Brewing All Grain inside

I’m looking for some advice, recently my older brother and I purchased a starter kit for my little brother that lives in NY. I’d like to teach him how to brew using all grain right off the bat, but he doesn’t have the access to brew outside. What’s the best way to do all grain indoors on a regular range stove? Split the boil in two pots and add 1/2 the hops in each, then combine? The only negative I see on that is boil off…Thoughts, input, suggestions?

I do everything inside except my boil. I would think most stoves would take forever to bring a full batch to a boil. I have seen some people insulate their boil pots to help things along, but split pots would probably be the easiest. When I’m heating strike and sparge water I have 2 or 3 pots going.

You could do a partial-boil and adjust the hops for the lower utilization.

Shadetree,

That’s interesting, how do you do your runoffs?

There isn’t room to do an outside full boil but what do you think about doing this indoors and the potential mold issues? Is this doable, or should I just start him off on extract even though I feel AG produce significantly better beer?

When its cold the humidity helps the house, I haven’t had any mold issues from brewing inside. I just do half batches using a 3gal round water cooler for a mashtun, batch sparging and boiling on the stove.

I would do a no-sparge mash or a mash-in-the-bag to get the ~4 gallons in the kettle, boil down to three, then dilute in the fermenter.

That’s what I do during the winter. One tip: boil and freeze your top-off water a few days ahead of time. Then you can dilute and chill your wort at the same time, and it only takes a couple minutes.

Doing a partial boil isn’t really practical over a certain gravity, but for typical OGs it works well.

See ^^^ for pics and some text.

I do all my brewing indoors. All grain only. Either 2 half batches or sometimes just a half batch. You can take any 5 gallon recipe and cut it exactly in half.

Mash: I use a 5 gallon round cooler with 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag to hold the grain. (see above for pics). Preboil, I usually get 4-4.25 gallons wort and save approx 0.5 gals in the freezer to use for starter.
Boil: use 5 gallon pot on kitchen stove. Start with approx 3.75 gallons. Easy to control and not have boilover. End with 2.5-2.75 post boil.
Cool in sink with icewater just like you would an extract batch.

Repeat ^^^ if you want to do a full 5 gallons. Only downside is two mashes, two boils, two cooldowns make for a long brew day. But, experience level increases 2 x as fast.

Transfer to carboy/bucket and pitch yeast when temp is at desired point.

cheers

In the winter I do full batch all grain biab inside. I use a 1500W heatstick to assist my stove it works great.

I was going to suggest a heat stick. That’s a good idea.

I do 3.5 to 4 gallon batches, depending on the OG of the beer I’m brewing. Mash in a 5 gallon cooler, boil in a 6.5 gallon pot on the flat top electric stove. It’s a beast, boils 5+ gallons no problems and doesn’t take forever either. I’d imagine doing that with a heat stick would be even more efficient, you just have to throw down the cash for it.

I do partial boils inside. I used a 5 gallon rubbermaid cooler that I converted into a mash tun. Here is the sight I use to help me: http://www.thescrewybrewer.com/2010/12/ … h-tun.html. Some of the part numbers don’t work anymore but I am not handy at all and I was able to figure it all out.

My process is pretty much the regular process. Mash, drain, batch sparg, boil. I just add DME at the beginning of the boil and usually top up about 2 gallons (for 5.5 gallon batch). So far my beers have really improved.

I can usually get almost 10lb of grain going so I can minimize the about of DME I use. The biggest thing is what kind of power output your brothers stove is going to have. I can get a 4 gallon boil going, which is fairly good. But for example I helped a friend learn a couple weeks ago and we had a hell of a time getting 2.5 gallons to boil once the extract wAs in because he had a pretty crappy stove.

I often do a stovetop “mostly grain” beer with a concentrated boil.

9 lbs of grain with a 4-4.5 gallon boil gets me anywhere from 1.042 to 1.048 of 5.25 gallons wort. I then use DME or simple sugars to make stronger beers.

The only problem I see with the concentrated boil is reduced hop utilization.

[quote=“Wahoo”]I often do a stovetop “mostly grain” beer with a concentrated boil.

9 lbs of grain with a 4-4.5 gallon boil gets me anywhere from 1.042 to 1.048 of 5.25 gallons wort. I then use DME or simple sugars to make stronger beers.

The only problem I see with the concentrated boil is reduced hop utilization.[/quote]

That has been my experience as well.

I do stove top boiling for 5 gallon AG batches and don’t have a problem getting a full boil. On hi my stove will boil over

I do everything inside except milling my grains. I intentionally got a kettle that spans two burners on the gas stove. A good boil in a reasonable amount of time is no problem.

Even in the middle of winter I do have to open windows or the walls and ceiling can drip.

[quote=“Belpaire”]I do everything inside except milling my grains. I intentionally got a kettle that spans two burners on the gas stove. A good boil in a reasonable amount of time is no problem.

Even in the middle of winter I do have to open windows or the walls and ceiling can drip.[/quote]

Now that was said I get a problem with moisture as well. I usually have a fan going about 15 feet away. I turn it off with 15-20 minutes left just to be sure any dust or little things that blew in get boiled.

I’ve done about 80 all grain batches indoors. I use a 30 quart kettle on a cooktop stove and I normally start with about 6.5 gallons so it’s pretty tight but it works. I don’t get a rolling boil but I get a pretty steady one. After a few batches I figured out how to make it the most efficient. One thing that helps is I fly sparge, so I add my runnings to the kettle about 3/4s of a gallon at a time so by the time I have finished sparging the stuff in the kettle is pretty hot.

I brew inside, splitting my boil between 2 5gal pots and splitting the hops etc evenly. I do have a heavy duty fan over my stove to extract the moisture. If you brew like this you will have more evaporation due to a larger surface area. I will start with 7.5 gals and in 60 mins boil down to 5.5gals. I hope this helps…

I’ve brewed inside since I started in the late 90s. I usually brew three gallon batches.
When we bought a new stove a few years ago we got one with an oversized burner in the front. I’ve not brewed any 5 gallon batches on the new stove, but I’m pretty sure it could handle it.