How to brew your own beer - The All Grain method

[Dunks]

Mrs. Ahleckz (Beckz) wants to help brew one and wants to do a raspberry wheat beer so that might be on the cards next. Though raspberries are hardly cheap.

My girlfriend wants to do the exact same beer when I get up and running

Photos are looking good, lets hope it turns out good!

 

[seabiscuit]

Nice.

We barreled a couple during the week. Our old standby "Don't Tell the Inlaws" (named when we bought the boiler to do all grain and figured they might frown at the expense), which is a London Pride(ish) recipie. And an APA(ish) beer using magnum and cascade hops. Mrs_Seabiscuit named it Magnum Falls (cascade-falls) but I misheard and named it Magnum Force in Beersmith (I think it still works as it's got the Dirty Harry magnum connection still). We just tried a shot glass amount of each from the barrels checking how they're going, and the magnum/cascade is going to be really tasty I think.

We need to get a proper hop filter on our boiler. At the moment we're using hops in muslin bags, which doesn't give them the same contact with the whole wort as being in lose would. Probably get that sometime after christmas though, it's not exactly an urgent requirement as bags work ok. We just need to use slightly more hops in the recipe to account for it.

As for unmalted adjuncts, we've toasted some rolled oats about a month ago. We need to use those in a beer. Might be a plan for this weekend. Just not sure what hops to use. I'm thinking traditional fuggles and goldings, but we'd need to order some more of those first.

So we might do a single hop with galaxy, or might use magnum for bittering again. Oh, the possibilities. It's great though.

Cooking beer. It's not quite breaking bad, more breaking slightly mischievous. Yo. (crystal malt is a lot safer)

 

[Ahleckz]

Thanks .

Yea, cool names - it's good to have a name I guess but then I'm just tempted to call it "America IPA, Citra & Simcoe" like Kernel do.

I just threw my hops in and hoping for the best. I syphoned most of my wort into my FVs so shouldn't have too many hop radicals in there. I've got one of those rigid syphon extender things with a filter on it that I'll use when bottling to ensure no hops in the bottle.

For the minute, I'm just going to brew with stuff I can get in the brew shop and/or supermarket. Can't be bothered with roasting stuff and what not. If my friend comes back to the fold, as I've been trying to get him to (to cut costs, mainly!) then I might start experimenting some more.

I'm really tempted to get a keg... Would just make things easier (and I drunker!), I've got a stack of empty bottles atm but they'll quickly run out I imagine. I still have loads of my kit brews bottled, some are 3 years old!

 

[PlacidCasual]

Someone was asking about recipe volume calculation. The following link is to a piece of freeware that helps and is easy to use.

http://www.practicalbrewing.co.uk/main/calculators/beerengine/

 

[seabiscuit]

Another free one is Brewmate. But I bought Beer Smith when it was on sale a bit back and have been really impressed with how comprehensive it is.

 

[Ahleckz]

Oh, Seabiscuit I think you asked if I used a program for recipes? The one I posted was devised in iBrewMaster, it's for the iPhone. I just told a friend what I wanted to do and what I had and he plugged it in and gave me that so I haven't used it, but what it outputs is good.

I'm loving how much this beer is bubbling away. All the FVs are about a metre away from me. Sometimes I tune into it and think "the heck is that noise?" but it's all good when I remember it's beer!

 

[st00dent]

Decided to postpone my brew until next weekend. I'm going to order a proper boiler and do the whole lot in one go.

No idea where I'm gonna store it though

 

[metbandit1]

Got my brew on! Currently mashing.
Im a bit disappointed I missed my mash temp by 2 degrees

Have some pics

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mnetp6extvaw58s/2012-10-29 11.49.29.jpg

Hops

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhyr6lmfppmxjzp/2012-10-29 11.49.37.jpg

The HLT in all its glory!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9un630soar5zoe/2012-10-29 11.49.48.jpg

 

[jimmy321]

Looked out my old brewing notes from 10 years ago and have picked out a Milk Stout which I remember being good and a Wheat Beer which I will modify, sterilised all my old gear and will be visiting the brew shop later in the week.

 

[metbandit1]

Hi guys just did my 2nd brew day and have a couple of issues.

I followed my recipe as it is on brew mate.


Here is my brew day write up:

All Grain number 2

Name: Daniel Lamberts Tipple ABV: 4.1%

Batch Size: 23L
Expected OG : 1.043

Ingredients
Marris Otter: 4.15Kg
Chocolate Malt: 50g

Mash
60 minutes

10.5L strike water
Temperature 77 Degrees

Sparge
24L
Temperature 80 Degrees

Boil

60 minutes

20g challenger 60 minutes
15g Challenger 15 minutes
1/2profaloc 15 Minutes



Beer in fermenter = 18L
Actual OG = 1.030
Final Gravity =


The issue I have is my OG, why has it turned out so low?
Same with my beer in the fermenter. I still had 5L left in the boiler that i couldn't get to due to dead space.

I am more worried about hitting my OG though, or rather im worried about how I missed it by so much.

Pic of my OG measurement:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e99kntcxrkoi0ub/2012-10-29 16.21.40.jpg

I know you cant see it very well but it seems to be 1.030.

HALP.

:shock:

 

[Ahleckz]

Couple of things spring to mind:

What temperature was the wort at when you measured grav?
When boiling, did you do it with lid on or off?
Dough balls in your mash?

 

[metbandit1]

Temp was 20C
I measured as I wort chilled the beer and made sure it was at 20c to pitch the yeast right away.

It was with a lid.

 

[Ahleckz]

Yea, you're meant to boil with the lid off. How on Earth did you boil with lid on and not get boil over? I'm also going to suggest that you're boil isn't vigorous enough.

 

[metbandit1]

It didnt boil over mainly because its a 100L boiler with only 28L of liquid in it at the start of the boil .

I have a 7kw gas ring as well.

 

[Ahleckz]

Ah right, nice size. But yea, lid on. You could add fermentables at this stage to try and boost the OG I suppose.

 

[metbandit1]

Ah right, nice size. But yea, lid on. You could add fermentables at this stage to try and boost the OG I suppose.

Couple of sugar cubes to see if that works?



I think I had my brew house efficiency set too high as well in my program.
Until I get used to it im more around 60% than 75%.
I forgot to change it =/

 

[Ahleckz]

Or, you could stop worrying and read this:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/att...nal-gravity-reading-wrong-dont-panic-289735/c



But, in future brew with the lid off. Keeping it on keeps in something (that I've conveniently forgotten the name of) and will end up making your beer taste vegetably.
One final thing, your sparge could be awfully fast? Needs to be slow enough for sugars can dissolve and do their shiz.

OR, , your hydrometer could just be buggered. If I were you, I'd just take another gravity reading in a day and see what's happening.

 

[metbandit1]

Links broken!

Yeh I will do, I think ill have to add more water in future though due to the amount of dead space in the 100L boiler.

 

[Ahleckz]

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/att...inal-gravity-reading-wrong-dont-panic-289735/

Not sure where that c came from in the first link.

 

[metbandit1]

Cheers mate!