More confused than a baby racoon...

[ElChemist]

Okay, mash tun - Done. Boiler - Should be done by Sunday. Wort chiller - Dispatched and should be here next tuesday. This gives me a week or so to get my head around all grain brewing, specifically Mashing Volumes - Which Grain to water ratio is best? Sparge volumes... This is very confusing. Should I always have a 60 minute hop? Does it make much difference if I dont want to use one? Would boiling a smaller amount of hops for the full 60 and then putting more in later on change the characteristics of the beer much?

My boiler will be a 33L one, so I'm hoping that I can keep volumes to around 27 litres to make sure I dont have a massive boil over and end up crying over spilt wort...

Can anyone point me in the direction of a morons guide to AG brewing?

I'm aiming for a Saison, just because I like the sound of the beer, orange peel to be added during the ferment. Does this need to be boiled to kill nasties? So many questions and so little information (My google skills have seriously atrophied or I just dont have the time like i used to)

Any help, pointers, links greatly appreciated....

ElChem

 

[Robin54]

Best of luck. Actually I don't believe in luck but do believe there are some very knowledgable and helpful folk here who will put your mind at ease. That didn't help much did it?? but I feel better.

 

[ElChemist]

Thanks Robin, this kinda makes me feel like when I was doing my degree, second lecture was Inorganic chemistry but seemed more like advanced maths... still have nightmares about the longer Debye-Huckel equation...

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

[TheRedDarren]

Hi mate, I'll offer my two pence worth and hope it helps...

First up, it's easier than you think so don't stress, enjoy it. Your first go at making beer with a new set up will be prone to unexpected results as you don't know how the system will work, so pick a beer style that can tolerate a bit of flexibility, no lagers, probably not a pale ale, maybe an IPA (big hops can hide a flaw or two)
or a stout (again big flavours, but malt not hops) and use a dried yeast to cut down various aspects of the brew day.

Liquor/grain ratio, I always go for 2.5/3x liquor to grain. So, 5kg of grain gets mashed in 12/15l of liquor.
Simple as that. There are thoughts on which is best in regards to efficiency but you can look at that later. Pick either x2.5 or x3 and go with that for a few brews.
I always have and full kettle just boiled and a jug of cold water so I can adjust the mash temp once I've doughed in.

Total liquor. A bit more complex but still pretty straightforward...
Take your brew length (23l) add your losses to dead space (mine is actually
0 as I tip the boiler up to completely
empty it), add losses to grain (maybe 3l), add losses to hops (this depends on how much you use and what type, come back to us with your chosen recipe and we'll help you out then), add boil off rate (mine was about 5l per hour on a good, strong boil) and you should have an idea of roughly how much liquor to start with.
Then once you've used your mash liquor, the remaining is your sparge liquor.

Sparge. Take your time, nice and slow is the way here, I run off at about 500ml per minute which means 20l should take 40 mins, this is as fast as you want to go, ideally you'd want to take at least an hour to fly sparge.
Sparging stops when either you have collected enough wort or the runnings are less then 1.008.

Hop additions. Ideally you'd want a 60 minute addition then some late additions too but this depends on the style you decide to make.
To keep things simple at this stage go for one early or bittering addition and maybe two late additions.
Boil for 90 minutes, once you know your ingredients and system you can lower boil times for various reasons. But for now stick with a 90 minute boil (Google DMS!)

Cooling. Don't pitch too warm, be patient and wait for the wort to get down to 20 degrees, then pitch. Pitching warm can decrease lag times but can set you up for a few off flavours if you're not careful.

Hope that's of some use, good luck and write up your brewday for us!

 

[Halfacrem]

My advice: Follow recipes until you can answer those questions yourself. (I can't as yet answer those questions for you, which is why I'm following recipes) :)

 

[Dutto]

My advice is simple:

1. Buy an All Grain Kit of a type of beer (but not a lager) that you like.

2. Read and make sure that you understand the instructions.

3. Check that you have everything that is required by the instructions.

4. Clean and sanitise everything required and ensure that it is ready to hand.

5. Read the Instructions again and FOLLOW THEM TO THE LETTER.
(It helps if your OH acts like a Jimmy Cricket to remind you when you stray! They're usually very good at that!) :whistle:

Finally, enjoy the experience and learn from any mistakes. :thumb: :thumb:

 

[JapanBrew]

RedDarren said it well. In fact too well. First go, 5 kg will make a 23 liter batch. Start there.
Now, you'll loose 1 liter per kg of grain. So add 5 liters. Now you're 28. Now, like Red said, you need to know your dead space. I have a lot. And I don't take the last 2 or 3 liters of wort after boil because it has all that protein and such. My mash tun has about 2 liters under the false bottom. So I need another 4.5 liters. So now I'm up to 32.5 liters.
Now Red said it best. 3x the grain weight to mash. So use 15 to 18 liters. Start with about 71 degrees. When you add the grain it should hit 67 or so. That's a good temp to mash. Stir for a few minutes to make sure everything is really mixed.
After 45 min. Start getting the remaining 14.5 liters of water ready to sparge. Heat that up to 75 degrees. That should take 15 minutes or so. By that time you hit 60 minutes.
Now Red said it very very well, sparge SLOWLY. just a trickle. Stop when you hit your target volume or when the wort coming out is under 1.008.
And most important, enjoy and take notes.
You'll have things go ****. At least for the first 5 brews. Just learn.
As for 60 minutes hops, that's for bittering. That's what gives beer the beer flavor.

 

[ElChemist]

Scrap that, going for a kit from Morley Home brew, All grain kit but still a kit. Get my tekkers down before I go off piste...

 

[whinton]

My BEST advice is to buy a good book and read it thoroughly. Second BEST advice is to chat to people and use this excellent forum. I only started brewing seriously from AG in March this year. I've learned that first you get to know the basics then through brewing you learn a heck of a lot more! Keep a journal of your brew days and make sure you make a note of "Lessons Learned" after each brew. Those notes will help you BIG time.
For books, my personal favourite is "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" by Graham Wheeler. It's my bible :lol:

 

[Fore]

For books, my personal favourite is "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" by Graham Wheeler. It's my bible :lol:

I found that a good AG beginner book too; covers the basics pretty well. For some reason though, although I have reasonable BH efficiency at 79%, I always seem to need a lot more grain than Wheeler lists for a 23l brew. I don't worry about it though, it is what it is. I use a free on-line-tool to develop my recipes and it get's me very close (I have never directly followed the volumes in any given recipe, I use the tool to meet the recipe targets for ABV & IBU).

One weak area in Wheelers book is water treatment. Most should overlook this at the start, get the brewing basics down first. In my case I have "strange" water in that it has very high bicarbonate, but very low calcium. Took me 3 months to get my head around water assessment and treatment. Anyone with any interest in this subject might check my thread "Water for dummies".

 

[chuffer]

John Palmer's How to Brew is very useful too:

http://www.howtobrew.com/

 

[whinton]

I found that a good AG beginner book too; covers the basics pretty well. For some reason though, although I have reasonable BH efficiency at 79%, I always seem to need a lot more grain than Wheeler lists for a 23l brew. I don't worry about it though, it is what it is. I use a free on-line-tool to develop my recipes and it get's me very close (I have never directly followed the volumes in any given recipe, I use the tool to meet the recipe targets for ABV & IB

I haven't really had that problem although I do use the beer engine from his web site. I adjust the values according to what and where I am buying from and work with the engine to get the result I am aiming for. I usually aim for 25 to 27 litres and after boiling I end up with around 23 litres or so fermenting. Siphoning this off into my cask works out well as I fill the 4.5 gallons and leave the sediment behind.
Some great recipes in the book too! :thumb:

 

[Fore]

I was wrong, got mixed up. It's my mash eff. which is 79%, my BHE is 69-72%. Wheeler says on page 84, "the recipes assume an overall efficiency of 75%". That possibly explains it.

 

[ElChemist]

Many thanks for the wise words peeps. Ive been reading like a trooper these last few days, but havent had the time to brew yet. I need a pipe bender and a few hours where the wife isnt on nights and can deal with the little monster for a while to finish the boiler, then I'll head to my LHBS and pick up a bunch of grain hops and yeasties to get my first large scale AG on the go...

Incidentally, I screwed up cutting the holes for my boiler, so have ended up with a mash tun, boiler and a hot liquor tank... such a shame lol