Never to be one who does things the easy way, I decided to start my home brewing by going all grain. Not necessarily a daunting task but much different than an extract build.
So I decided not to wait 'til I built my mash tun. I'm thinking about a 10+gallon mash tun.
Keep in mind this is my first time ever with beer so please jump in and correct me where I screwed up. I went with a SMaSH brew, 2 row and Cascade only. (I am trying to sling around the lingo so help me out here.)
Ingredients
----------
5 lbs. - 2 row pale malt
.75 oz. Cascade hop pellets, added at first boil
.25 oz. Cascade hop pellets, added at flame out
1/2 tsp Irish Moss, added at flame out
1 qt. of water per pound of grain
double sparge to make 3 gallons of wort
So I went with a single temperature infusion, fancy terms for "steeping grain in a big pot" apparently. I found an awesome deal on a turkey deep fryer with a 30QT pot, clearanced at $40 so used that on the stove. I struggled a bit to keep it at the proper temp but I would say I was mostly between 150-155F for about 90 minutes.
I performed a double batch sparge by lifting out my grain bag, squeezing it out (damn that water is hot as hell) and emptying out the stock pot. I then added the remaining water I need divided by two, heated to about 190F so I could get the grain mash up to about 170. that failed miserably and I couldn't get it any higher than about 150F again.
While that steeped I heated up another batch to about 200 and did it all over again. Squeezed out the grain bag, emptied the pot and added the next batch. This one came out at about 168 once added to the pot. (I was trying to stay as close to 170 as possible)
Pulled the grain bag out, squeezed it dry and the added all the wort to the stock pot.
Added first hops and boiled for 60 minutes. I also made sure that I had sparged enough water (is that the right term?) to make 3 gallons of wort. In one hour of boiling I was able to boil approximately 1/2 gallon out to make a 2.5 gallon batch.
After flame out, cooled to about 78 degrees. (I ran out of ice.)
Added irish moss and final hops (I forgot to add it at flameout)
Moved to 3 gallon carboy after determining 1.060 OG. (Yay!)
Added Safale S-04 English Ale yeast and airlocked it in a bathtub, just in case I get some blowoff.
This morning I have some nice activity in the airlock and a fine krausen across the top.
I am going to call the first brew a great success thus far. We will see how it tastes.
Observations:
Thanks for reading. How did I do?
So I decided not to wait 'til I built my mash tun. I'm thinking about a 10+gallon mash tun.
Keep in mind this is my first time ever with beer so please jump in and correct me where I screwed up. I went with a SMaSH brew, 2 row and Cascade only. (I am trying to sling around the lingo so help me out here.)
Ingredients
----------
5 lbs. - 2 row pale malt
.75 oz. Cascade hop pellets, added at first boil
.25 oz. Cascade hop pellets, added at flame out
1/2 tsp Irish Moss, added at flame out
1 qt. of water per pound of grain
double sparge to make 3 gallons of wort
So I went with a single temperature infusion, fancy terms for "steeping grain in a big pot" apparently. I found an awesome deal on a turkey deep fryer with a 30QT pot, clearanced at $40 so used that on the stove. I struggled a bit to keep it at the proper temp but I would say I was mostly between 150-155F for about 90 minutes.
I performed a double batch sparge by lifting out my grain bag, squeezing it out (damn that water is hot as hell) and emptying out the stock pot. I then added the remaining water I need divided by two, heated to about 190F so I could get the grain mash up to about 170. that failed miserably and I couldn't get it any higher than about 150F again.
While that steeped I heated up another batch to about 200 and did it all over again. Squeezed out the grain bag, emptied the pot and added the next batch. This one came out at about 168 once added to the pot. (I was trying to stay as close to 170 as possible)
Pulled the grain bag out, squeezed it dry and the added all the wort to the stock pot.
Added first hops and boiled for 60 minutes. I also made sure that I had sparged enough water (is that the right term?) to make 3 gallons of wort. In one hour of boiling I was able to boil approximately 1/2 gallon out to make a 2.5 gallon batch.
After flame out, cooled to about 78 degrees. (I ran out of ice.)
Added irish moss and final hops (I forgot to add it at flameout)
Moved to 3 gallon carboy after determining 1.060 OG. (Yay!)
Added Safale S-04 English Ale yeast and airlocked it in a bathtub, just in case I get some blowoff.
This morning I have some nice activity in the airlock and a fine krausen across the top.
I am going to call the first brew a great success thus far. We will see how it tastes.
Observations:
- Wort is sticky.
- Next time I will do this outside on my grill burner or the turkey fryer burner.
- I could definitely use a wort chiller. It took me about 30-45 minutes to get the temps down.
- While not completely necessary, a mash tun would be highly beneficial.
- I think I would go with an S-05 yeast next time, the temps in my house are at the high-end for S-04 and I am a little concerned with Ester production.
- OG of 1.060 was read after reducing to 2.5 gallons. Calculating at 60g/L my original OG with 3 gallons was 1.050. This gives me an efficiency rating of 81% per this website: http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/ Is that good?
Thanks for reading. How did I do?