1st AG

[Tourist]

Sorry, couldn't help myself - had to share:



This little bad boy is my first attempt at an all-grain brew and, yes, there will be no turning back. My best beer to date by a mile (even though I overdid the hops big time). Best part is that it's only a week in the bottle. The beer has a number of flaws (too much hop flavour, cloudy as hell, perhaps a little thin), but I couldn't be happier. Was surprised by the voluminous head, which dissipated a bit as I scrambled for the camera and fought off the 2year-old (hand in photo), but lasted to the finish.

In summary, it's a pale/amber ale with amarillo and Coopers IPA yeast (S-33?). The photo makes it look a lot darker than what it actually is. I have minimal equipment for all-grain and absolutely no patience, so did a half-size (11L) batch, BIAB, no-chill. If you care to read the recipe and method, it does little more than illustrate that the dodgiest of methods can result in some awesome beer. And hey, it's heaps of fun!

Can't wait for my next one!

Recipe and method:
2100g MO Ale malt
50g Med crystal (all I had left)
50g Cara amber (ditto)
20g Chocolate malt
26g Amarillo (40min)
10g Amarillo (10min)
S-33 yeast

Mashed-in with 6L water at 75C and kept mash temp to about 60C for 45 min (had some issues keeping the temp constant)

Raised mash temp to about 70C for another 45 min.

Drained bag and transferred wort to another vessel while I returned bag to pot and added another 9L of pseudo-sparge water at 80C and left for 15 mins before draining bag again. Added 1st lot of wort back to the big pot.

Boil only 40 min, as I miscalculated IBUs (63!) and had to cut boil short by 20 min. Left in pot outside overnight to cool (lid on, covered in a towel). Siphoned to fermenter in the morning and added a couple of litres of water to lower SG, which may have been elevated due to a lot of break material (I think my boil wasn't as vigorous or long as is should have been, no Irish Moss, either). Fermented at 18ish for two weeks. Didn't rack - other fermenter full. Bottled in Grolsch swing-tops (for a bit of "bling-factor", primed with a heaped tsp dextrose).

Bottoms up!

[mobydick]

Top Work for a tourist. Hope to emulate your courageous efforts some time soon.Its all about the effort dude - oh, and the reward. Cheers & Bon Jovi

[Kevnlis]

Hmm..overdid the Amerillo? Are you sure? LOL

Nice work mate, glad you are enjoying it!

[yardglass]

Nice work Tourist, no turning back now, as if you'd want to !

Cheers

[blandy]

Good work, Tourist. Welcome to the AG club!

There's plenty of stuff that can go wrong with any sort of homebrew, but the most important thing to do is not worry and have fun. Looks like you've got that sorted!

Like other brews, it should get better with age, the hop flavour will probably mellow out a bit too.

[KEG]

nice work

if you think the hops are overdone, keep in mind it's only a week old. give it a month then re-assess

[Tourist]

Thanks for the encouragement, fellas. The hops are a bit too prominent and yes, should mellow with age, provided they are given the chance! I love my hops, but was actually aiming for something with a bit more malt in the balance, as I've heard good things about the MO malt.

Backed this one up the other day with an AG stout. This time I used Koppafloc (Irish Moss?) in the boil and got a whole lotta crap at the bottom of the kettle that I managed to keep out of the fermenter. Pity it will be too black to detect any haze improvement, though.

Thanks again.

[warra48]

Happy to report I did my first AG yesterday, using Trough Lolly's SNPA recipe.
I did it flying blind, as I hadn't got my head around Beersmith as yet.
I ended up with only 17½ litres. Beersmith now tells me I used too little water for dough in, and too little for the sparge. Will have to work out some way of measuring my boil volume in the pot.
Efficiency obviously not the greatest at a guess, but the OG post boil was exactly 1050 at 20ºC. Will probably be too hoppy for a while, because of the smaller volume, but the sample seemed great to me.
Managed to chill it down from boiling to 20ºC in 25 minutes.
WLP001 culture has it happily bubbling away today, with about 3 cm of krauesen.
Will rack next week, then CC for a week before bottling (and no, I don't mind bottling).
Hope the AG brews will be as good as they are reported to be.

[Tourist]

Great stuff, Warra.

You touch on an issue I was wondering about:

How, in practice, do you measure the amount of water that you add to your mash?

I transfer from HLT to mash with a 2L jug. Is this the sort of thing that others do, or should I etch markings on the inside of the HLT (a hot water urn) to measure the water as I add it directly to the mash?

Cheers

[blandy]

Use the jug. When they tell you "use 8L of water" it means exactly that, not "top up the mash tun until you have 8L of stuff in there"

if you use notches on the tun, you'll include the volume of the grain too, and you'll therefore add not enough water.

Warra,

don't worry about not using Beersmith. I've tried it a few times and actually prefer to do the calculations with my own spreadsheet, or even by hand (yes, I am a bit nerdy ). I reckon there's a huge benefit in knowing how to do the calculations, instead of getting beersmith (or any other brewing software) to do them for you. Pretty much all the calculations are outlined in Palmer (http://www.howtobrew.com).

That said, if you like beersmith, there's nothing wrong with using it.

[warra48]

Great stuff, Warra.

You touch on an issue I was wondering about:

How, in practice, do you measure the amount of water that you add to your mash?

I transfer from HLT to mash with a 2L jug. Is this the sort of thing that others do, or should I etch markings on the inside of the HLT (a hot water urn) to measure the water as I add it directly to the mash?

Cheers

Thanks Tourist.
Yeah, I used a jug, and counted the litres I put into the mash (not enough this time, but hey, we are on a learning curve).
My concern is to have some accurate way of measuring the total volume of wort drained into my boil pot. I was thinking of measuring accurate quantities of water into the pot, and marking the litres on a brass tube. That way I will hopefully be able to work out the amount absorbed by the grain, and the dead space in my mash tun (guesstimated at no more than about .5 litres).
Once I know the total volume at commencement of the boil I should also be able to measure the amount lost to evaporation. I guess I need all those figures to set up beersmith properly for my system.
As you said, what have others done?

[warra48]

Use the jug. When they tell you "use 8L of water" it means exactly that, not "top up the mash tun until you have 8L of stuff in there"

if you use notches on the tun, you'll include the volume of the grain too, and you'll therefore add not enough water.

Warra,

don't worry about not using Beersmith. I've tried it a few times and actually prefer to do the calculations with my own spreadsheet, or even by hand (yes, I am a bit nerdy ). I reckon there's a huge benefit in knowing how to do the calculations, instead of getting beersmith (or any other brewing software) to do them for you. Pretty much all the calculations are outlined in Palmer (http://www.howtobrew.com).

That said, if you like beersmith, there's nothing wrong with using it.

Thanks Blandy, you posted as I was doing mine! I do have beersmith now, so will try for a while to see how it goes. Having said that, I also have Palmer's book, so could do it manually once I am happy with my next few brews.

[Tourist]

Use the jug. When they tell you "use 8L of water" it means exactly that, not "top up the mash tun until you have 8L of stuff in there"

if you use notches on the tun, you'll include the volume of the grain too, and you'll therefore add not enough water.

Cheers. Was actually thinking to notch the HLT, not the tun for this very reason.

Looks like the jug is the way to go at the moment, though.

My concern is to have some accurate way of measuring the total volume of wort drained into my boil pot.

Great question, that I have often wondered - how do people measure the pre and post-boil volumes? I guess you can measure the post-boil volume by what goes in the fermenter, but do people use any other method? (I ask because I don't have volume indicators on my fermenters.....yet.....)

[lethaldog]

Unless you add your water to the tun first

[Kevnlis]

I measure the depth of the liquid in the stockpot with a tape measure, I have worked out the amount of mm per litre of water. It is only approximate, but close enough.

[Tourist]

Unless you add your water to the tun first

Thanks for unclarifying!

Would work for mash-in, but not for the sparge, I assume, unless you were going to mash and sparge with the same volume of water - you could mash-in by adding water, then grain (ala lethaldog). Mix. Mark level with something, then batch-sparge with same amount of water by filling to the same final volume level.

Genius! Next question:

Are there any major issues extraction-wise with mashing and batch spargeing with equal volumes?

[Tipsy]

My concern is to have some accurate way of measuring the total volume of wort drained into my boil pot.

Great question, that I have often wondered - how do people measure the pre and post-boil volumes? I guess you can measure the post-boil volume by what goes in the fermenter, but do people use any other method? (I ask because I don't have volume indicators on my fermenters.....yet.....)

My method is not to measure the pre boil volume
It's working so far

[lethaldog]

I measure both my sparge and mash water with a jug but i was merely suggesting that it would be fine to measure in the tun if you added your water first, this would also be good for sparging if you marked the depth after adding grain, only problem is in the majority of mashes you will need more sparge water than mash water and is it really worth the guess, its a whole lot simpler to just measure it

[warra48]

I measure both my sparge and mash water with a jug but i was merely suggesting that it would be fine to measure in the tun if you added your water first, this would also be good for sparging if you marked the depth after adding grain, only problem is in the majority of mashes you will need more sparge water than mash water and is it really worth the guess, its a whole lot simpler to just measure it

I agree. It's not difficult to measure the required litres of water with a jug. Palmer also suggests we add the water to the grain, not the other way round.

[Kevnlis]

I measure both my sparge and mash water with a jug but i was merely suggesting that it would be fine to measure in the tun if you added your water first, this would also be good for sparging if you marked the depth after adding grain, only problem is in the majority of mashes you will need more sparge water than mash water and is it really worth the guess, its a whole lot simpler to just measure it

I agree. It's not difficult to measure the required litres of water with a jug. Palmer also suggests we add the water to the grain, not the other way round.

I always add the water to the grain, it helps to keep the dust in the brew rather than up your nose.