Relic's Adventures into Homebrewing

[Jimmy]

Looks good man. Not taking you long to get your gear together!

[CorneliusAlphonse]

Just gotta give the cooler a good cleaning and then I am ready for my all-grain brew to happen. Hopefully in the next day or two.

nice! only potential issue i see is that the stainless braid could collapse - i've never used one myself, so i don't know if it happens, but people usually put something inside to help it keep shape (food grade plastic with holes, coiled up coat hanger, stanless clamps with the screw part removed, etc).

i have a similar cooler, how did you remove the stock spigot? i've been using my biab bag as the filter, with the stock spigot.

[Relic]

Just gotta give the cooler a good cleaning and then I am ready for my all-grain brew to happen. Hopefully in the next day or two.

nice! only potential issue i see is that the stainless braid could collapse - i've never used one myself, so i don't know if it happens, but people usually put something inside to help it keep shape (food grade plastic with holes, coiled up coat hanger, stanless clamps with the screw part removed, etc).

i have a similar cooler, how did you remove the stock spigot? i've been using my biab bag as the filter, with the stock spigot.

Don't remember reading anything about the hose collapsing....gonna have to look into that a bit further.

As for removing the spigot, mine unscrewed no problem at all.

[jeffsmith]

My mash tun doesn't have anything in the braid and I've not had any issues.

[thirdeye]

My mash tun doesn't have anything in the braid and I've not had any issues.

How stiff are your mashes? I've heard of it happening and I went with a bazooka screen instead, maybe the "braid crushers" are opening their valve all the way and causing a stuck mash?

[jeffsmith]

I go anywhere from 1.25 qt/lb to 1.5 qt/lb depending on the recipe. I quite often run with the valve full open. I've been considering going with a bazooka screen though lately as I've caught the braid a couple times with my SS spoon and warped it a little.

[Relic]

My mash tun doesn't have anything in the braid and I've not had any issues.

Good to hear.

After a little googling (or is it googleing?), seems as though collapse is a rare occurrence but it does happen. Knowing my luck, it'll happen to me. I think tomorrow I'll strip down a piece of 14/2 wire and make a small coily thingy to insert inside the braid just as a preventative measure. Can't hurt. I have the wire and I have the time.

[akr71]

Never had a braid collapse here either. However using a blue cooler as your mash tun will give you better efficiency.

[Relic]

Check with the recycle depot, you can normally score some bottles there

Good call. Stopped by this morning and picked up 100. At 10 cents each and with a 10 dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket.....

Surprised at how many they had.... lot of Sam Adams and Hallertau (or something like that), plus a scatter Guinness bottle.
I was like a kid at a candy store.

[chalmers]

Thanks for keeping us up to date on your equipment purchases/builds!

[Relic]

Thanks for keeping us up to date on your equipment purchases/builds!

No problem at all..... later on someone interested in getting into brewing may actually find some of it useful.

Anyhooo.......little update here:
As batch #1 was fermenting I was taking daily samples...for SG testing, seriously.

Last Thursday was the third consecutive day of having an SG of 1.10. Ideally you would leave it a little longer. But, I decided to go ahead and bottle anyways. Today was day 2 in the bottles.
Me, being the experimentive type, had to check one just to see how things were going. Nothing wrong with checkin' progress along the ways is there!
Little "tiss" upon opening. Still a bit "apply" tasting, to be expected of a "green" beer I guess. Still tasted good tho. Will only get better with further bottle conditioning.

Also clearer than I expected too:


Anyways, tomorrow is the big All-Grain day....more pics to come.

Batch #2 Recipe:
Grains

8 lbs. 2-Row Pale Malt
2 lbs. Vienna Malt
0.5 lb. Crystal 10L Malt
Yeast: Nottingham

Hops:
1.0 oz Cascade 6.6% at 60 min.
0.5 oz. Cascade 6.6% at 30 min.
0.25 oz. Cascade 6.6% at 15 min.
0.25 oz Cascade 6.6% at 5 min.

[jeffsmith]

Nice! Let us know how it goes. Nice to see you making the jump to all grain so quickly.

[Tony L]

Well today is the big day. Hope everything goes great.
Remember to relax and just take your time. Beer wants to be made.
Label your hop additions into bags ready to be used and don't forget your irish moss or whirlfloc tablet with
the last 10 minutes in the boil.

Cheers

[Relic]

Thanks for the tips Tony. I will be using Irish moss.


The barley is a steepin'!


Preheated tun with hot tap water(160 F) while I prepared.
Then added 3.5 gallons of water @ 172 F. (after I dumped the preheat water, naturally)
Slowly added the grains while stirring. Grain temp was around 35 F.
Final grain bed temperature : 153 F.
Damn, so far so good. Gotta go get ready for sparging now.....

[Jimmy]

Looking good man. Good luck

[Tony L]

Sounds like everythings under control.

Tip for next time... add your initial treated ( if you do treat it ) water at about 180f or so and let it cool down to your strike
temperature. This way you are preheating the tun. It will cool fast down to your strike temps and you'll have to heat less water to
use. I use software to judge my temperature of the water needed. It goes by the temp of the grain and the temp of the strike
water... but I guess you know that... you hit your dough in great.

[Relic]

Thanks again Tony. My water isn't treated....comes straight from the ground. 200 feet down.
I used ProMash for my initial temps and I must say, they were spot on.

Anyways, the rest of the day:
Alright....after 60 minutes passed, I added 5 quarts of 175 degree water and begin to drain. Caught the first lot until clear and returned back to the tun. After around 3 quarts before it cleared up well, then drained off to my fermenting bucket for a bit. SG of the first runnings was 1.052.
Then I added 3.25 gallons of 180 degree (plus a bit maybe) water to the the tun for sparging and gave her a good stir. Bed temp was a little low ...around 165 degrees. Then I put the first runnings into brew pot.
Here's the sparging in progress:


Same process for draining off. Second runnings (?) came up with an SG of 1.030. Put this in brew pot as well and start to bring to boil. Forgot to write it down, but I think the SG of total combined was around 1.042...

Warmin' up:


Hot break at boil temp happens pretty fast, never had a boil over tho. It was close but had my hand on the controls and spray bottle of water just in case.
Pic just after hot break:



Now it's time to follow the hop additions according to schedule. Started the brew timer app on my phone and away I went. Here be the hops all laid out awaiting their purpose in life:


At 15 min to go I added a tsp of irish moss and my wort chiller. Once the 60 min boil was complete fired up the chiller. One leak.....guess the heat softened the hose and and created this one. It was fine earlier. I don't think any water got in the pot, not sure. It was more spraying over and beyond. Chiller worked well..... less than 15 minutes and I was down below 20 degrees C. Ground water is cold and 150 feet of garden hose in the snow may have helped as well.

Dumped the wort in fermenter, gave her a good shake for aeration, then added my re-hydrated Nottingham yeast.
SG before pitching the yeast: 1.049. Pretty close to target of 1.051. I'm happy.
Now the wait begins.....

Some things I noticed to be taken into account in the future:

Should have bought more muslin bags for the hops. With what I had, I felt the hops were packed a bit too tightly. Would have preferred to have them a bit looser.

I need a good bucket with fluid measurement marking. Took lots of notes but my amounts were lacking. I have no idea how much got drained for the first infusion mash or the batch sparging. Therefore I have no idea what I started with pre-boil. I think I ended up with approxiamately 5 gallons in the fermenter.

Also need to increase the temperature of the water for sparging... 168 degree grain bed temp would be better.

Also gotta fix the leak better on the wort chiller.

All in all, t'was a wonderful experience and can't wait for the end result.

Cheers.

[Tony L]

Two things I might note for you. Everything else looks good to me.

If you believe in hot side aeration ( like I do ) you might want to limit the splashing of hot wort. I run my runnings into the bottom of my kettle
with a hose and cane from my spigot on my mash tun. Not everyone believes in HSA and they all claim it makes no difference. Most writers
of brewing books say to limit it, so I do.

Also Gordon Strong ( Brewing Better Beer ) says to keep your sparge water at about 168f to 170f because adding hotter water to the grain
could cause starch to burst and unwanted flavours to leech out, especially if your pH is too high. Unconverted starch leads to haze that
won't be removed by finings.

But it is your first brew, and you should be proud. i'm sure it will ferment out to be one of or the best brew you have ever had.

Hops should be looser in the boil to get the proper extraction of acids. I throw mine in loose, and you can too even though you
don't have a spigot on your kettle. You can always siphon off into the fermenter, leaving the hop and break sludge behind.

Keep well documented notes on each brew. It will help you improve.

Cheers and congrats.

[Relic]

All tips and pointers greatly appreciated.

When I was draining the tun, a little voice kept saying that I should be draining via hose instead of out in the open like I did. Thanks for the info on the sparge temps, I thought a grain bed temperature of at least 168 was needed.

Are there any other choices besides muslin bags for the hops? Re-usable would be nice. The nylon bags any good?

[Jimmy]

Are there any other choices besides muslin bags for the hops? Re-usable would be nice. The nylon bags any good?

You can throw them right in the boil and siphon above them, whirlpooling helps with this method (stirring in a circular motion, then let it sit for 10-15 min). The hops/break will tend to settle in a pile in the middle that way.

Another option is a large nylon bag from noble grape, or you can get one that we use forBIAB (my girlfriend sews them).

I use one that my girlfriend sewed, and made a hop spider. The bag in this pic is one from noble grape, it was before I got her to sew me one.

[Relic]

Made another batch: Iceberg Amber Ale

Trying out my new semi-clear fermenter.
Those little yeast creature sure create a little storm inside (this is my first time seeing this live!) Quite amazing actually.... gotta do a batch in a clear glass carboy to get a better visualization sometime.
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