All grain questions

[kevinlassen]

So I think I am going to try my hand in all grain this weekend. I live in an apartment and have zero room for any more brewing gear. So I'm going to do one or two gallon batch. My question is how big of a pot do I need to do it. Mine is 6 gallons. And if anyone has tips that would be realy helpful

 

[gcdowd]

A 6 gallon pot will be plenty for a 1 or 2 gallon brew. I would try to figure out your boil off rate so you know how much water to start with. Do you plan on doing BIAB? Are you going to sparge?

 

[Demus]

6 gallon pot should be good for 2 or even 3 gallons. You're probably going to boil off a gallon to 1.5, so ur 6 gallon pot should have enough extra space. For brew in a bag maybe only 2 as you more room in your kettle for the grains...

 

[kevinlassen]

I'm still new to brewing. Only about a dozen or so batches. But when you talk about sparging that's rinsing the grains with more water right? If so then yes. I want to get all the flavor I can

 

[gcdowd]

I'm still new to brewing. Only about a dozen or so batches. But when you talk about sparging that's rinsing the grains with more water right? If so then yes. I want to get all the flavor I can

Yes, sparging is rinsing the grain. I assume you are doing brew in a bag, which I've never personally done. Either way, a 6 gallon pot should be plenty of space. Just make sure you know how much your boil off is. Then you can determine how much water to sparge with.

 

[duboman]

Visit the All Grain forum and find the "attention all grain" stickie- it's a good quick demo of how to move forward. It will answer a lot of your questions and show you in pics as well

 

[kevinlassen]

Visit the All Grain forum and find the "attention all grain" stickie- it's a good quick demo of how to move forward. It will answer a lot of your questions and show you in pics as well

Thank you!

 

[gr8shandini]

I hope you don't mind my saying, but you seem a little ill informed about the basics. It's OK, we all were once. I'd recommend starting with Bobby M's article ( http://www.suebob.com/brew/Bobby_Mallgrainprimer.pdf ) as well as the all grain portion of How to Brew ( http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/ )

They don't cover brew in a bag, but the basic concepts are the same. Also, once you think you have a process in place, don't be afraid to post your plan here. We all want to help expand the hobby, so we'd be glad to tell you what you've got right and steer you away from any potential pitfalls.

 

[DaNewf]

Google Mini BIAB. I've done two batches this way. A one gallon batch and a two gallon batch. The pot I used was a little smaller than the 19 litre pot I currently use for doing partial mashes.

Doing Mini BIAB is what convinced me to step up to partial mashing. Prior to that I was just banging out Cooper's kits (don't get me wrong I still use Cooper's kits).

Currently I am looking at ways to do five gallon all grain batches in my kitchen using the pots I have available (19litre being the largest). One method I'm considering is Maxi BIAB which is a variation of Mini BIAB. Another method is doing a split boil. If I went split boil I'd still mash BIAB style in the 19 litre pot.

 

[hehawbrew]

[ame]http://youtu.be/CH5eN6pVK1A[/ame]

I learned AG by starting with 1 gal by this little video. The beer was great and I eventually moved up to 5 gal AG.

This shows a nice easy way for a gallon