Horray, my first all-grain batch is in the fermenter
After my lovely wife got the household a 2 tier Rims system for Christmas we finally got a chance to use it today. I think the process took longer that expected since we had to make sure all the fittings and line were good. One trip to the hardware store but other than that had everything we needed. We did a Chocolate Milk Stout, and at least sampling hte wort it seems to be a pretty tasty beer. With the Lactose (1 lb) added my hydrometer showed as 1.061 but the recipe called for OG to be 1.049-1.051 so not sure if we got really good extraction or what.
Had a couple of hangups, killed a thermapen (really really nice thermometer) burned a bit of my wife's foot when one of the tubes from the pump slipped off and got hot wort on my wife's foot and had to deal with 1 stuck sparge.
Honestly though, I think it was a good learning experience for us to do it together especially since I am going to be doing an Irish Red on Monday by myself.
I feel like we have graduated to, well something :)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Patrick Barch on -
Congratulations on your first all-grain! and knocking out a Red on monday to boot! I enjoy the added time that all-grain takes, it gives me a chance to relax for a while, to step back from daily life and just brew.
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Permalink Reply by Sean Morrill on -
Well got the second one done yesterday actually, much much faster now that we knew what we were dong. We have a grain mill, and this time hooked up my cordless drill. I think the extra speed cracked open the grains more, even with the spacing set the same because I saw much more grain coming down through the tubes while sparging, so much so that we were worried when we started the sparge process.
One other thing I was dealing with was cooling the wort, we have a copper coil immersion chiller that I hook up to the garden hose, and even yesterday with our nice temps I can get it down to about 85 degrees but it takes about 10-15 minutes. Then we put it in an ice bath to get it the rest of the way down. I am just looking for a more efficient way to do this, especially once the water temps coming out of the host are much higher.
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Permalink Reply by Ken "Triple Hopped" Forrey on -
Congratulations on your first all grain batch. They never go smoothly on your first all grain batch. Although I didn't break any equipment or cause physical harm to anyone. All I had to deal with was a stuck sparge. There is a lot that has to be done by you the brewer.
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2012 BoardPermalink Reply by Jerry van West on -
Good job. Way to go.
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Permalink Reply by Sean Morrill on
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Going to keg the Irish red tonight, tastes good uncarbed and am really looking forward to drinking it. It is pretty hazy, I think that is because of some temp issues in the mashing process. Evidently using the keggles I actually don't drop as much temp as I thought I would when adding into the grain. I played with the keg tonight for the first time and I think it will work fine, but the attachment to the keg (the ball coupling) makes a squeeky noise when the pressure it turned up above about 12 psi, will have to play with that a bit.
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