My First All Grain!

[Benfleet Brewery]

Thanks all - and I forgot to mention, whilst pre cleaning the AIO I turned the pump on not realising the return tap was open spraying the kitchen with - admittedly - clean water!

Right now all of my cock ups are out of the way I can look forward to better brew days - I hope

Things like this are always going to happen and even on a relatively good day we’ll make a mess. I brew outdoors for this reason

 

[lmbollinger]

Good work on the first brew day! Seems something always goes wrong I’m the brew day, it’s just a matter of when. Sounds like you understand the brewing principles well enough that you were able to correct the problems. Now it’s up to the yeast to do their job!

As far as the bazooka screen, I stopped using mine a while back. I’m brewing on an AIO electric system. Put a grain bag in the malt pipe along with the false bottom to strain out hulls. The hop spider does a decent job filtering hop particulate. Both of these screens are finer than the bazooka, anyway, so it wasn’t catching much and was harder to clean than the hop spider IMO. Along with a whirlpool before transferring, I’m happy with the results. I expect you’ll be fine without the screen, although you may have more grub than you were expecting

 

[peelman]

Congratulations on your first brew
Totally old school here, but the fuse never goes on my propane tanks… lol
We all make mistakes, I forgot to mill my grains once in the early days and wondered why they were all floating and right to the top of the mash tun

 

[Rodcx500z]

I once chuck the grain in with out the basket being in doh, what a mess

 

[Andrew Booth]

That brings back memories of my first attempt at all grain 25l pot brew in a bag on the stove made a right mess but three weeks later I had 15 bottles of beer that were like the amber nectar. In short order I got hold of a Brewster beacon AIO and then onto a Grainfather a couple of years after now here I am with 300 brews done and about to open a brewery the hobby is great and don’t worry not every Brewday is a disaster.

Not long since I had completed the sparge on a Yorkshire Bitter I was emptying the spent grain from the basket next to my Grainfather in short order the bag ripped and dumped 6kg of spent grain back 8th the boiler. Some choice words came forth and I swung into action drained the wort out of the front tap into my sparge water heater and set about cleaning up the grain in my boiler it got everywhere blocking the pump and also the tap to the point I had to resort to my co2 cylinder to unblock the pump.

Moral of the story we all have frustration on some Brewdays.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

I once chuck the grain in with out the basket being in doh, what a mess

Yep, guilty also

 

[Rwilts]

Yep, guilty also

Once done never repeated

 

[Dark Arts]

Question about boil and hop additions,

What's the reason for the 1hr+ boil other than to reduce wort to reach required OG

Suppose what I'm asking is, is it necessary to mash with the extra water because of boil off? or could you mash with lower volume, requiring a minimum boil to sterilise wort and have the correct OG and do a separate 1hr hop tea boil then add this to wort and get the same result? or is this extra faff just not worth any possible cost savings/time?

 

[David Woods]

UPDATE: so my first all grain was ready to gulp down - well almost as I got impatient and tried one after 2 weeks and initially it tasted a bit home brew - I was disappointed but remembering previous comments I left it a bit longer and it turned into a really nice drinkable hoppy beer - it cleared really well too.

The batch carb amount worked perfectly for this beer and I ended up using the fermentation temp in the priming calculation.

I have now just done my 2nd brew - an Amber ale!

I had no brew day problems - it was stress and panic free and I am already planning another for Xmas.

Thanks for all the help.