First Brew Ever! All Grain #1 - Light Wit

[dunks]

Hey guys,

After having never brewed anything before, be it with an extract kit or all grain, I decided to jump into the deep end and go all-grain for my first brew.

My boiler consists of a 33l fermentation bucket with a single 2.2 kW element (seems to handle the job fine, might install a second for quicker heating). My mash-tun is a coolbox with extra insulation added in the form of aluminum foil lined bubble wrap.

And to cool the wort after boiling, I went with a counter-flow chiller.

I did a couple of test runs with just hot water and it all seemed to go smoothly and I had a rough idea of my dead spaces.

Anyway, apologies for the dodgy photos (and the lack of them!), being my first brew I was all over the place with little time to take photos. Next time will be more of a relaxed affair!

My recipe was:

2000g lager malt
2000g flaked (unmalted) wheat
1000g wheat malt
500g porridge oats

30g Saaz - full boil
2 oranges (standard oranges!) - 15 minutes
10g crushed coriander seeds - 15 minutes
20g Bobek - flameout steep

Yeast: WB-06



Doughing in!

First runnings out the mash tun (temperature held fine at 66c for 90 mins beforehand!)

Lovely hops!

Cooling the wort

Nice and snug in the FV

I had some minor problems in being that I ended up with 17 liters in the FV and not 23 liters.

I think this was due to inaccurate measurements on my boiler and underestimating the dead spaces in the boiler and mash tun. I put around (probably wrong) 26 liters into the boiler, and came out with only 17 liters according to the measurements on the FV, which are also probably in accurate.

All in all, no major disasters and now I know what to alter, and where I need some fine tuning!

Four days on, I took a small sample and I'm now down to 1.020, tastes quite but a little thin maybe? My OG was 1.060 which was pretty high for the recipe, hopefully I don't end up with some too strong!

 

[phettebs]

Nice job. Sounds like a tasty brew. :thumb:

 

[PD]

Well done in making a fine start to All Grain Brewing. :party:
Take no notice of the printed volumes on the buckets they are usually out a few litres. Spend an hour with a measuring jug some water and an indelible pen and make your own marks.
There's lots of things to get to learn from your equipment like how much your system loses in steam during the boil, how much liquor your grain and hops will absorb, your dead spaces. As you use your system you will come to get to know these values and can adjust accordingly. Your targets are just that in the begining, something to aim towards. You'll get there.

Again...well done.

 

[pittsy]

well done , i have just brewed a wit beer too , its been in the bottle for 4 days and it already tastes nice :thumb:

 

[Dave1970]

Congratulations :thumb: Looks like all your equipment worked well so you'll be sorted for future brews.

As you came in high on OG and low on volume it looks like your evaporation losses were probably more than you allowed for, you can dilute with cooled boiled water to get back towards target, for example 2 litres of added water would have given you 19 litres @1054, 4 would give 21 litres @ 1049. The downside is that you will dilute flavour and bitterness as well. If you're already thinking it tastes thin I guess you wouldn't want to do this. There's a dilution calculator built into the free Brewmate software.

Next time, sparge a bit more, so instead of going for 26 litres pre-boil keep sparging until you've collected 30 or 31 (provided the gravity of the runnings doesn't fall below 0.990) and you should end up closer to your target volume.

 

[dunks]

Thanks for the advice guys! :thumb:

I think I actually should have had around 30 liters into the boiler, and not 26, and I think my markings over read too, so that explains the 17 liters out!

Oh well, I had fun, I learned a lot for next time, and I did get 17 liters of beer out of it

Bring on brew #2!

 

[BrewDan]

Well done!! I love reading these threads, my delivery of grains should be arriving tomorrow, and I can then make a start if my first batch.

Any tips at all? Also how long did it all take , finally did you use anything like beersmith?

Enjoy your brew!!

 

[dunks]

Yeah, I added the recipe to BeerSmith, seemed to calculate everything fine, I just mucked up when adding my sparge water volumes! Can't really blame the program for that, although I still need to spend some time playing around with it, seems quite complicated!

As for tips, I guess next time I'll be rushing around and worrying less, not everything needs to be done to the exact second! It probably took me around 4-5 hours (including boil and mash time), I didn't really notice :)

 

[Wendy1971]

looks great welcome to the dark side :thumb:

 

[BrewDan]

Sounds like time well spent to me :thumb: looking forward to an update, and some tasting reviews :

 

[dennisking]

Well done good to see someone take the brave route.

 

[dunks]

I was hoping to maybe prime and bottle it Wednesday/Thursday and let it condition a week or two, but for unforeseeable reasons I'm away the next two weeks so will have to leave it be in the FV! Oh well, I'm sure it wont do it any harm :)

 

[Dr Mike]

Congrats on your first AG.

Looks like a great set-up you've got. I'm jealous of the counter flow chiller!

 

[pittsy]

I was hoping to maybe prime and bottle it Wednesday/Thursday and let it condition a week or two, but for unforeseeable reasons I'm away the next two weeks so will have to leave it be in the FV! Oh well, I'm sure it wont do it any harm :)

good it will do it good , best to leave it around 10/14 days to help the yeast clean up the brew , taste etc .

 

[dunks]

Congrats on your first AG.

Looks like a great set-up you've got. I'm jealous of the counter flow chiller!

Haha, it's a bit rough looking, but I kinked it once when winding it around a pan, had to lob about 4" of copper off so I left it alone after that, it works just as well. Function over form

It's only around 4 meters of 8mm copper too, when most I've seen are around 3x that, had to run my hose at 1/2 flow as well due to the wort coming out around 10-15c! I guess that's the cold water of the Highlands doing its bit!

good it will do it good , best to leave it around 10/14 days to help the yeast clean up the brew , taste etc .

Yeah, I guess being away from it for two weeks means I wont be tempted to poke and prod it

 

[dunks]

Just taken another sample, 1.010 on the nose! :drink:

Tempted to bottle tomorrow if it's still the same.

Taste and mouthfeel are much better than a couple of days ago also.

 

[BrewDan]

Excellent!!! I bet it's pretty good knowing you made that yourself :thumb: how long do you plan to condition for, you said you were bottling didn't you?

 

[dunks]

Yup, gonna bottle it. Will leave it in the FV for two more weeks then condition it bottles, not sure on length of time, will see how one tastes after a week!

 

[dunks]

Hey guys, after leaving it for another two weeks after the intial one week ferment, this is how it looks!

Certainly a lot more clear than when I left it after one week (fermentation had stopped too). I was a bit worried as from looking at it inside the FV it looks a lot darker, with some yeast (trub?) floating on the surface, however when I syphoned some out with a racking cane, it came out looking above.

 

[TheYoungishBrewer]

All looks good to me. I can't believe you are a first time brewer. Well done. I'm on my fourth brew and still not this advanced. :thumb: :