All Grain Stove Top Tutorial

[jsupe]

I have brewed for about six months now with the same number of batches bottled and drunk. Aside from the small pamphlet that came with my True Brew kit, most of my knowledge came from these excellent forums. I thought it might be helpful for other new brewers to see the method I use since it uses minimal special equipment and achieves all grain on a ceramic stovetop. My goal is to have plenty of multi-taskers, some of which also serve non-brewing purposes in the kitchen. I think Alton Brown would approve of my setup.

This guide details the production of an apple ale, but it should be useful for making any style of low to medium gravity beer, substituting water at the end for the top-off.

I stole much of my process from DeathBrewer in this thread and combined it with the wisdom of Revvy in this post. Cheers to both of you!

Ingredients:
3 lbs Pale Ale Malt 2-Row (Briess) (3.5 SRM)
2 lbs Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)
1 lbs Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM)
1.00 oz Glacier [5.60 %] - Boil 20.0 min
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
8 lbs 5.6 oz Fruit - Apple sweet (0.0 SRM)

Hardware:
2 32 quart restaurant quality aluminum stock pots with lids.
6 gallon True Brew fermenter bucket, with airlock and air-tight lid.
Large plastic tub
Nylon bag
Floating thermometer
Instant read thermometer
Butcher’s twine
Sturdy tripod
Large cooler
Water bottles filled with water and frozen.

Other:
6 gallons spring water, divided into 4 room temperature two chilled.
5 gallons prepared Star San

These two pots are the magic that make it all happen. These are Vollrath aluminum that are designed to be used in a commercial kitchen. They are thick walled and hold heat well enough for mashing. I found them at my local restaurant supply store.



First, prepare two ounces of Star San in five gallons of hot water. Do this in the fermentor since it easily measures out the water and begins the process of sanitizing it.



Once that’s filled pour the sanitizer into the plastic tub. Use this to dunk anything that will touch your post-boil wort. While pouring, spin the bucket around to get the sanitizer in contact with all the sides of the bucket.




With a ceramic cooktop, boiling five gallons is difficult, so we will target four gallons. Before entering the recipe into BeerSmith, set it for a four gallon boil, with a one gallon fermentor top-off. It will adjust sugars and IBUs accordingly. For this recipe, start with 4 gallons of room temperature spring water. I prefer spring water because it is already portioned into gallons and in Florida has a profile good for beer.




In a large mixing bowl, mix the grains thoroughly.



Continued in next post...

 

[jsupe]

Pour two gallons of water into each pot.



Place the nylon bag into one pot. This is now the mash tun. Your other pot will be the lauter tun. Place a floating thermometer into the mash tun and set your burner to high. Bring the water up to between 160F and 165F. In addition to the floating thermometer you might also want to keep an instant read around. This gives you a better idea of the overall temperature of the water. The floating meter tends to measure the bottom of the water, so using the instant read near the center or top and averaging the two will give you a more accurate reading.

Meanwhile, set the burner under your lauter tun to medium low. You are shooting for about 155F there but there is no rush since you have not begun to mash.



While waiting for the water to come to temperature, pour yourself a tasty beverage. Ah, that one will do just fine!



Once you have achieved the target mash temperature, kill the heat and pour the grains into the tun. Go slow and your stirring job will be easier.



Stir thoroughly making sure all of the grain is in contact with water.



Continued...

 

[jsupe]

Check the temperature — it should read close to 150F after the grain addition. Your mash time will be 60 minutes. Cover and let sit for ten minutes.



Every ten minutes, take the lid off and stir. The best mash stirrer is a good whisk. Use it to pull up grain from the bottom and push the top grains down. Replace lid. During this period, also check the progress of the sparge water. Remember, you goal is for that to be at 150F when the 60 minutes is complete.



After 60 minutes it’s time to drain the grain. This one of the most difficult steps; the sodden grain is heavy. I use butcher’s twine and a sturdy tripod to hang it over the pot. Let it drip for about 10 minutes then, being careful not to burn yourself, gently squeeze out as much wort as you can. For this batch, you should recover just under your starting two gallons of wort.



Carefully replace your mash tun with your lauter tun, which should be at 150F now. (You were monitoring that, right?) Lower the bag into the sparge water, spread the bag out, stir, and cover with the lid. Allow to sparge for 30 minutes, again stirring every ten minutes keeping the lid in place between stirs. After 30 minutes, repeat the drain and squeeze process. Remove the grains from the draining rig and discard. Rinse out the grain bag and set aside. You will now have two pots with wort.




Pour one pot into the other and replace the nylon bag. Position the pot to straddle two burners. Turn both burners to high. Cover and bring to a boil.



Continued...

 

[jsupe]

Once the wort is boiling, put the lid askew to allow the release the Dimethyl sulfide. The total boil time is 60 minutes.



At 45 minutes, add the hops. Stir.



After 60 minutes, turn off the burners and remove the pot from the heat. Remove and drain the nylon bag. Prepare an ice bath in the sink. Put the pot in and wait for all the ice to melt. Do this twice and your wort should be near 90F.



Slowly pour the wort into the fermentor. I ended up with just shy of three gallons which is about typical for this method.



Top off with one gallon of chilled apple juice (or water for other recipes). Take a gravity reading. If it is near your target specific gravity, do not add more water. Yes, you are below 5 gallons, but that’s okay. If you are a little high, add some more and take another reading. It’s better to be at your desired gravity than right at five gallons. I was a little over after adding the juice for this one, so I put in about another quarter gallon of chilled water, bringing me to about four and a half gallons.



Continued...

 

[jsupe]

Take a temperature reading and if you are in the 70F-80F range, pitch the yeast. Let it sit on the top for 10 minutes, then give it a quick swirl.



Secure the lid and place in the airlock. Place fermenter into a cooler large enough to fit most of the bucket. Use frozen water bottles to drop the water temperature to around 50F. Over the next few hours, the fermentor and water will equalize temperature to about 60F, which is the low end for US-05. Let it get to about 65F and keep it there for 48 hours by swapping out frozen water bottles.



After 48 hours you can let the water temperature climb into the low 70s. Leave it alone for 3 weeks. If you want to cold crash, pour a bag (or two) of ice into the water. Bottle or keg and carbonate with your preferred method. Let condition for at least one week.

 

[kingogames]

I'm going to try this. Great tutorial!!!!!!!

 

[jsupe]

I'm going to try this. Great tutorial!!!!!!!

Thanks!

 

[evrose]

Fantastic! Thanks for posting. My BIAB process is similar, only I do it outside with a turkey fryer, and a 5g cooler for a mash tun.

Great pics... let us know how the beer turns out.

 

[Malty_Dog]

Always interesting to see different folks' process. I especially enjoyed the use of the tripod

 

[rydia131]

Ok so I haven't done all grain yet so bear with me...before you pitched the yeast you didn't mentioned aerating the wort. Is this just assumed or is there a different reason. Once agin total noob here, I liked the tutorial and even if I didn't have a question I still would have posted something in order to make this thread easier to find in the future!

 

[jsupe]

Ok so I haven't done all grain yet so bear with me...before you pitched the yeast you didn't mentioned aerating the wort. Is this just assumed or is there a different reason. Once agin total noob here, I liked the tutorial and even if I didn't have a question I still would have posted something in order to make this thread easier to find in the future!

I don't explicitly aerate. I pour vigorously into the fermentor and the top-off water should have plenty of suspended oxygen (since I have boiled it). I also give it a quick swirl after the yeast sit on top for 10 minutes. So far, no problems.