New Beginnings! AG No.1

[fivetide]

Nice! That's not a nightmare, that's a pretty successful first AG brewday - good work.

As others have said, you just need to either liquor back (add boiled water) to the fermenter at the end to hit the anticipated gravity, or better still, just add the volume of water lost to grain and dead space in the MT, to the amount lost to hops, evaporation and dead space in your boiler.

To give you some idea and to show you that your day actually all went just fine, I need to mash and sparge over 70L of liquor to get a 50L brew length, and still get miscalculations depending on whether the hops I use are pellets or flowers etc...

You're going to love you first AG brew. You'd better brew again soon to stop yourself drinking the first one too early!

[crookedeyeboy]

Haha...wow 53 AG's I cant wait to get to that stage!

Im almost hoping something has gone wrong, in a good way, as it was a bit slap dash at times! Although if the beer turns out to be great im not sure which slap dash part might have been the major contributor!! haha

Roll on AG 2...this could be an obsession

[fivetide]

If you use 90 minute mashes and boils, you'll get the process down to under 6 hours in time. Less than 5 hours if you go for 60 minutes for each process.

I take almost spot on six hours if I have a relaxed brew evening and all goes well. That includes dinner and the odd pint, but doesn't include all the major cleaning up, as it's too dark to visit the composter by the time I've finished...

[crookedeyeboy]

Haha Yeah I was wondering what to do with the spent grain...may well just chuck it on the garden, shame I havent got a goat who could eat it all