Getting into all grain beer

[rangaz]

Hi all,
Been a while since I've visited round here as I haven't really had the time to do a lot of distilling. I was always interested in getting into brewing beer from scratch rather than the kits but was intimidated by the extra complexity from distilling. I ended up designing a brewery for a uni engineering project and decided to give it a shot. My first brew was done without purchasing any equipment as I had enough to make do with stuff from distilling. I used a boiler as a kettle and a condenser coil (one from a bokakob inline, not the one pictured) for a chiller and everything else was sitting around the house so thought it might be interesting for anyone else who wants to get into AG beers. The day I took pictures was probably the 4th brew I've done but the only piece of equipment I changed from the first bree was the chiller.

From the first lot of recipes tried it seems the most simple one was the most popular among my friends, I'm not even sure of what you would call it.
19L Batch
4kg of pale malt
mash 1 hour @ 66deg C
30g stirling (6%) 60min
15g stirling (6%) 30 min
15g stirling (6%) 10 min
15g stirling (6%) dry hopped after racking to secondary

I bought all my ingredients in bulk so it is fairly cheap to make at $11.70. I figure with the lpg gas, co2 and other misc things like bleach, it will come up to about $20 per 19L batch

I started last night by weighing out and grinding 4kg of pale malt in my corona mill . I had this from when I tried to make whiskey but gave up when my mash didn't work. Turns out the malt I tried was non diastatic







Next I weighed out my hops into little bags. I think the scales will be next for upgrading as I'm currently using a set of scales designed for measuring powder for reloading ammunition (It measures in grains not grams).



Currently I'm using a 3 ring burner and it seems to work ok



A while back a mate who works in a pub gave me 3 free kegs that had been sitting in the basement, unused for years. The one that I am using for mashing has been cut back so that there is no lip, making it easier to transfer the mash to my improvised lauter tun. I started with a liquid/grist ratio of 3L/Kg, giving me 12L of mash water needed. For this I just used hot tap water at about 54deg C, dumped my grain in and then heated it up to 66 degC while stirring to avoid burnt grains. It took about 10 mins to heat up to temp.





I then covered it in towels and a lid and left it for an hour hour. I did check the temp after 30 mins but it was still sitting at 66, so I just left it.
After the hour, I turned on the gas again to heat up to mash out temp. It took about 5 mins to get up to 72 deg C, then I transferred to my improv lauter tun.



This is probably one of the more dodgey parts of my set up. Its just a foodsafe plastic bucket. To filter the grain, The siphon hose has bee wrapped in SS mesh from a seive and a bit of SS wire to add strength. Ill probably just get a false bottom for my keg.





The first stuff to come out is very cloudy but quickly clears. To recirculate and Sparge I use a vegetable steamer to sprinkle the liquid on top. The keg Im using for boiling still has most of the top intact, making it much easier to fit a lid. Total time for wort separation and sparging was about 25mins.





Judging by how clear my last runnings were, I probably should have recirculated for a bit longer.



It took my kettle about 45mins today to get from 50degC to first boil. It seems a bit longer than the last couple of times but oh well, it gave me plenty of time to make some lunch and pour a few beers.







Top is a wheat beer and the bottom is a pale ale. Both the beers were filtered cold with a 1 micron filter so the cloudiness I think is chill haze. I think the culprit was my old improvised immersion chiller made from a short section of copper found in the back yard. It took a full 40 mins to get the wort down to temp. The plate chiller on the right was bought yesterday, so today is its first run, will be interesting to see how it goes.



Here we are at first boil, starting the hops additions



After the boil was done, I moved the kettle to a higher spot and started a whirlpool with the mixing spoon. This spins all the solid crud into a neat cone in the bottom, allowing me to drain clear wort from around it. After leaving it for 15mins, you can see that it is pretty much completely clear, which is the most succesfull attempt at whirlpooling I've had so far.



neat little trub cone at the bottom



Measuring the OG, I got 1.047, meaning that my overall efficiency is 75%.



Time to pitch the yeast. This is the first reuse from an original brew using safale US05 i think.

[flip]

Hi Rangaz
i like it a lot, and I'm jealous, wishing I could do that!
although I am a bit lost somewhere between filtering and the very clear liquid.
thanks, good job!

[MaxT]

Beer brewing is a great hobby and it looks like you are doing it well.
A few thoughts:
*I would think about getting a proper grain mill. especially if you want to brew wheat beers, stuck sparges suck.
*If you haven't already, hook up with the boys (and girls) from Warthogs brewclub. There are also some other great brewers and beer judges in W.A

Have fun.

[King Of Hearts]

Hi Rangaz, what you have there is an American Pale Ale. Safale O5 is like Chico Ale Yeast = Wyeast or White labs. Feel free if you have any questions, I've been brewing 25 years. Looks like your doing a fine job there.

[NcHooch]

Lookin good Rangaz

If my calculations are correct you're using approx 2 ounces of hops, and ending up with a well balanced pale ale?

NChooch

[maheel]

for anyone interested..... great beer forum
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow?

nice looking beer

a simple way of getting into all grain (AG) brewing is "brew in a bag" (BIAB) you can do it on the stove top at home

i h

[rangaz]

Thanks for the comments guys. funnily enough, aussiehomebrewer was where I originally posted this.
For the time being I've spent quite a bit getting that plate chiller, so I'm happy to stick with the corona mill. So far, I've only gotten one stuck sparge which was last brew when I tried a finer crack (the wheat I tried was fine), it knocked my efficiency up to 80% but made separation slloooooooow. Had to occasionally stir up the grain bed and then recirculate to keep things going.

@flip
Basically that step is separating the liquid wort from the solids left from the grain.The whole mash, which is liquid with grain in it, is dumped on top of that filtering piece. The filter piece holds back the grain while the liquid is drawn from the bottom. The first stuff to come out is cloudy so it's sprinkled back over the top which compacts the grain bed. The grain bed itself acts as a very good filter and once the liquid starts running clear, you can let it go directly into the kettle. After the initial liquid is drawn off, more hot water is sprinkled on top and then drained, to rinse off the grains and get as much sugar out as possible

[flip]

hi rangaz
thanks for that explaining i am going to try for shore

my problem ,is that i don't have a mill , bashing it in a round boll will probably make it to fine
so i have homework on this one,and I'm amazed at the filter action that you explained.

[Bohunk]

I’ve been wondering if anyone has tried mashing with unmalted barley as a base grain, and adding malted barley during the mash for conversion??? With the price of malt being a little over $1.00 USD, and the price of unmalted barley around .15 cents, this would lower the price considerably. In theory malt should convert eight times it’s own weight, so to be safe I’m thinking six pounds of unmalted barley, to one pound of malt. Make sense to anyone??? Maybe the taste of malt versus raw barely is the factor here, but being basically a cheap ass, who is used to mashing corn for whiskey, I’m thinking about giving it a try. If anyone has tried this let me know, Thanks.

The Bohunk

[scotty]

I’ve been wondering if anyone has tried mashing with unmalted barley as a base grain, and adding malted barley during the mash for conversion??? With the price of malt being a little over $1.00 USD, and the price of unmalted barley around .15 cents, this would lower the price considerably. In theory malt should convert eight times it’s own weight, so to be safe I’m thinking six pounds of unmalted barley, to one pound of malt. Make sense to anyone??? Maybe the taste of malt versus raw barely is the factor here, but being basically a cheap ass, who is used to mashing corn for whiskey, I’m thinking about giving it a try. If anyone has tried this let me know, Thanks.

The Bohunk

Convert to what please.

Perhaps i dont understand what you think can be done with that process

I dont think that un malted barley has the necessary conversion needed to start with. the idea of maltng is to convert the starches into sugars for the mashing. unless i missed something((which i do quit often) the malting process is necessary to produce the necessary starches that will be conveeted to sugars

[Bohunk]

Scotty,
When making whiskey mash, we cook corn to get the starch out of the kernel, then add malted barely to convert the starch to sugar. We then ferment the sugar to make our hutch. My question is would this same process work making beer?? Thanks for you response.

The Bohunk

[rangaz]

When making whiskey, only a small amount of the grain is malted. The malted grains provide the necessary enzymes to convert the starch in the rest of the unmalted grains. Distillers malt is only dried, not kilned, so as to maximise the enzyme content. With higher enzyme content, you can reduce the malt fraction required. You could use pale, ale or pilsner malt instead but would have to increase the amount of malt used to compensate for the slightly lower enzyme content.
Beer is generally made from %100 malted grain (or fairly close to) and gets most of its flavours from different drying and kilning processes for the malts. For example munich malts are dried, then kilned at higher temps to produce a slightly darker colour. Crystal malts are cooked at 66 degrees C for a hour to convert the starches while still in the grain, then dried and kilned at different temps to produce lighter or darker colours.

[rangaz]

oh and btw flip, most homebrew shops can crack the grain for you for a small fee. Hope that helps

[flip]

Thanks Rangaz
i saw some course grind-ed corn in shops, as well as ruff grind ed maize ,this is what i will use.
the barley is what i don't find easy.

[gretschem]

Nice looking beers bro,

I'm doing an all grain jsaa clone real soon,

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/i ... ecipe=1169" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

as well as ujssm

regards