How to brew your own beer - The All Grain method

dinger44 said:

Nice one. What size is your boiler mate. Love that you can see the wort from the outside. Like a sight glass without the hassle. Theres some calculators for adding back water after to reach your abv but i cant remember if they suggest pre or post fermentation. Itll be a great pint!

Click to expand...

30 litre. Actualy about 27 lites.

Well it's out the 1st FV and the finings are in.

1st thing i noticed is the yeast bed. This pic was taken on a good slope. The kit yeast would work it's way down to the lowest point. This stuff hasn't move a bit.


1st shot of the finished but cloudy product. 1.012 on the hydro. Strange cos it was 1.009 2 days ago.

You need a hop filter mate. And measure your dead space in that boiler. 8 litres is a lot of drinkable beer. protoflac in the last 15 minutes of your boil if you havent already. And a wort chiller. On a 23 litre brewlength you should be getting at least 21 in the fermenter. looks good tho. lovely colour. your hydrometer measurements are out by a bit because of the temp of the wort. Needs to be at 20 for an accurate reading.

Possible leap forward in beer drinkability??





Behold,





A proper drinking vessel!







1st test going well so far.




Feel like a true man for only £4 (+p&p)!

Thanks Ebay!

Well i've had a taster of mine, not bad could do with some more time in the barrel, I also think I may have gone overboard on the steriliser as there's a tinge in the background, hopefully that fades with time

Second taster, funky taste is gone! I'll add pictures later

Bit of a brewing disaster day today but a new beer was born, Tripple B. - Burnt out boiler brew.


Things were going so well, new home made grain bag, a few matching hop socks..

Recipe was a TTL clone with a little extra pale malt to boost the ABV.

Mash went well, even added a mash out step this time.

Heated wort to boil and added sock number 1.

Sparged the grain bag twice with 5 litres a time of hot water. (found 5 litres of boiling water once on the grain settled to 75c.)

At 70 mins i was topping up the boiler with the last 2 litres of sparge and i noticed it didn't come back to the boil... Literally the lights were on but no one home I added the protafloc and final hop sock and wrapped up the boiler and lidded it to maintain the heat.

Last 3 litres of sparge went into a pan and got boiled. The wort was at 95c so i removed hop sock 2 after 6 mins and added it to the now boiling pan, giving it 6 mins (should have been 10 total).

Since i was planning on no cooling in the boiler i was left with about 25 litres of wort an still swirling hot break which i now dumped into 2 FVs and cooled in the bath. Yeast was pitched at 28 and fish tank heater added.

8 hours later it's starting to come alive and the temperature is a steady 20c. Fingers cross the unexpected extra steps havn't killed it.

A boiler autopsy shows a burst capacitor next to a the relay (low amp external switch). I'm going to remove the relay and hard wire directly to the mains lead and use the socket as on and off.

Well after only 3 days i'm at the desired gravity nearly (2 points off) I've taken the opertunity to get the beer off the inch deep hot and cold break that ended up in the FV.

It had set well and i only lost about 1/4 cup of beer

New brews started yesterday.

1st is an Old Tom clone 8.5%. Yeast seems to like the extra sugars.


2nd is a Porter @ 4.6%. Had a pint or 2 of Ruddy Ram (Black sheeps new brew) mid week and was inspired.

So is anyone going to try this...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-historical-notebook-cost-just-11p-pint.html ?

I've read about/seen on youtube people using dark sugars to add fermentables, but surely it'd be pushing it a bit too much to call this a beer.

Although I'm not sure how much grain it would use? How much grain is in 1 peck? (and yes, apparently a peck is a unit of volume, not weight).

Just kegged a fullers xxxx london porter!


4 pecks in a bushel.

A bushel is a volume but... a volme has mass

a bushel In pounds

Flax, rye, shelled corn, grain sorghum 56
Corn-and-cob meal (ground ear corn) 45
Cracked corn, corn meal 50
Barley 48
Oats 32

Me and MrsSeakitchen are looking at getting a boiler soon to do this. One question I have (amongst many many more) is what do you do with the used grains?
Probably going to do half batches to start with to get the hang of it (we've already done a couple of one gallon brews in a borrowed jam kettle, but our stove isn't up to a rolling boil with that much water), and want to develop further as we go.

Best Regards

To add to Seabiscuits post we are looking to do a London Pride for our first one to christen our new boiler!

seabiscuit said:

Me and MrsSeakitchen are looking at getting a boiler soon to do this. One question I have (amongst many many more) is what do you do with the used grains?
Probably going to do half batches to start with to get the hang of it (we've already done a couple of one gallon brews in a borrowed jam kettle, but our stove isn't up to a rolling boil with that much water), and want to develop further as we go.

Best Regards

Click to expand...

Put them on the compost heap if you have one. Professional breweries sell the spent grain to farmers for cattle feed.
Otherwise, it's just straight in the bin.

Next question of my five million and one questions....
With Boil in a Bag, sorry, Brew in a Bag, do you get more protein, ie. hot/cold break than if you mash in a mash tun?
I really want to do this, just the initial outlay is slightly hard to justify when some kits can be so amazingly good in themselves. And with a bit of tinkering with, some kits can be made really special.

But I still want a boiler.
Sob.

OK, should be getting a boiler this week to do BIAB. TheBlue, I see you don't use a wort chiller? So you just leave it to cool? Does this hugely increase the risk of DMS/DMS precusors and the risk of infection? Have you had any problems doing it this way?
Also, what do you guys use to clean your boiler? Is it just VWP (I really should buy shares in their company the amount we use just with kits), or do you use something else/better?
Really looking forward to giving this a good go.
Wish us luck.

Howdy!

I do now but i didn't then. I just popped the lid on, wrapped a bag arround the tap and let it cool. Just remember that the liquid and boiler is sterile untill you open it. Let it cool without sticking you head in and lifting the lid


I clean my boiler with boiling wort . swill it out after use then soap and water the boiling will kill everything, try you finger in there for the 90 min boiling time

OK, so boiler should arrive tomorrow. My local pharmacy have got me a 500ml bottle of Videne on order (they asked what it was for, but were really laid back when I said cleaning brewing equipment) which should arrive tomorrow too. Got grains, hops and yeast. I've got some muslin to make a basic BIAB bag (everyone says voile, but I was only able to get muslin without ordering specifically). We haven't got a wort chiller yet, so I'm just hoping that the wort won't get an infection while it's chilling before the yeast can be pitched.
But hopefully tommorrow afternoon we might do an all grain 5(ish) gallon brew.
I'm far too excited for my own good an I'm sure I'm getting on the nerves of MrsSeakitchen by now

Well, we've just done our first 5 gallon(ish) all-grain BIAB. It was based off of a clone London Pride recipe, but we don't have the Fullers yeast, and we didn't have flaked maize (nope, didn't have cornflakes even), but if it even turns out passable I'll be really pleased. MrsSeakitchen's taken some pictures to post tomorrow. So hope it turns out ok.
So we used 4kg of pale ale malt, 130g of crystal. 11g each of challenger, northdown and target hops, with a further 11g of northdown 15 mins before the end of the boil. A 90 min boil to reduce DMS precursors (apparently) as we are letting it cool overnight before putting the wort in the primary and pitching the yeast. We've coated the lid in Videne and clingfilm to prevent nasties getting in. So hoping for a ok result.
Thanks to TheBlue for posting your BIAB to give us clues what to do, and everyone who's put great information in this thread. Big thumbs up to Ahleckz in particular for being a bad influence in the best possible way.

Tune in tomorrow for photo's and in 2-3 weeks for the initial results.

So with MrsSeakitchen out at work at the moment, I figure I'd best post a couple of the promised pictures....
The obligatory yes, these are genuine, and for proof.....

So the boiler, with our improvised bag...

Seabiscuit pouring in the base malt...

MrsSeakitchen adding the crystal malt...

Boiling (it's getting darker outside)...

and finally for now, the finished wort with yeast in to ferment it....


So as it's not completly a clone, just heavily influenced, I feel justified in naming our first own brew. So I present our "Don't tell the inlaws" beer.