Home Brew Forum

I'm a day late but my first all grain beer has just kicked off.

What have you guys been hiding from me ??
I opened the crystal malt and the aroma was amazing ! Opened the MO and not the same but still the scent of the gods. Its probably just another day in the office for you but the smell of the malt for the first time (hopefully) shows me what I've been missing.

I'm starting with Dave Lines Bass.

So far, so good. Mash was slightly under 66 degrees so I've added a bit of boiling water to get there.

I'll not be adding any pictures as its all a bit fingers and thumbs at the minute without the compilcation of a camera.

So far so good

Its boiling away happily

Smells good ... hopefully it will be a decent drink

Good luck with the brew, you will find that there's no turning back now,

Sounds like it's going OK Softlad, have a good one & welcome to the dark side - you'll never leave mwuhahahaha !

Good luck & I hope you enjoy your 1st brewday Softlad, no doubt it will be the 1st of many!

How are you doing, you must be well on the way now.

Welcome to the Malty side

Enjoy your first AG day, and remember its really hard to screw up, and if you have any problems post away. enjoy

It all worked out well

I tasted the brew at each stage to get a feel for whats going on.

IC worked really well - I dont know how long it took but the heat exchange was inpressive with the exiting water being good and hot.

The H&G kit made the process easier. I modified the hop strainer with the holes but think I'll build the SS strainer in the near future as this struggled with the last gallon

SG weighed in at 1.044 which should give me a beer pretty close ABV wise to its commercial cousin

All tidied up now and the chickens are feasting on the used grain.

Nice work, keep us posted during the 'quality control' phase

Glad alls gone well Softlad. You'll never forget your 1st batch of AG.

roger the dog wrote:Nice work, keep us posted during the 'quality control' phase

Ive got 5 or 6 kits to wade through first but this holds far more interest than the kits Ive brewed previously. Kits just 'hapen' - AG holds far more interest to me.

I checked the brew tonight and the crust is touching the lid ..... is there a better hobby ?

softlad wrote:is there a better hobby ?

I find photography comes very close . . . Particularly traditional, something really special about making BnW prints in the darkroom . . . . I'm now looking at some of the old processes like Cyanotype / Argyrotype . . . and platinum/palladium printing . . . Yeah It can be done digitally, but the sense of achievement when you craft something is really special

softlad wrote: All tidied up now and the chickens are feasting on the used grain.

Nothing excites my birds like more than the sight of me emerging from the back door with my cool box. The latent heat within the grains used to throw them, but I've learnt spread them around a bit now, in order to dissipate this.

Northern Brewer wrote:

softlad wrote: All tidied up now and the chickens are feasting on the used grain.

Nothing excites my birds like more than the sight of me emerging from the back door with my cool box. The latent heat within the grains used to throw them, but I've learnt spread them around a bit now, in order to dissipate this.

My mate spread his about, wife was not too happy!!

I had a test of this last night and it is damn good !

The maltyness is there and the hop flavour and aroma are just right. Before fermenting it tasted very bitter but this has now settled down and made a good drink .

I'm amazed that it is so good after a couple of weeks in the barrel. Kit beers would taste ropey with such a short conditioning time.

AG 3 to commence as soon as AG2 has finished fermenting.