AG number 1

[Talheedin]

Hi All,

I'm attempting my first AG this week (hopefully tomorrow) and advice would be more than welcome. I've done a few kits and several extraxt brews, most of which have turned out pretty well and I'm now determined to go the full hog.

First of all I'd like to ask for ideas for a simple but tasty recipie. I like pale, quite hoppy brews (at the minute) but any suggestions are welcome. Simplicity is the key.

Next, onto equipment. I've got two fermenting bins (with taps), a metal 5G boiler with thermostat, an imersion chiller, a grain bag and lots of tubes and bits and bobs. My plan is to mash in the boiler with the grains suspended in the grain bag (I've been told no more equipment until after the familly holiday has been paid for). To sparge I'll open the bolier tap and drain into a jug and gently poor it back onto the grains through a large seive that has a holed plastic bowl in it to prevent the grain being to disturbed. When ready it'll go into one of the fermenting bins before going back into the cleaned out boiler for brewing. Finally fermenting in the other bin.

Will this work?

I'm really confused about when the sparging should stop (and, in fact, what the hell I'm meant to be doing at all) and could do with a simple explanation using words as short as possible please. As with everything else in beer making, everyone seems to have their own way of doing it and it makes my brain hurt. Or is that the beer?

Help please!

Thanks

Talheedin

[Talheedin]

OK, should have possibly read Jim's brewing techniques first as his setup is almost identical to the kit I've got. So I'll do the sparging his way.

However I'm still not sure about the mashing and sparging process and have questions such as, how much water do I use to mash and how much to sparge? What's all this 1.010 - 1.006 stuff about? What is batch sparging? etc, etc, etc? A simple explanation would still be very much appreciated. And, most of all, a simple recipie.

Thanks

Talheedin

[Garth]

Right, now I'm no expert but I use 2.5 litres of water per kg of grain in the tun, some folk use less, some more, I did a really diluted mash at the weekend and it didn't seem to change anything

Batch sparging is when you drain the tun after the mash is finished and refill it with hot water give it a stir, leave it for 15 mins and then drain it again to get your desired pre-boil amount, with this method you can't over sparge.

The other method is fly sparging using a spinny arm spraying fine droplets over the grains gently so not to disturb the grain bed. They both do the same thing, they rinse the trapped sugars in the grain. If you are spinny sparging your runnings shouldn't go below 1006 (corrected for temp) as you risk extracting unpleasant tasting tannins from the grain. I may be wrong but I don't think there is any risk of doing this if you batch sparge.

oh, and have a good brewday, stay calm and don't worry if you make a cockup, theres always AG no2

[AT]

Yea you'll have to batch sparge, do you have a hydrometer? i remember steved i thing explaining doing a full mash to boiling rice. Somebody help me here

I think the most important thing before your first all grain is to have a plan or at least a fair idea what steps and when you're gonna take them and if you have that everything will fall into place. The 1010 stuff don't worry about it if you batch sparge and when you get more comfortable with AG brewing you can learn it one step at a time. Do you use campden tabs?

[Talheedin]

So for batch sparging I'd mash 2.5kg of water per kg of grain, tip the lot into the grain bag in the fermentor bin, fill the boiler with (the same amount?) of water and tip that over the grain as well?

[AT]

There's nothing wrong with mashing in the boiler but why not keep it available for preparing the sparge water and mash in a fermenter. Preheat it with few kettles of boiling water, pour out, add your mash liquor, mix in the grains and wrap the fermenter up with duvets/sleeping bags/blankets etc.

With 30 mins or so to go, prepare your sparge water (25L) and heat it to 80 deg c.

When the mash is over, run off the wort from the fermenter slowly, firstly into a jug, returning it until it is free from debris. Run it off into fermenter no'2

Mean while gently pour the sparge water over the grains to rinse the sugars out. Once you have collected around 20L, take a sample from the run off, cool it and check the gravity, if it is above 1010 keep going, if below stop and transfer the wort to the boiler.

You can sparge down to 1006 if you want to collect a little more.

Top off the boiler as, much as you can bearing in mind initially the wort will try its hardest to escape. (a few drops of cold water will keep it in check), add your hops after the initial excitement and then it's the same as an extract brew.

Alternatively you could sneak a cool box on to the shopping list (they are very cheap at the moment). Mash in therethen transfer the grains to a fermenter with the grain bag suspended in it (even a cool box will need blankets for added insulation).

Hope that helps.

btw if you want to try batch sparging instead and not worry about the gravity have a read of this, it may help

http://www.18000feet.com/batch_sparging ... ing_p1.htm

Yea that's what i meant

[Gurgeh]

Do you have a tap at the bottom of your fermenter/mash tun?

[Talheedin]

I've had a look through the recipies on this site and I'm going to try a slight modification on Vossy1's 100% Satisfaction:

I'll call it Pale Gold Cream

(Moddified from vossy1 100% satisfaction)

In the tun
Pale malt 4.1kg
flaked oats or torrified wheat 400g (for head and creamyness which one do you recomend?)

In the boiler

Goldings hops (4%) 75g (start of boil)
Goldings hops 15g (last 15 min of boil)
Irish moss 5g (last 15 min of boil)
Goldings hops 10g (last 2 min of boil)

(also maybe try First Gold hops if I can get them)

S-04 yeast

What do you think?

I'm also putting together a method that I'd like to check with you when it's done but I've got kids screaming for me to take them into town now so it'll be in a while.

Thanks

Taheedin

[Talheedin]

That didn't take as long as I thought it would. So here is my plan:

-Treat approximately 35L of water wth campden tablet and a couple of tea spoons of gypsum.
-Put 12L of treated water at 73C in pre-warmed first fermenting bin (FB1) and insulate bin.
-add grains, check temprature is around 67C (add hot or cold water as necessary) and close and wrap.
-leave for 90 mins
-test for starch conversion. If complete then move on else bring back up to 67C with more hot water and retest in 10 mins time.
-Heat around 20L of treated water in boiler.
-Prepare second fermenting bin (FB2) with grain bag and pre-warm and pour in contents of FB1.
-Transfer hot water from boiler to FB1.
-Start draining FB2 into a jug and pouring back over grains until wort running clear.
-Start draining FB1 into FB2 through sieving mechanism and FB2 into boiler until 23L collected (I can only fit this amount in the boiler) and collect the rest in another recepticle (the emptied FB1 for instance) for topping up during boil.
-Boil wort for 90 mins topping up with wort as required.
-Clean and sterilise FB2 for fermenting and sieving mechanism for aerating.
-Add bittering hops after 15 mins.
-Put immersion cooler in after 60 mins.
-Add flavouring hops and Irish Moss after 75 mins
-Add aroma hps after 88 mins
-Cool imediately to around 20C
-Pour into FB2 through sieving mechanism.
-Take Hydrometre reading.
-Add yeast.
-Give praise to the Goddess of Beer by drinking the rest of last batch

Suggestions for improvement will be most appreciated.

Thanks

Talheedin

[Talheedin]

Thanks for that DaaB, I'll take all those points into account. You mind that computer monitor with all that sticky liquid around though!

I've had a look through a lot of other posts this morning (the boss has let me have a week off! I can't beleive it) and there are two other points I'd like to query.

The first is about the yeast. I've used S-04 in all my extract brews and they've turned out pretty well but someone said that this yeast can add a strong flavour to pale ales and that S-33 might be better. Is there a majority view on this?

The other thing is about secondary fermentation. I bottle all my beer and have been getting quite bad haze problems, will secondary fermentation help this? If so, when should I rack to a secondary? I normally keep in the primary for ten to fourteen days and then bottle but should I keep in the primary for less time and then secondary for three of four weeks before bottling? What methods do you all use for getting the beer into the secondary without introducing too much air or other nasties?

Any pointers on the recipie?

Thanks

Talheedin

[prodigal2]

I would stick with Vossys (Marc Ollosons) recipe as is, it's been tried and tested by many and all seem more than happy with it.

I will secondry that I had to use a pilsner malt(the only pale malt I could lay my hands on) but all in all its 100% Satisfaction for a reason.
Simple, to the point and a easy introduction to AG.

If your bottling I have found using a secondry has made a huge difference for me, when i was doing kits. Mainly to reduce the amount of sediment in the bottles and to bulk condition. If you are doing a ale it only takes a week in a bottle to carb up too.

[J_P]

its 100% Satisfaction for a reason.
Simple, to the point and a easy introduction to AG.

Speaking as the resident brewing retard this is sound advice single hop beers have the added bonus of teaching you the flavours of the different hops.

The only thing I'd add to the standard recipe is to throw in a decent amount of hops when you turn the boiler off and let them steep, this gives the brew a great hop aroma without any extra bitterness. SteveD and Vossy swear by this method, I did a Styrian Stunner from the same book and threw what was left of the packet of hops into the boiler and it smelled wonderful when I bottled it, cheers for the tip guys

[Talheedin]

Well, I've done it and they're bubbling away nicely now. I say "they're" because I ended up doing two brews. Vossy's 100% Satisfaction (as per his recipie except that the goldings were 5.6% instead of 4%) and the following:
3Kg Marris Otter
500g Torrified wheat
50g First gold Bittering (7.2%)
15g First Gold Flavouring
10g First gold aroma

I managed to get a cool box from woolworths (25L) for 7.99 which made the mashing easier.

All in all I think they were probably the easiest brews I've done (by which I mean that nothing seemed to go wrong). I even managed to take a gravity reading for the second one!

Thanks for all your advice and I'll let you know how they turn out in a few weeks.

I will be getting a sparge arm for the next one though!

Thanks

Talheedin

[Vossy1]

Hey T...I missed this the first time round

Well done on the double brew...I wish I had the patience

Did you hit your target SG....

[prodigal2]

Nice one T, ~I hope you enjoy it as much as I have