is pretty easy. I just wet them down with plenty of water and give a good rub with a regular sponge. Once their off, continue cleaning as normal.

Cheers SJ

Cheers. If it's no harder than cleaning it up straight after the boil, I think this will become a change to my brew day process.

 

[Screwtop]

The only sad part is seeing a meesely 7.5L of beer in my fermenter. Now i really need to get my act together and work out which burner and pot to buy as i well and truely have the AG bug now!

Well now that you know how to do it, for a decent sized batch, make another and pitch onto the 7.5L starter you have fermenting. :lol:

Cheers and well done,

Screwy

 

[Nick JD]

When you see 9L in a fermenter it's like you could almost fit it into one glass.

But 24 x 375 = 9000

Good to hear about the upscaling (and all that amarillo) - I'll have to do that some day too. For those who are gonna do a few carton-sized brews, it's nice to make them in a little fermenter or your supplies dwindle rapidly!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Does it make it really difficult to get rid of the tide line on the pot the next day? I have an 80L aluminium pot that I frequently do double batches in, and no-chill in some fermenters overnight - cubes if I'm not pitching yeast the next day - and it would be a whole lot easier to let the wort cool in the pot overnight, but I'm worried about getting the baked-on scum lines off the next day

Wardy - I was only talking about the leftovers from straining the kettle trub out of a small batch brew - so a couple of litres maximum. That means a medium small stainless saucepan on the stove for me. Scrubby and elbow grease for cleaning.

And it has had all the break and hop material filtered out; I personally wouldn't consider just letting a full batch - with hops & break still in there - cool down in the kettle overnight. I know some people do it, but kettle trub tastes nasty and I want my wort away from it ASAP, so its whirlpool and cube clear as possible wort for my no-chilling.

I use plenty of techniques that could be considered shortcuts... but you have to draw the line somewhere and leaving my wort sit overnight on something I know for a fact tastes bad, is where I draw mine.

 

[technocat]

Lol, the grain off farm isnt ready just yet, you gotta put it through the malting process first

Forget grain, forget canola, flavour of the month is growing poppy's for the pharmaceutical companies, that's if you want to take a punt against the elements.

 

[Maeldric]

Ok so my false bottom arrive from beer belly yesterday, THANKS! Hooked it up to my esky and basked in its glory. Made me wish i had ordered my burner and pot at the same time so i could get into it straight away. Then an idea struck! I have about 20kg of old grain i ordered just over a year ago when my mates and I were gonna start AG together but it all fell apart. I thought well i can at least have a trial run of my mash to work out temperatures and volumes. So i grabbed about 4.75kg of grain, and started heating my strike water. Got 14L of water at 71 into the tun and then in with the grain. Turns out i need to heat it a little hotter cause once it was all stirred i was sitting at 64. Little bit of hot water and i was at 66, lid on and time for a beer!

As all that starch was being converted into sweet malty goodness i had another thought (funny how beer makes you think huh?) The grain had been in vacuum packed bags in a cool dark place for this last year and boy did it smell good in the mash tun. So i decided to actually go ahead and brew the lot. I only have a 20L pot so had to boil it all in 2 goes. So after the hour i added about 6L of close to boiling water and got the temp of the mash up to about 75 for a mashout. Drained 14L of wort which turned out to be 1050 at 60 degrees. Started the boil and added 5g each of Tettnang and Hursbrucker. After the hour i whirl pooled and drained it into a cube with another 5g of each hop.

As all this was going on i did the sparge and ended up with another 14L of wort which was 1030 at 60 degrees. This was then also boiled with 5g of each hop, whirlpooled and drained into the cube with the first wort. No chilled it over night and just checked the gravity this morning. 1050 with bang on 20L. Happy times. Now as long as there is nothing wrong with the grain i used i think i will end up with some damm nice beer in a few weeks time!

Don't remember what the grain was but i do remember it was made up of mostly vienna and munich with a couple of speciality malts also.

So all in all I learnt a few valuable lessons with grain i thought as expendable before actually making myself a proper recipe.

One quick question though, Is there any problem with leaving my unboiled wort for an hour or so like i did? If there arent any ill effects I might give this another go with a proper recipe while waiting for my pot and burner.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

nah - no real problem, its not ideal, but its no beer wrecking tragedy either. If a small pot is what you have - then go for it until you get a bigger one.