An inner conflict

[gregb]

All, I find myself with an inner conflict:

The slack arse side of me figures that with almost no effort I can kit and adjunct up a beer that is really quite good. And almost impossible to stuff up (Friends, relatives and other ringers say it is better than anything they have tried. I always thought they were just being nice.)

The more adventurous side wants to move into all grain capers.

I humbly seek opinions:
In this current time where quality kits and quality malt and hops are so readily available to slackers such as I, is all grain really worth the effort?

I am also concious that even if it is not really worth the effort, somethings need to be done 'just because they can be'.

And finally, what stuff do I need:
MASH - I have a 40lt esky/picnic cooler/chully bun
LAUTER and SPARGE - Tip esky into colander with cheese cloth and squeeze the cheese cloth.
BOIL - Kmart have 15 lt pots for $20.
COOLING - Ice bath unless I really get into it.
into the bucket to ferment as normal from this point.

I welcome any comment or opinion you may have.

Thanks, and cheers,

Greg B.

[Dogger Dan]

Greg,

As an all grain brewer go for it, I had a kitten when I found out these two things

1. It is bloody easy
2. It is bloody good

Many of your questions can be answered by this web site, the guy shows you step by step how to do it and how to build it.

http://howtobrew.com/

The only change I made was to cut my slits in the sparge tube on the underside rather than the top.

Gough was the bloke who got me into it

Dogger

[thehipone]

Hi,

Just did my first AG batch over the weekend. It really isnt that hard, but there is some capital outlay and it takes a little longer.

you do need some sort of mash/lauter tun. I use the 55L K-mart picnic cooler with a manifold in the bottom. You will probably have a hard time finding a colander big enough to hold the ~5 kg of grain that you need, so go with the false-bottom or manifold. And don't squeeze the grains, I'm not sure how much of a problem it is, but apparently you get all the nasty proteins out of the grain if you squeeze.

My local K-mart had the 15L Pronto pots for $12. Perfect. You need 2.

Something to hold the sparge water is helpful, I use one of those 15L drink coolers with the tap on the bottom.

There's lots of ways to go about it. Look around and don't be intimidated.

[Gough]

G'day Greg and Dogger,

I reckon you should go for it mate. It is time consuming and a bit of stuffing around, but the beer is better IMHO and you can basically brew anything you like - you have control over the whole process. The howtobrew.com site suggested by Dogger is excellent and covers everything you'll need to know in detail. Check it out.

As far as your suggested gear goes, the esky will be fine, but your sparging/lautering setup will let you down and you'll need a bigger boil pot. The collander/cheesecloth would probably introduce a bit too much oxygen at the high temps when sparging and you might end up with cardboard flavoured beer If you don't want to go to the hassle of building a copper manifold, you can cut out the strainer bit of a stainless steel strainer and roll it up into a tube, hose clamp it at the end and run it into your esky tap on the inside and it will do the lautering cheaply and easily. You need to be able to boil your whole wort when ag brewing so 15 litres won't really cut it. Try and 'liberate' (I just asked my friendly local publican ) an old 50 litre Tooheys/Carlton keg and knock the top off with a grinder/plasma cutter if you have one. Hey presto a 50 litre stainless steel boiler for nothing! 15-20 litre pots are great for partial mashing, but not really big enough to boil your full wort when ag brewing. I use my old 19 litre BigW job to heat my sparge water in, so it is handy to have one.

Best of luck,

Shawn.

[Gough]

Good stuff thehipone! How's the wort tasting so far? What did you brew?

Shawn.

[thehipone]

It is an English Bitter. My efficiency was a little lower than I expected, so it just needed a little DME to boost it up to the 1.050 target from about 1.040. Haven't tasted it yet, but it smelled somewhat similar to the usual extract wort. It's ferociously bubbling away undeneath the house.

Incidentally it was also the first time using the White labs liquid yeast vials (its the London Ale) so I got the fun of making a starter on top of the grain brew-day. Any excuse to get some malty water boiling! and the best part is there's 5 more lots of yeast (taken out of the starter volume) in the fridge for the next few batches.

[Dogger Dan]

My first couple were a bit light to until I got the math right. Now it is drive on. I actually built the worlds ugliest heat exchanger using copper cooling tube. (Bloody ugly but works a treat) I can drop 5 gallons of wort from boiling topitchable temp in about 12 min.
I did a partial last night as I wanted to brew up 10 gallons rather than 5 and I am just not set up for a 10 gallon brew

Dogger

[Gough]

My first effort came out on predicted gravity, but with only 19 litres in the fermenter instead of 22 I sorted that prob by the next brew and have been fine since, but sh!t happens...

Have you guys tried this program? http://www.beersmith.com It is great in putting your recipes together and tracking efficiencies etc. I started out doing it all on paper and it was a bit of a pain in the arse - fun but time consuming. This program has helped speed up and standardise the process a lot. Cost me just under $30 Australian back in March - a pretty good investment IMO. No association blah blah, just a happy customer...

Shawn.

[Dogger Dan]

I'll check that out, I am using a shareware beasty right now which works out OK,

but I have a mash temp calc which gives you strike water temp based on grain weight and strike water volume. That is worth its weight

Dogger

[gregb]

All,

I am going to give it a go.

More than anything it was the AG brewers enthusiasm for the AG that sold me. I've still got a couple of kits to get thru. First mash is scheduled between now and Christmas 2004.

I'll add the annecdotes of how badly I F'ked up if it all goes bad.

Thanks heaps,

Greg B

[Dogger Dan]

Will be here to help

Dogger