First AG brew day

[TheGeek]

So I've been brewing for a year now and I have been working on getting to AG for a couple months. Today I took the plunge!

Ruination Clone Recipe

14.5lb American 2Row
1lb 10L Crystal

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Mash
60min 149F

Boil
60min 2.75oz Magnum 13.1%
15min 1tsp Irish Moss
0min 1.75oz Centennial 9.1%

So, the day started with some beercalculus. At 1.5q per lb it showed an initial volume of 5.8gal. I heated this to 160F and mashed in! The recipe called for a 60 minute mash at 149F. After adding all my grain I had a pretty consistent temp of 150F so I wrapped up my kettle and let it set for an hour. I ended up with about 146F. Next I moved my mash from the kettle to the lauter tun, recirculated and spared about 4 gallons off. While that was sparging, I heated another 2 gallons to 180F and added this after the first 4 gallons came off. This gave me nearly 6 gallons of wort.

At this point I was concerned that I didn't have the 6.5-7 gallons that the recipe called for and I didn't want to end up with less than 5 gallons in the end, so I sparged a second time with 1 gallon at 180F. This finally brought me pretty close to 7 gallons.

Anyone think this might have been too much sparge? I am a little concerned that I may have extracted some tannins or other bad juju, though the final runnings still tasted very sweet with no bitter/astringent tastes.

Moving on, I boiled making the called for additions. My post boil volume was about 5.25 gallons. Immersion cooling took 14 minutes to hit about 75F. Poured to my fermenter, aerated and pitched my yeast starter of Wyeast 1056 American Ale. It is currently sitting at about 68F in my fermentation chamber.

Here are some of my measurements.

SG 1.062
OG 1.075

The only snag of the day really was my volume issue as stated above. (Oh and that when I tested my MLT before brewing it was leaking, glad I checked beforehand. Got that fixed before I started.)

I'm proud to say that I am now among the ranks of All-Grain homebrewers! w00t!

 

[lumpher]

congrats in joining the ag brewers of the world. there won't be any problems. it might be a lower % than you were looking for, but still decent, and i'm sure it'll be good. keep practicing, and learn your new rig, and above all, RDWHAHB

 

[dzlater]

Now you know your boil off rate, and how much loss you have from the lauter tun to the boil kettle and from the kettle to the fermentor, use these numbers when figuring out the volumes for the next batch.

 

[TheGeek]

Fermentation was going within 4 hours! I'm pretty stoked that I was in the ballpark on the numbers. Efficiency was only 69%, but for my first time at bat, I am very pleased. Now I just want to drink it. lol

 

[OLDBREW]

so if you started with 7 gals. pre-boil, and ended with 5.5 gals. post boil after 1 hour, that equals around 1.75 gals an hour. If you left let's say close to .25 gals. in the boiler you'd be right at around 1.5 gals. per hour.

with the dilution of .25 gals. you probably lost 3 points from 5 to 5.25 gals., the rest was efficiency loss 1.075-3 dilution=1.072 -1.062 = 10 points extraction loss

don't worry about tannin extraction with those numbers and when fly spaging an old trick is to taste the runnings close to the end.. if you taste sweet your still good to go

 

[zacster]

It sounds like it went pretty well. I'm reading all of these 1st time threads as I'm looking to get started with AG after doing extracts for 15 years now. I'm hoping it goes so well for me.

 

[TheGeek]

so if you started with 7 gals. pre-boil, and ended with 5.5 gals. post boil after 1 hour, that equals around 1.75 gals an hour. If you left let's say close to .25 gals. in the boiler you'd be right at around 1.5 gals. per hour.

with the dilution of .25 gals. you probably lost 3 points from 5 to 5.25 gals., the rest was efficiency loss 1.075-3 dilution=1.072 -1.062 = 10 points extraction loss

don't worry about tannin extraction with those numbers and when fly spaging an old trick is to taste the runnings close to the end.. if you taste sweet your still good to go

Yeah, I thought I remembered reading that so when i sparged the second time, I sampled the runnings and they still tasted pretty good.