First Time All Grain Screw-ups

[Banjo-guy]

I finally did my all first all grain biab batch yesterday. I dropped my wife at her school at 8.00 had breakfast and started setting up at 9.00 am. By 10.00 I was mashing. I figured could easily finish by 3.00 so that I could pick her up after work.
I made a Moose Drool clone.

The first problem came up when measuring the grains. I had used a little of the 2 row base grain to make a 2 gallon test batch and miscalculated how much was left. No problem, I added .6 lbs of light dme at the start of the boil to compensate.

The mash went really well. I wrapped the kettle in an old sleeping bag and covered the top with a few bathroom towels ( my wife was at work ). The outside temperature was 45-50 and I need to mash at 152 -154. I started at 154. I had to add a little to get to that strike temp. After 70 minutes the temperature was 154. I probably started the mash at a higher temperature than I measured because I didn't stir up the water before checking the temperature.

I took a sample and stored it in a coffee mug to cool. My daughter assumed the mug was her coffee and poured coffee into it. At this point I was 20 minutes into the boil so I couldn't get a pre-boil gravity reading.

I used 6 gallons of water for a 2.5 batch. I previously and run a test boil and came up with a boil-off rate of 1.8 gallons per hour. Even with that boil-off rate the water level seemed too high.

My first big mistake was to add an extra 1 of a gallon of water. My idea was to leave all the water below the valve opening in the kettle after the boil. All the hops and solids that were below that level would stay there if I drained and left the gallon behind. This was a bad idea. I had just diluted my 2.5 gallon batch to a 3.5 gallon batch without adjusting the ingredients. Oops.

At 60 minutes I added my first hop addition. When the boil seemed to going fine I went inside to do a few things. At some point I noticed that the wind had blown out the burner. I heated it back to a boil in a minute or two. I must have just blown out. I added 5 minutes to the boil time and proceeded with the boil, adding hops at 10 minutes, 5 minutes and at 0.00.

I ended up with a gallon of extra wort. The expected OG was 1.052 and I got 1.040 (taken at 80 degrees).
I found a calculator that said to put 12 ounces of dme into 2.75 cups of water to raise the og to from 1.040 to 1.052. I drew off 2.75 cups of wort from the lbk and used that along with the dme. I boiled,cooled and added it to the lbk. I hit the OG of 1.052 after adjusting with dme.
I used 2.5 gallons of the wort.

It took a long time for the wort to cool to 70.00 degrees by putting the 9 gallon pot in my sink with ice. I ran out of ice and had to let it cool out side for a 2 hours.

I had to ask my wort drinking daughter to pick up her mom at work because I was just cleaning up at 3.00.
I finally pitched the yeast at 5.45.

I will have beer but it will be a very diluted version of Moose Drool I think.

They say you never forget your first time.

[Brewbirds]

Sounds to me like you made a decent recovery and like you made beer.

Did you remember to take some notes afterwards?

It will take a few tries to get your methods down and your equipment dialed in.

How would you explain the differences in your AG brew day compared to your extract brew day for those thinking of giving it a try?

[Beer-lord]

I don't anyone does AG for the first time and does it perfect. That's the fun of this hobby and you get to do it all over again. Even after many, many batches, I make mistakes of some sort almost every time. Most don't matter and either way, you've got beer.

[Banjo-guy]

Sounds to me like you made a decent recovery and like you made beer.

Did you remember to take some notes afterwards?

It will take a few tries to get your methods down and your equipment dialed in.

How would you explain the differences in your AG brew day compared to your extract brew day for those thinking of giving it a try?

Once you start the boil the brew day is basically the same.
The hardest thing for me to figure out was the pre-mash water volume. I think if I had not added the extra water I would of come close to hitting the right levels.
The day is much longer than an extract day. The mash itself is at least 60 minutes.

I will have to make a wort chiller for the next brew. It takes a long time to chill the full volume of wort. With the extract I would top off with cold water in the LBK which lowered the temperature quickly.

The post boil kettle and contents weighs more than I expected.This is another reason to chill and mash without moving the kettle.
I was thinking I would mash in my oven but the water,grain and kettle add up to a pretty heavy load.
I'm going to try and do the whole process outside next time.

I kept notes and will make some adjustments. The water volumes and maintaining the mash temperature for 60 minutes are two things that I'm worried about. The temperature is dropping as winter gets closer. I'll have to adjust my mash temp. as the outside weather gets colder.

The old grains look like they could be baked into some tasty bread or desert bars!

[John Sand]

I think you did fine. I've made near every mistake possible. My first grain batch I underestimated the water required and came up with a strong ale. With age it became one of my best.

[FedoraDave]

I don't do much BIAB (although I'm starting to get back into it on some of my LBK batches). But a good rule of thumb for AG, whether using a mash tun or doing BIAB is 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain for the initial strike water. Some like 1.5 quarts, but anywhere in that range should make for good efficiency.

Keep in mind that the grains are going to absorb a good amount of that water. I usually wind up with about half the volume (in other words, if I use 3 gallons of strike water, I expect to get about 1.5 gallons from the first runnings). The sparge will allow you to not only rinse some more of the converted fermentable sugar from the grain, but also to bring you to pre-boil volume. You won't have any absorption with the sparge, so if you sparge with two gallons, you're gonna get two gallons.

I usually heat up my strike water anywhere from 10 to 15 degrees higher than I want my mash temperature to be. Adding the grains cools the water a little, and the time it takes to add all the grain plus the stirring usually brings it down to a good mash temp.

Only you can determine what your pre-boil volume needs to be, based on whatever your experience tells you. I usually lose a gallon during a 60-minute boil, but I'm not using your stove, and you're not using mine.

All these numbers are going to vary from person to person, and even from batch to batch, but I think it's a good jumping-off point. You'll be able to tailor it to your own brewhouse with a little experience.

[mashani]

I don't do much BIAB (although I'm starting to get back into it on some of my LBK batches). But a good rule of thumb for AG, whether using a mash tun or doing BIAB is 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain for the initial strike water. Some like 1.5 quarts, but anywhere in that range should make for good efficiency.

Yeah that will work with BIAB, I do that when I do Partial Mash BIABs all the time.

But just for clarity, traditional (as in original method as practiced by the Aussies who invented it) AG BIAB is to mash with enough water that when you pull the bag you are left with the full boil volume in the pot (you need a really big pot). it's a very thin mash, and has no sparge step. You can still get 70% or > efficiency that way believe it or not.

[FedoraDave]

Did not know that. I still prefer to sparge, but that's just me.

[Banjo-guy]

I squeezed the bag and vorlaufed. If I were biabing tradionally should I have just dunked the bag in the kettle?

[jimjohson]

i squeeze also. if i understand and mean the same thing by dunking(like a teabag, in and out, in and out), then no. http://beersmith.com/blog/2009/04/14/br ... r-brewing/

[Brewbirds]

From reading your first post it sounds like you got more water than you wanted so your pot might be big enough to do the "true" BIAB that Mashani mentioned.

In which case,as he stated, you wouldn't have to sparge.

Since your daughter drank the OG sample you won't have that info for checking on your efficiency numbers until your next brew day.

I'm not sure how you got to much water but would absolutely recommend making sure all of your vessels, especially your pot are marked correctly.

If you add water to your kettle, say a quart at a time, and mark that off on something long and plastic it would help you find your grain absorption and boil off rates.

With that info you can determine what your mash/brew house efficiency is.

A reminder also some grains require special handling: Pilsner needs a 90 minute boil, smoked malt needs chlorine free water, rye can be touchy etc.
(I didn't learn any of this the hard way honest )

As for your first try I think

[haerbob3]

Mine was quite the experience also. I could not pick a nice easy brew. No I had to do a Hopslam clone. I was sure that the numbers from the Kit instructions and Beersmith were wrong so I went ahead and added an extra 5 lbs of 2-row to hit my numbers. Completely new rig. Burner, mash tun (10 gallon cooler) HTL (10 gallon cooler). Started brewing at 9am finished at 3am the next morning

There was not enough room in the tun to hold all the grain and strike water so I had do a de-concoction mash.

Did a fly sparge after 90 min I had the needed amount of wort. The problem the last runnings were at 1.065 collected another 3 gallons of wort. The only good part of the day.

Now this kit had a pound of hops to be added to the boil. The first 2 additions caused boil overs. Of course this ran all over my nice new and shiny stainless steel burner & patio. The police come over wondering what I was cooking out there in the middle of the night.

All in all quite the learning experience. Yep I would do it all over again

[FedoraDave]

Brewbirds is correct in mentioning a good method of measuring the volume inside the pot. I marked a wooden dowel at each gallon level (cut notches in it, rather than using ink). One end is marked for my big pot, and the other end is marked for my smaller pot, which I use for LBK-sized batches. It's a real handy way to know where things stand, especially when I'm doing full-volume five-gallon AG batches.

[Banjo-guy]

I'll have to pick up a dowel and mark it. My kettle fills a gallon for each 1.5 inches. I think it would be easier to use a dowel or long spoon with notches.

My next project is to figure out how to enter my equipment profile into Beersmith. It doesn't seem too biab friendly.

[jimjohson]

I'll have to pick up a dowel and mark it. My kettle fills a gallon for each 1.5 inches. I think it would be easier to use a dowel or long spoon with notches.

My next project is to figure out how to enter my equipment profile into Beersmith. It doesn't seem too biab friendly.

i use a long spoon but what i did was measure how many inches x amount of water is on the handle i.e. 2 gal is 3 1/4"(actual measruement). i stick the spoon in then measure to the wet line the wort makes.