My first time going All-grain in a new country...HELP!!

[Hophead04]

Hey guys, I moved to South America from the States and I have been living here for about 6 months. I am just about to start brewing again, thank god. The only problem is that the stores here do not sell Malt Extract for brewing (both liquid and dry ME are not available). So now I have to learn how to go with All-grain way, I have wanted to do this for some time but I have always been a bit intimidated by process.

What the brew store offers is: A large 23-28 liter brewing pot with a welded spicket, with a "kit" that consists of a false bottom. They explained that I just boil the grains for 1 hour, then continue with the normal brewing process (adding hops at various stages for 1 hour). Then you just open the spicket and drain out the wort into the fermenter..then add water/yeast and you are done.

IS IT THAT SIMPLE?!?! I have been doing a ton of research and have watched videos of how people use igloo coolers to get the wort, then do the boil from there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!

Cheers

 

[naiek]

Don't boil the grains. You want to mash them at about 152F for however long your recipe calls for, 45-60 mins usually. Are you batch sparging? There is a lot of good information in the all grain section. I'd do a lot of reading up before brew day

 

[Hophead04]

Ahh ok. I have read up on the forums but what the people at the store told me is very different from what is on the forums. It seems that they (store people) are missing a step or two. Thanks!

 

[jaysbrewing]

Well not boil the grains but steep them at 149-154 for about an hour. But ya, it's not hard. A lot of people on the internet make it sound like you have to work for NASA to figure this one out but it's simple.

go to brew365 and they have a free calculator for how much water you need. Once you get that part you pretty much have made the process that much easier.

But in a simplified process what you are going to do is take water heat it up to about 165 degrees, add your grains which will cool it to 150ish then keep that temp for about 1 hour. Drain that water, collect the runnings. Add more water to the grains and rinse the sugars, collect that water, you should end up with about 6.5 gallons of water then bring to a boil.

At that point you are at the part where as if you just added DME or LME.

PM me if you need help with it and I can aid. But full circle, all grain is not harder it just takes about twice the amount of time.

 

[two_hearted]

Check out BIAB (Brew in a bag).

 

[Hophead04]

Well not boil the grains but steep them at 149-154 for about an hour. But ya, it's not hard. A lot of people on the internet make it sound like you have to work for NASA to figure this one out but it's simple.

go to brew365 and they have a free calculator for how much water you need. Once you get that part you pretty much have made the process that much easier.

But in a simplified process what you are going to do is take water heat it up to about 165 degrees, add your grains which will cool it to 150ish then keep that temp for about 1 hour. Drain that water, collect the runnings. Add more water to the grains and rinse the sugars, collect that water, you should end up with about 6.5 gallons of water then bring to a boil.

At that point you are at the part where as if you just added DME or LME.

PM me if you need help with it and I can aid. But full circle, all grain is not harder it just takes about twice the amount of time.

Thank you for the info! This will definitely be a bunch of help. Should I boil down that 6.5 gallons of wort to a more manageable 4 or 5 gallons before I start adding hops? Or should I just make a 6ish gallon batch (my recipe is for 5 gallons, with 4.25oz of hops and 1 packet of champagne yeast, do I need to scale up the ingredients?)

Thanks again!

 

[El_Exorcisto]

You need to mill your grains first, don't forget. Find someplace to buy a corona style mill locally, or buy one online. Make a cooler mash tun, there are plans available all over. Then you'll need to make a chiller for the hoppier styles, but initially you can get by on more balanced and malty styles by chilling in a tub of cold water and/or ice. So the process goes?

Add hot water to your mash tun, use tastybrew.com's calculator for figuring what temperature you need. You'll need to go hotter than that to pre-heat the walls of the tun.

Add your milled grains and mix thoroughly. Let this mash for an hour or more. Run that off into a bucket or pot, then add more water that you have sitting at about 175 degrees. Mix thoroughly and run off. Repeat.

Boil this, adding hops as prescribed. At the end of the boil, chill it as quickly as resources allow. Get it down below 70 degrees and add yeast.

 

[Hophead04]

Thx for the vid Maxam!

 

[jaysbrewing]

You start off with 6.5 gallons of water normally because for the full boil it will get down to 5 gallons. As far as your grains, ask if they can mill them. In the USA, most places should be able to - I'm not sure about in Chile.

If they can't mill then you will need to buy a small mill. Keep in mind that you will be milling something on the lines of 10lbs of grains so if you can attach a small drill to it makes it a bit faster.

On our blog we have a step by step if you get lost.

 

[Hophead04]

You start off with 6.5 gallons of water normally because for the full boil it will get down to 5 gallons. As far as your grains, ask if they can mill them. In the USA, most places should be able to - I'm not sure about in Chile.

If they can't mill then you will need to buy a small mill. Keep in mind that you will be milling something on the lines of 10lbs of grains so if you can attach a small drill to it makes it a bit faster.

On our blog we have a step by step if you get lost.

Yeah they will mill it for me. After watching the above video I noticed that they did not sparge, since I will be brewing about 5 gallons, would I need to sparge my grain? Any ideas about how I can do that in a pot either with or without a brew bag? I will check out the blog right now. Thanks!!

 

[two_hearted]

Yeah they will mill it for me. After watching the above video I noticed that they did not sparge, since I will be brewing about 5 gallons, would I need to sparge my grain? Any ideas about how I can do that in a pot either with or without a brew bag? I will check out the blog right now. Thanks!!

No need to sparge with BIAB, you just lift up the bag and drain as much wort as possible. done.

 

[Hophead04]

No need to sparge with BIAB, you just lift up the bag and drain as much wort as possible. done.

Thank you!

 

[Hernando]

No need to sparge with BIAB, you just lift up the bag and drain as much wort as possible. done.

^this. To make things a bit easier, it helps to have a collander that you can rest on top of the pot while it drains. Some people also use the fry basket that came with the turkey fryer and put the bag in that and hoist it up with rope while it drains. It's all preference but it is easier than holding a bag with a crap load of wet grain.

 

[zeekage]

No need to sparge with BIAB, you just lift up the bag and drain as much wort as possible. done.

This also assumes your pot is big enough to hold 10lbs of grain plus 8-9 gallons of water. No sparging means that after you lift the bag out you need to have your pre boil volume (~6.5 gallons). You can also do a 2 pot method where you have a second pot ready with hot water to "dunk" your bag into to mimc a sparge. Then after a few minutes you lift the bag out of that pot, let it drain, and combine both pots of water to make your ~6.5 gallons. Then proceed as normal with a 60 min boil adding hops as per the recipe.

Check out this thread. It explains the 2-pot BIAB method in much more detail. Easy Stovetop All-Grain Brewing (with pics)

 

[Hophead04]

You guys are amazing. Great community!! Thank you all, everyone has been incredibly helpful. If you guys have any more tips that would be great! I am really interested in the 2 pot method, since I will be using my kitchen gas stove in my small apartment.

cheers

 

[zeekage]

You guys are amazing. Great community!! Thank you all, everyone has been incredibly helpful. If you guys have any more tips that would be great! I am really interested in the 2 pot method, since I will be using my kitchen gas stove in my small apartment.

cheers

Definitely do the two pot method if doing it indoors. It will probably take forever and a few days to get 6.5 gallons to boil on a single burner, but I could be wrong.

You can also look into 2.5 gallon (or really any size you want) batches too. Then you can be back to a single pot and brew twice as many kinds of beer as 5 gallon batches. It all depends how fast you and your friends drink it.

 

[BrewinHooligan]

I do full boils of 6.5 gallons on my gas stove. My pot is wide so it fits over 2 burners. With high heat, it takes about 30 mins to get up to boil after the sparge. I mash in a cooler and batch sparge so the wort in the pot is already over 150 before getting to the heat. Soon I will have a propane burner for outside and that will speed things up quite a bit. If time and space is an issue, brewing more often with smaller batches may help out.