Home Brew Forum

Today was my first all grain brew. In fact, it's my first ever non-kit brew - and I've only ever brewed one kit before.

I've tied to add some pics, but can't seem to get it to work - so here's a link to my site where the pics are hosted:

http://www.dentonmiller.net/Site/First_ ... .html#grid

I used the Northdown Wonder recipes from Barley Bottom:

5.5Kg Maris Otter
150g Crystal Malt
60g Northdown - 90 mins
50g Bobek - 1 min
12 Safale S-04
1 protafloc tablet

All in all, everything went well. I turned the boiler on at 0920 and was finished and cleaned up by 1600 in time for the missus to get home.

The boiler took about 45 minutes to get the water to temperature. When it hit 78C, I dumped 14 litres of water into the tun. After a few minutes, this settled at 72C so I added the grain. After a good stir, this stabilised at 67C, without me needing to add any hot or cold water to adjust. I put the lid on and monitored the temperature. After an hour, it had actually risen to 68C!

After the complete 90 min mash period, the temp was still reading 67C, so the tun works well.

I had decided to use batch sparging to keep things simple so I added 7 litres of water at 70C, then drained off the tun, recirculating the first litre or so of wort. Once the tun was empty, I refilled with another 14.5 litres of 70C sparge water gave it a good stir, let it sit for 10 minutes, then did another recirculation and drained that load.

All good so far....

Next, I put the wort into the boiler, switched it on and it was boiling nicely at exactly 1130. In went 60g of Northdowns hops.

20 mins before the end of the boil, I put the immersion chiller into the wort to sanitise and added a protafloc tablet. One minute before the end of the boil, I added 50g of Bobek hops then turned the boiler off and the chiller on.

The chiller worked well, but took longer than I thought it would. It took almost an hour to get the wort down to 25C. In the meantime, I rehydrated my yeast.

Once the wort hit 25C, I removed the chiller then went to drain the wort from the boiler into the fermenter. This was where trouble struck!

I got perhaps 30% of the wort drained when it the boiler clogged up and wouldn't let any more wort out! shit.....

So I tried a syphon - no good either. thin bore pipe kept getting clogged.

In the end, I had to keep rocking the boiler to get the wort out, but finally it was all through. I presume ths means that I have a lot more small hop particles in the beer than I strictly want, but hopefully most of these will settle out in fermentation.

I pitched the yeast in, stuck an airlock in the lid and gave it all a good shake to kick it off. Now it's sitting doing nothing......I imagine that it will take a few hours for the fermentation to really get going. I plan to ferment in the bucket for a week, then rack that into a plastic keg for secondary for two weeks, then rack into a corny keg to mature and dispense.

I dunked the hydrometer into the wort when it had cooled to 21C - it read somewhere between 1052 and 1056. I could really see due to the froth, and the angle was bad....

Anyway - that's it. The whole process was much easier than I thought it would be and was enjoyable. My equipment all seemed to work fine, and I imagine the next brew will be easier.

Things I would do differently next time:

1) Use a hop bag! Having the hop residue clogging the boiler was no fun at all

2) Use a reading vial for the hydrometer so I can see what it actually says!

Things that went better than I thought they would:

1) The mash tun, and manifold worked really well - didn't even lose 1C over 90 minutes and no problem draining the sparge.

2) The wort chilled also worked well. It took longer than I thought, but I also think the digital thermomemter I was using got stuck at 45C on the way down.... the glass one showed 28C.

So - now I'm having a pint of Hop Back T.E.A. to celebrate with - and looking forward to getting this brew out of primary so I can use the bucket for the next batch.

Cheers,


Alasdair

Pics at: http://www.dentonmiller.net/Site/First_ ... .html#grid

Well done adm, glad it went well for the mostpart . I presume you were using a hop strainer in the boiler?

I also wait about anything between a half and an hour after chilling to let all the cold break material drop out of suspension before draining the boiler.

Hi Buzz,

Yes, I had a hop strainer in place. It's like a small mash tun manifold - copper pipe in a square shape with slits cut in it.

Thanks for the tip on waiting a while - that might have helped. I think I will try that and a hop bag next time to see what happens.....


Cheers,


Alasdair

I'll have a stab in the dark and hazard a guess that its one of the H&G hop strainers. Mine stuck all the time too, i took a couple of measures, hacked more slits in it (helped but still stuck), drilled holes in it, the wort flowed well through the hop strainer but so did big chunks of the hops also (holes to big). Finally solved it by tieing the hop back over the hop strainer.

This is a better fix than using a hop bag for boiling hops, its the hops themselves settling on the strainer that act as filters catching all the protien break material, if you use a hop bag there is no hops to filter this and it'll all end up in the fermenter.

BTW welcome to the dark side

DelBoy - you're right! It's from H&G and came fitted in the boiler from them....

Where you said to put the hop back over the strainer, did you mean the hop "bag" ? This makes sense to me - I was also a bit worried that if I put the hops in the bag, they won't get agitated so much and I might lose some of their power.....

I'll give it a go next time (which might be this Sunday if I can get hold of another fermenting bucket.....)

Good work adm, like the pics

Welcome to the dark side

Well done on breaking your duck adm, great pics too

Excellent

Great pics, Love the slideshow,

One tip to assist the chilling, gently stir the wort with the chiller, you break up the stratification and the wort chills much quicker.

adm wrote:DelBoy - you're right! It's from H&G and came fitted in the boiler from them....

Where you said to put the hop back over the strainer, did you mean the hop "bag" ? This makes sense to me - I was also a bit worried that if I put the hops in the bag, they won't get agitated so much and I might lose some of their power.....

I'll give it a go next time (which might be this Sunday if I can get hold of another fermenting bucket.....)

You are right adm, you probably won't get as much utilisation when using a hop bag since the mecahnical action of the boil helps extract the alpha acids.

The hopbag i bought from H&G fits snugly over their hopstrainer and then you tighten the the drawstring in the indent between the big brass nut and the hopstrainer and tie several knots (stays on during the boil no problem).

Initially though you should get a hacksaw and try doubling the number of slits or instead get the drill out and drill numerous small holes which DaaB or someone else will know the optimum size diameter to use (i made mine too big). If you get it right then you won't need a hopbag over it like i do, but if you are like me and manage to overdo it and bodge it you can always rectify the situation with the old hopbag trick.

Yes, very fancy slide show. Most Impressive.

Hope you enjoyed your first of many mate

p.s. I've just wrapped my H&G strainer in a SS mesh envelope

Thanks for all the kind comments and tips, gents!

I enjoyed myself so much I think I will do another batch on Sunday - the only problem is that I don't have another 10 gallon bucket, so may have to do the primary fement in a plastic pressure barrel. i think I'll take the S30 valve out though and replace with a blow off hose run into a bucket of water to be on the safe side.....

For the hop strainer, I think I'll try drilling a load of 3mm holes in the copper pipe for now. I also have a sheet of fine stainless mesh that came with my H&G picnic cooler mash tun, so I might try making an envelope type thingy out of that to fit over the strainer. Who know if it will work or not? If not, then I'll go for the brupaks version.

As for the slideshow, I can't take any credit - it's just one of those things that you get with a Mac. You just drag your photos onto the page, tell it to upload to the webside and bingo! If only other things in life (like tax returns for example) were so simple!


Couple more questions though:

1) Would there be any issues if instead of going from the primary to secondary, then to a keg, I just left the beer in the primary for a bit loger then racked straight to a corny? If so, should I use finings, and when? If it's going to result in much more sediment in the keg, then I'd probably just go the secondary route.

2) Does anyone know if spent grain from the mash tun is OK for dogs to eat? I've got a bit hound that seems partial to it, but before I let her at it I thought I'd better check as I know that hops can be very toxic to dogs.

Great write up and congrats on your first all grain

Good set of pictures too - Firefox didn't seem to like the slideshow, but it worked fine on Internet Explorer

Cheers,

DaaB wrote:I personally like the Brupaks hop strainer, it's made of some sort of rolled copper mesh and the holes are closer together than you'd get with a drill. It costs a tenner or so but just grit your teeth and hand over the cash and you'll have hassle free hop strainer that will last forever.

Daab's right, I use one of these and have never had a problem