First All Grain Brew Coming Up

Good Day Everyone;

I have gone from extract to extract/steeping to partial mash and now onto all grain brewing and my first two recipes that I am doing are the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone from BYO and the Blue Moon Clone from this forum, going with Wayne's #2 recipe.

My question is I have put together my mash tun and I will be doing batch sparging to start with. I have used a 10 gallon rubber maid round orange cooler as my mash tun. I have checked it for leaks using cold water at the 8 gallon mark for two hours and not a drop then the next day I used hot liquid to check temp retention. I ended up using gradually heated water to 150 degrees to the 7 gallon mark.... I started off with 100 degree water and stepped it up 20 degrees til I got to about 150 and held that temp within a degree for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

How do all of you "pre-heat" your mash tun coolers am I going about it the right way.

Thanks in advance.

Ron B.

If you are talking about pre-heating it before you add your strike water and grain I wouldn't bother. You will just want to compensate for it in your strike temp calculator. It might take a couple times, but you'll eventually have it dialed in. You can use some online calculators to get you in the ballpark.

What he said, and I'll add that when its cold, I bring mash tun and hlt inside so it's not at cold temps. I keep my brew stuff in the garage. Compensating for house temps gets you a lot closer.

I never used to bother preheating my mash tun, but I also often missed my mash temp due to varying start temp of the cooler and grains. So you can eliminate the cooler variable by dumping in your strike water first, wait a couple minutes, check the water temp, and adjust as needed before adding your grains. Yes it takes a few more minutes but I found I can hit my target temps better. YMMV.

By the way, how are you maintaining 150f within 1F for 75 minutes? I've never found a cooler that can do that. If I really want to be exact, I have to add some boiling water halfway through the mash, or alternatively decoct and boil a quart or so of grains.

I heat my strike water up about 8-10 degrees above strike temp and dump it in the MLT. After 15 mins I check the temp. If it's still a little too high I stir it until it hits target temp.

Don't worry about losing a couple degrees during the mash. It won't hurt anything.

I have my equipment all set up in Beersmith so I hit my strike temp with almost spooky accuracy. I do store my cooler in the garage so if its cold out, I'll go a few degrees over and worst case, stir for a little longer to ease it down to the ideal target.

I do what a lot of people around here do. I go about 10-12 above strike temp and let it heat the tun for about 10 minutes prior to adding grain. I'll stir to get my actual strike temp if I'm high and then dough in. It usually settles out pretty close, except when you throw in an oddity like rinsed rice hulls. That cooler, once stabilized to absorbed temp, will maintain for 90 minutes within a degree, easily...even when it's 40-50 degrees outside.

Just remember, it's a lot easier to take away heat (stirring) then it is to add heat (decotion or thinning your mash with hotter water).

I heat my mash tun (10 gallon Rubbermaid) with about 2 gallons of hot water from the tap (about 130 degrees) for approx 15 minutes before adding my strike water (dump the hot water before adding your strike water). When I heat my strike water, I heat it to 8-10 degrees above my mash temp, and it usually works out great.
I would also suggest to add 1/2 campden tablet to your strike water, and the other 1/2 to your sparge water, if you're not using RO water (it takes the clorine/chloramine out of the tap water), to keep the medicinal taste out of the finished product.

I finally have everthing together...I did go on the cheap/inexspensive for some of my items....

I have a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler, with kettle screen inside and valve kit I purchased from Local Home Brew Shop in Normal Illinois......cooler with lowes card and discount 40 bucks, kettle screen and valve kit from LHBS....39..79.00 dollar mash tun (heck of a lot less expsensive than the 199+ plus from most online places)

I know I will catch some grief here but when saving some dollars and a ton of reading I think I am on the right track....

Propane burner (turkey Fryer with 32 quart aluminum pot with spigot) took Spigot off used bargain fittings got a kettle screen and keg/kettle kit, have done two boils at the handles for about 90 minutes each have a greyish powdery look to to the inside of the kettle it hasn't turned black...wife and neighbor have both said this has "seasoned" the pot....

I picked up a wort chiller off ebay from a brew shop in wisconsin for 49.99 free shipping 25 foot 3/8" copper coil with garden hose attachments.....

I am working on getting a stainless pot in the future but for now I will use the aluminum I have put together

Reason I had asked about preheating the cooler was I feared ruining it by putting a hot liquid into to quickly....
...TODAY is Brew DAY!!!!!!!!:fro::rockin:

No worries! I went on the cheap too. I've had my ghetto brewery going for a couple years, and I really don't have any plans to upgrade to anything fancy. I've had really nasty homebrew from great systems and I've had really good beer from simple ghetto systems. It's all about the process and recipe, not the equipment!

Enjoy your first all grain brew day!

Cheers!

Well into the boil have tilted the mash tun a couple times and have gotten more wort. Poured into the boil only one boil over so far



Is that a decent grain bed I have ended up with another pitcher and a half of wort out of this





Boil appears to be moving right along

Ok it's down in the fermentor original gravity 1.050-1.051 range kettle did great screen didn't a lot of gunk came out ended up using auto siphon to get into fermentor

Wort chiller kinda took a longer time than expected water temp from hose was 53 degrees