"SMaSH that Stuff Up"

[user 4822]

I've been wanting to do an all-grain for a while but haven't really found the time. I realised I had a spare weekend this weekend, so ordered the ingredients last weekend in preparation.

I've made beer from kits and extract before, along with a few turbo-ciders and country wines, however no all-grain. I decided to follow the "Back to basics" mantra and just have a go at it using whatever I had in the kitchen. I wasn't dogmatic I used hydrometers and my 25lt brew bins too.

I decided to to a SMaSH brew just so I could hopefully learn something about the taste of the malt and hops rather than just randomly picking ingredients that I didn't know. I was a bit eager with the ordering and ordered 3kg pale malt, and 100g hops. I'll probably use 2kg total (2 batches) of the malt and 24g of hops. Not sure what to do with the rest...

Ingredients
[*] 1 kg Pale Malt
[*] 3 additions of 6g Fuggles- start of boil, 15 mins and dry hopped
[*] Safale s-04

Obligatory ingredient photos


IMG_4095 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Yeast and starter. The started was started last night using ~1/2 a yeast packet.


IMG_4096 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Fuggles


IMG_4097 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Pale Malt

The brew

Heated water up to about 75C, before tipping in my pale malt.

IMG_4102 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Stove top

The final temperature after addition was ~65C.

IMG_4107 by general.mooney, on Flickr

Active temperature management was employed (Kitchen Oven).

IMG_4108 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Oven

Batched sparged with another couple of litres of 65C water for 30 mins. Once that was done the grain was filtered out using a collander. I re-filtered the wort though the grain quite a few times to try and clear it up and extract more sugars.

IMG_4109 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Buckets and filtering

I eventually ended up with just over 5 litres of sweet, sweet liquid. Although I don't think I'm going to have the clearest beer on the planet.

IMG_4110 by general.mooney, on Flickr

The gravity was measured at this point to be 1.033, although you'll see later that this is nonsense.

IMG_4111 by general.mooney, on Flickr - OG 1.033

Following the method of [Back to basics 2: AG MoBotulism] I boiled the wort for 60mins with additions of Fuggles from the start of the boil, 15mins from the end, and dry hopped into the fermentation bottle.

IMG_4113 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Stovetop


IMG_4115 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Dry hops ready

Chilled using the classic cold water in the sink method. I've found improved chilling by circulating the wort and the cold water at the same time. Took two sink loads of water to get the temperature down.

IMG_4116 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Sink

Added the chilled wort to my pre-hopped demijohn and then added my yeast starter. I had significant losses during boiling, and underestimated the amount of water that the grain would absorb so didn't end up with a full demijohn.

IMG_4118 by general.mooney, on Flickr - Final shot

I took another hydrometer reading before adding the yeast to double check after the boiling and chilling what the density would be. Well it turned out to be 1.060! Unfortunately I didn't take a picture. So that was a bit of a shocker, I won't have much beer but it will either be sweet or strong.

After about 30mins the crud started to settle to the bottom of the demijohn quite nicely. It has been sitting overnight near my bedroom radiator and bubbling away quite happily.

Overall it was easy enough to make an all grain wort, but I don't know if I've made a drinkable all grain beer yet. We'll have to wait and see. The things I'm going to be looking out for are the clarity of the beer (Did my filtering work?) and the amount of hop flavour. I think I may have overdone it a bit, but I personally don't mind a hoppy beer.

I think I'll be sticking to kits and extract for the time being though, as it was such a huge pallava trying to filter and pour, and trying not to spill. It was a lot of effort for only 5lt of beer. I see why most people make 25-50 litres each batch, it wouldn't cost you much more in effort or time but you'd get a lot more for it.

ps. I made more today and got 5lt with OG=1.040. Same recipe and method.

 

[Scott]

Good pics and congrats on the first AG!

With the OG coming out that high, did you not consider adding more water at the end to bring it down whilst replacing the loss? Not saying you did wrong, just curious.

:thumb:

 

[oldjiver]

I have made a couple of gallons at a time using the same basic system you did. i.e. a saucepan a plastic sieve. I used a polystyrene box with a plastic food container in it to maintain the temperature, and that worked well. You can make small brews, I now make 15 or 20 litre brews and they are well worthwhile.

 

[jonnymorris]

The gravity was measured at this point to be 1.033, although you'll see later that this is nonsense.

SG varies with temperature. There's a calculator at the top of the page.

Congrats on #1.

 

[abeyptfc]

The gravity was measured at this point to be 1.033, although you'll see later that this is nonsense.

SG varies with temperature. There's a calculator at the top of the page.

Congrats on #1.

yeah in that pic your og is higher than 1.033 aswell, its more like 1.036, you take the reading from under the surface of the film of the beer. you can always 'liqour back' by adding cooled boiled water to make it up to 5 litres and bring your gravity down.

 

[user 4822]

Thanks for all the comments.

I would have added more water but I was getting to the end of 4hrs of work and just couldn't be be bothered. I had a ton-load of washing up to do as well.

It'll still be interesting to see how it comes out.

You can make small brews, I now make 15 or 20 litre brews and they are well worthwhile.

Do you not end up having to heat and boil lots of separate batches of water and grain?

 

[oldjiver]

Thanks for all the comments.

I would have added more water but I was getting to the end of 4hrs of work and just couldn't be be bothered. I had a ton-load of washing up to do as well.

It'll still be interesting to see how it comes out.

You can make small brews, I now make 15 or 20 litre brews and they are well worthwhile.

Do you not end up having to heat and boil lots of separate batches of water and grain?

No, because I have bought a 23litre boiler now!!

 

[user 4822]

Racked both my all-grain brews into secondaries this morning. They have both fermented to about 1.020 so far. I'm hoping for them to drop a bit more in the next fortnight before bottling.

They were quite clear before racking, but moving them caused some sediment to be kicked up. Hopefully this will all settle out before bottling to give a nice clear beer.