Did my first all grain yesterday. An hour and a half to clean and set up. Burned my thumb relighting the turkey fryer that turns itself off after 15 minutes. Couldn’t keep temp at 152. Had to add boiling watter to get 170 mash out. Ended with 10 gallons in my cooler. Took six quarts recirculation to set the grain bed. Gravity at boil was a few points low. Phone call interupted me at critical point of boil (as usual.) Boil was more vigorous than with the stove and I lost more volume than expected. Chiller worked so well that it caught me off guard. Cloudy beer. Gravity under prediction.
So, how did it go? It was FREAKIN AWSOME!! I made beer from scratch!
Now if I could figure out how to add Smilies there would be a cheers here!
Congrats on your first all-grain. I have never done an extract since my first all-grain about 3 years ago. And isn’t that smell of the mash just heavenly.
Here ya go, :cheers:
You’ll have everything dialed in in no time.
BTW, whadcha brew?
for the timer turkey fryer headache - jam a piece of cardboard in between the dial and metal housing. or, if you’re really committed, Gorilla Glue it in an open position so you never have to worry about it again. yeah!
I brewed a variation of the NB Sierra Madre Pale Ale. I sent an extract version of this to you for the lottery that I called Georgia Pale Ale. For the AG I used:
- 10 lb Briess Pale Ale 2 row[/*]
- 12 oz Briess Caramel 80[/*]
- 6 oz Briess Caramel 40 [/*]
- .25 oz Perle FWH[/*]
- .75 oz Chinook 45 min[/*]
- .5 oz Perle 20 min[/*]
- 2.0 oz Cascade EOB[/*]
- Wyeast 1056 American Ale[/*]
The NB recipe called for 12 oz Caramel 60 that I split evenly into C40 and C80 for depth, then I added an additional 6 oz of C80 to darken it up a little to give it a color something like Georgia red clay (hence the name).
Turn the f’n phone off!!!
:cheers:
Felt the same way when I did my first AG
three weeks ago. I’ll be kegging that one Thursday .
Come to think of it, the last two felt that way. (#2&3)
:cheers:
Happy Brewing
Just did my first all-grain yesterday. I still have my 5 gallon kettle, so I figured I could biab a 3.5 gallon batch. Mash via biab went well…batch sparged in my bottling bucket…all in all went pretty easy and got ~70% efficiency.
The whole brew day fell apart during the boil! I expect around .75 gallon boil loss, so i collect to ~ 4.2 gallons. This leaves about an inch or so of headspace in the kettle. I figured I’d be fine with my handy squirt bottle and spoon. I was wrong as hell! Adding my bittering charge of 1.5 oz uk kent, there was about a .5 second lapse until around a half gallon of sticky wort shot out of the kettle.
Well most of my bittering charge rolled down the side of the kettle…soaked the stove and knocked my pilot light out. I get the kettle up and going on the other side and decide to up my flavor addition to the 60 min mark, to get some sort of bitterness. Luckily i fwh so hopefully some sort of aroma / flavor was extracted!
All in all I hit my gravities and volumes, so I may have a very alcoholic english mild!!!
