Have a go at simple AG

[NPi]

Omg just done this by 2
had two pots going so I have 10 litres in fv but thought I would go again first thing in the morning just finished now 10.30 so if I go again that's 20 liters but it's in fv now bubbling every 10 seconds with no yeast what is happening here lol when I finsh in the morning it will probably be ready to explode lol

If it's bubbling without yeast, it sounds like you have a wild yeast infection.

This is probably caused by a lapse in sanitation and time between brews. It's not advisable to add two or more brews together.

You'll be best off pitching yeast into the current batch and hoping that it overpowers the wild yeast. You never know it may be safe to drink once it's fermented fully.

Going forward, you're best to keep all pieces of your equipment clean and sanitised, cooling your wort down quickly after the boil stage. You can then pitch your yeast when it's within its pitching range (see manufacturers guidance).

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

 

[labrewski]

If it's bubbling without yeast, it sounds like you have a wild yeast infection.

This is probably caused by a lapse in sanitation and time between brews. It's not advisable to add two or more brews together.

You'll be best off pitching yeast into the current batch and hoping that it overpowers the wild yeast. You never know it may be safe to drink once it's fermented fully.

Going forward, you're best to keep all pieces of your equipment clean and sanitised, cooling your wort down quickly after the boil stage. You can then pitch your yeast when it's within its pitching range (see manufacturers guidance).

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

Damn drinking and brewing I done both simultaneously added to fv without cooling only added yeast following morning also got carried away and drank a few extra bottles was in a good mood brewing listening to music thinking yeah all grain
Aaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh hope it's it ruined

 

[Gerryjo]

Damn drinking and brewing I done both simultaneously added to fv without cooling only added yeast following morning also got carried away and drank a few extra bottles was in a good mood brewing listening to music thinking yeah all grain
Aaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh hope it's it ruined

If you added it hot it's just heat escaping and you've killed your yeast. If you haven't opened the lid you can add more yeast now it's cooled. It will be fine unless you have dumped it...

 

[HGJacko]

If you've made a few kits and/or extract brews, why not have a go at a simple AG brew, to see the difference it makes? A small batch of AG beer is not difficult and you will discover the difference and feel the joy and pride of making it from scratch. All you need for 5 litres is 1kg of Maris Otter, or other pale malt, a packet of hops, and a sachet of yeast. You just need a thermometer, a decent sized pan and something to strain the grain from the wort. A big sieve, or a piece of cloth in a colander. A bag that fills the pan and,drapes over the sides and holds the grains, made from muslin or voile, is ideal. You also need a hydrometer to check the gravity before and after fermentation.

Recipe:

• 1kg Maris Otter (about £1.50)
• One packet of hops (any you like - EKG, Citra, Amarillo, Galaxy, Fuggles, First gold etc) (About £3-4, but you will only use 15g of the 100g, so cost is around 50p)
• One packet of yeast, 3g dried yeast is enough. (50p ish)

Method:

1. Heat 3 litres of water to 75C in big pan.
2. Pour in the pale malt while stirring - get rid of lumps.
3. Check temp is 65-70C - adjust if necessary with cold or boiling water.
4. Wrap a thick towel round the pot and leave alone for one hour.
5. Strain into a bucket or other vessel through sieve, or colander lined with cloth.
6. Heat another 4 litres of water to 80C and add the grains back to it. Leave 10 mins, stir, and strain the liquid to your bucket. You should have about 6 litres, which will reduce when you boil it for an hour.
7. Dispose of grains, add wort to pan and bring to boil.
8. Add 5 grams of hops when boiling point is reached.
9. 55 Mins later add 5 to 10g of hops, depending on your hoppiness requirements, boil another 5 mins and switch off.
10. Cool the wort in sink, with lid on, add to sterilised FV/demijohn via sterilised sieve to catch hops, and top up the level to 5 litres if necessary. Pitch yeast at around 18 - 20C.

[Measure the amount of water added if you top up the FV, and add this amount to the sparge water next time you brew]

You should get 8 or 9 x 500ml bottles of lovely beer for about £2.50. It takes me about 3 hours start to finish, making 10 litre batches in this way (see below).

10 Litre option: You can just double all the quantities and make 10 Litres, which is what I do most of the time, it's a good amount of beer. About 18x500ml bottles, or 27x330ml bottles. You just need a 15ish litre pot.

If you've never made an all grain beer it's really worth giving this a go.

Great idea is this! Have a go if you are wanting to try with AG. I went straight into the deep end and never tried extract brewing. Highly recommend starting out simple and nailing the basics.

 

[StoutWolf]

Newbie question warning...
I had a go (or 2) at following this the weekend before last. So this weekend I will likely be bottling my small batch SMaSH's.
Once that's done, with a view to building stocks, so that I can reduce the 'greeness' of the homebrew I'm drinking and amount of commercial reinforcements that I'm drafting in, I'd like to get another small batch AG brew on.
Something that's remains unclear to me though, I've used copper finings, and sieved the wort from the kettle to the fermenting vessel, but the break material isn't removed by the sieve.
Should I be trying to keep this out of the FV? If so how?
Cheers.

 

[jof]

"break material"?
I use irish moss (5g in 20 litres) to clear my beer, but it won't be clear going into the fermenting vessel.
The point of using sieve/bag is to strain out the hops & any grains that might have made it into the wort.

It won't start to clear until fermentation stops,
I usually bottle mine before it is completely clear too, and let it clear in the bottles.

 

[StoutWolf]

"break material"?
I use irish moss (5g in 20 litres) to clear my beer, but it won't be clear going into the fermenting vessel.
The point of using sieve/bag is to strain out the hops & any grains that might have made it into the wort.

It won't start to clear until fermentation stops,
I usually bottle mine before it is completely clear too, and let it clear in the bottles.

Thanks, I kept the hops and grains out, was wondering if I needed to also keep the stuff that looks like underwort cumulonimbus clouds out some how?

 

[labrewski]

Thanks, I kept the hops and grains out, was wondering if I needed to also keep the stuff that looks like underwort cumulonimbus clouds out some how?

Done it recently mine turned out cloudy but I squeezed the bag of grain and didn't chill but beer tasted lovely
Enjoy

 

[obscure]

Thanks, I kept the hops and grains out, was wondering if I needed to also keep the stuff that looks like underwort cumulonimbus clouds out some how?

One advantage of a stainless steel fermentor is they are opaque, meaning you can’t see all the ‘muck’ swirling about, combined with a Tilt means the first I see of my beer after pitching the yeast is the clear beer coming out the tap when I keg.

 

[StoutWolf]

One advantage of a stainless steel fermentor is they are opaque, meaning you can’t see all the ‘muck’ swirling about, combined with a Tilt means the first I see of my beer after pitching the yeast is the clear beer coming out the tap when I keg.

I can only dream of such a setup atm. I'm very well behaved though, the lids have remained firmly sealed, and I can't see in. Just conscious that I read about hot and cold breaks, used finings and effectively, other than the hops, it all ended up in the fv anyway.

 

[matt76]

I can only dream of such a setup atm. I'm very well behaved though, the lids have remained firmly sealed, and I can't see in. Just conscious that I read about hot and cold breaks, used finings and effectively, other than the hops, it all ended up in the fv anyway. View attachment 36752

At this stage don't worry about it. Early in my brewing career I just used to tip the lot into the FV - hot & cold break, hops, the lot - and the beer turned out fine. All the crud should settle to the bottom of the FV so you can just syphon the beer from above it when you come to bottle.

For now I would just concentrate on learning which way is up, down, left and right, what you need to do and when - get your basic process sorted. For one thing it's helpful to get a feel for the efficiency etc of your setup which makes recipe planning more predictable.

There are ways to do what you're talking about - I eventually settled on one that works for me but that's more about maximising yield than drastically better beer.

 

[StoutWolf]

Thanks for the responses. I'll aim to repeat what I did last time then since there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it.

 

[Racehunter]

What a fantastic thread.

Tomorrow (hopefully) sees me do my first simple AG brew. This will be a full volume, no sparge BIAB SMASH. I am aiming at 10 to 11L into the fermenter and will be using 2KG of Maris Otter (4.5 EBC) with 150g of crystal (175 EBC), and hopping with cascade pellets, 20g at 60 minutes and 10g at 5 minutes.

For the mash, I will use 15.6L at 75C and hopefully maintain 65C for 45 minutes, when I will raise the temp back to 75C for the remainder of the hour.

That was from throwing a few things into Brewfather (rapid learning curve) but would appreciate any comments on my process etc.

Steve

 

[Pete9586]

What a fantastic thread.

Tomorrow (hopefully) sees me do my first simple AG brew. This will be a full volume, no sparge BIAB SMASH. I am aiming at 10 to 11L into the fermenter and will be using 2KG of Maris Otter (4.5 EBC) with 150g of crystal (175 EBC), and hopping with cascade pellets, 20g at 60 minutes and 10g at 5 minutes.

For the mash, I will use 15.6L at 75C and hopefully maintain 65C for 45 minutes, when I will raise the temp back to 75C for the remainder of the hour.

That was from throwing a few things into Brewfather (rapid learning curve) but would appreciate any comments on my process etc.

Steve

It’s not a SMaSH if you’re using MO and Crystal! Single malt and single hop!

 

[Racehunter]

Wondered how long it would be before my error was picked up

That's the trouble with trying to do many things at once. Better make sure my head is screwed on properly before I start my 'not quite a SMaSH' tomorrow

 

[matt76]

What a fantastic thread.

Tomorrow (hopefully) sees me do my first simple AG brew. This will be a full volume, no sparge BIAB SMASH. I am aiming at 10 to 11L into the fermenter and will be using 2KG of Maris Otter (4.5 EBC) with 150g of crystal (175 EBC), and hopping with cascade pellets, 20g at 60 minutes and 10g at 5 minutes.

For the mash, I will use 15.6L at 75C and hopefully maintain 65C for 45 minutes, when I will raise the temp back to 75C for the remainder of the hour.

That was from throwing a few things into Brewfather (rapid learning curve) but would appreciate any comments on my process etc.

Steve

Welcome to the dark side!

Believe it or not 66 brews later and I still do it more or less this way!

(Actually your proposed method and batch size is almost identical to what I do)

One critical thing to note - your strike water is way too hot. If you want to mash at 65degC (and I would go about there for starters) I think for your 2.15kg grain bill and 15.6L water you want 67.5degC.

You can use the calculator here:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/
I would just mash at 65degC for an hour. Don't bother faffing around trying to raise the temperature at the end - lots of faff for little gain IMO. Just mash for an hour, get the bag out and squeeze it and bring it up to the boil.

Have fun, enjoy it, make notes so you can learn from it next time - it's a fun hobby not a Space Shuttle launch!

 

[Racehunter]

@matt76, really appreciate your input. With 66 AG brews, you must almost be a 'black belt of the dark side'! Anyway, I take on board your comments about limited gain from a mashout and will try a straight 60 minute mash. The 75c starting temp was taken from Clibits OP where he said that is the temp before adding the grain. Looking forwards to tomorrow and copious note taking

 

[matt76]

@matt76, really appreciate your input. With 66 AG brews, you must almost be a 'black belt of the dark side'! Anyway, I take on board your comments about limited gain from a mashout and will try a straight 60 minute mash. The 75c starting temp was taken from Clibits OP where he said that is the temp before adding the grain. Looking forwards to tomorrow and copious note taking

No problem dude. To be honest I think there are folks round here who've forgotten more than I know! I think I still learn something new almost everything I brew.

It's surprising just how badly malt really wants to become beer, it's actually pretty hard to not make beer of some sort - it's just a case of making those little tweaks to get you closer to the sweet spot.

Best way to learn to make beer is to make beer. Good thing about small batches is you can brew more frequently, practise your process twice as often and experiment with different styles and techniques

 

[Racehunter]

Well, this 'dark-side newbie' now has around 11 litres of wort in the FV, in my water bath. All in all it took around 4 hours from filling the 19L pot to pitching the yeast. Doughing-in was done at 72.1C which dropped to 67.2. Pretty good heat retention with 65.5C after the 60 minute mash. Got it up to a rolling boil and continued with the hop additions at 70 and 5 minutes.

Managed to get the temperature down quickly with multiple changes of water in the sink etc and pitched the yeast at 19.8C. Just before pitching the SG was 1.050.

I did find that i was at the limit of my 3Kw wok burner on my range cooker and will probably investigate some other heat source. Also had a minor issue with the stock pot, which was somewhat full, during the mash, when I spotted a slight trickle of liquid escaping from a handle rivet. Apart from that, pretty pleased. Now to write up the notes

 

[matt76]

Well, this 'dark-side newbie' now has around 11 litres of wort in the FV, in my water bath. All in all it took around 4 hours from filling the 19L pot to pitching the yeast. Doughing-in was done at 72.1C which dropped to 67.2. Pretty good heat retention with 65.5C after the 60 minute mash. Got it up to a rolling boil and continued with the hop additions at 70 and 5 minutes.

Managed to get the temperature down quickly with multiple changes of water in the sink etc and pitched the yeast at 19.8C. Just before pitching the SG was 1.050.

I did find that i was at the limit of my 3Kw wok burner on my range cooker and will probably investigate some other heat source. Also had a minor issue with the stock pot, which was somewhat full, during the mash, when I spotted a slight trickle of liquid escaping from a handle rivet. Apart from that, pretty pleased. Now to write up the notes

Nice work fella Out of interest, what yeast did you pitch?

Couple of tips for chilling the wort:

Keep changing the cooling water for fresh chilled water. When you have a big temperature difference cold water will do the job. But for those tricky last 10-20degC throw some freezer blocks and/or ice in the water to make it colder (not in the wort!!!).

Make a wort chiller - really cheap, really easy, really quick, mega effective (I still use this one!).

Re. heating, yeah, I used to struggle to get it to the boil on the hob in the kitchen, used to take ages. This was a big part of the motivation to invest in a dedicated electric brew kettle. Well wortg considering if you decide to stick with it.

So now you've got your first brew done, time to get another one on - what are you gonna make next?