First All Grain Brew

[phildo79]

I'm thinking about giving all grain a bash but I'm not that keen to splurge on a +30 litre kettle just yet. I can get a 20 litre stock pot for £20 so I think I'll try that first.

My question is this; what is the maximum yield from a pot this size? Am I looking at 16 litres of beer when I'm ready to transfer to the FV?

I am aware of trub loss, evaporation and varying weight of ingredients so I'm just wondering what a good guess would be. I think it would annoy me to spend so long making a one gallon kit, so I was wondering if I could fire two kits into a stock pot of that size.

 

[IainM]

Hi,
I'm about to go AG - the kit has been dispatched, and I've spent some time working on some recipes in BIABacus. Getting 16L into the fv post-boil with a 20L pot is bit ambitious. If you could settle for 12L, then plugging in your numbers (assuming a kettle with 30cm diameter and 28cm height, giving 20L volume), you could use 2kg of grain to get a beer with OG around 1.040. You would need 17.5L of water, for a total mash volume of 19.4L, which will give you just shy of 17L into the boil, 13.9L after evaporation at flame-out, 13.3L ambient wort, and 12L after kettle-to-fermenter loss. You could get more by increasing the grain bill and doing a proper sparge instead of passive sparge, but I've only really looked into BIAB.
Iain

 

[MyQul]

If you make a concentrated wort and then dilute it in the FV you can make a full 23L. It's the way I brew. I have a 19L pot which gives me about 17L of concentrated wort which I then dilute down to 23L-24L.

Doing a full length mash & boil at a guess I would say around the 14L mark

 

[Sandimas]

You can also keep topping up during the boil - I easily get 12L from a 15L stock pot.

And don't bother with AG kits, just get some ingredients (Marris Otter, some hops and yeast) and roll your own :thumb:

 

[Simonh82]

I will keep singing the praises of Brupaks anitfoam when it comes to maximising your boil volume. A tiny spot of the stuff and you don't have to worry about boil over. That means you can probably boil 18L in a 19L pot. I have my 30L Burco boiling 1cm away from the rim.

I agree that you can skip ingredient kits. They are not going to be economical. Find a recipe that you like and then use the scale recipe tool in something like Brewers Friend to make it the right size for you. You will be able to buy the malt and hops cheaper than multiple stove top recipe kits. You will probably end up with some hops and speciality malts left over for future brews too.

 

[Hoppyland]

If you make a concentrated wort and then dilute it in the FV you can make a full 23L. It's the way I brew. I have a 19L pot which gives me about 17L of concentrated wort which I then dilute down to 23L-24L.

Absolutely agree - I dilute most of my beers after the boil & I'm certain that the quality does not suffer at all

 

[phildo79]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Much appreciated.

I've been hankering for a peanut butter stout ever since I tried Buxton's Yellow Belly stout. I think for my first time, I'll get a basic stout AG kit for £10 (1 gallon) and add natural peanut butter to the boil. Brooklyn beer shop have a peanut butter porter kit which, as far as I know, cannot be bought in the UK. But I have the instructions for making that kit so I'm hoping the standard stout kit will work as a substitute. Or am I being crazy?

 

[MyQul]

I'd be a little careful when adding peanut butter to a beer. Theoil/ fat in the peanut butter will effect the head, leaving it all but non existant. Also it might leave the beer oily/greasy.

I read about something called "fat washing" and some people even use it to add bacon to beer (yup :sick:). Put some peanut butter in vodka, let it sit for a few hours then put everything in the freezer till the fat solidifies. Then you can skim the fat off and add the peanut butter flavoured vodka to your FV/bottles. Never tried this btw

http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/...g-spirits-cocktails-how-fatwashing-works.html

 

[phildo79]

I have bought peanut butter that has no palm oil. There is still some oil from the peanuts but it has separated itself from the rest and is floating on top. The instructions I have say to discard the top inch of the butter before adding. The bird at the homebrew shop said she knew someone that had good results using peanut butter powder, which I've never seen for sale. I think it might be something body builders use for protein.

 

[Hoppyland]

I will keep singing the praises of Brupaks anitfoam when it comes to maximising your boil volume. A tiny spot of the stuff and you don't have to worry about boil over.

This new to me, but sounds interesting. But... if it stops the wort foaming, does it then stop the beer foaming - i.e. no head??

 

[JapanBrew]

I'm thinking about giving all grain a bash but I'm not that keen to splurge on a +30 litre kettle just yet. I can get a 20 litre stock pot for £20 so I think I'll try that first.

My question is this; what is the maximum yield from a pot this size? Am I looking at 16 litres of beer when I'm ready to transfer to the FV?

I am aware of trub loss, evaporation and varying weight of ingredients so I'm just wondering what a good guess would be. I think it would annoy me to spend so long making a one gallon kit, so I was wondering if I could fire two kits into a stock pot of that size.

The problem is, for a bigger pot, it's not much more in cost. It's almost certain when you start, the AG bug is going to bite you!!! Then you'll have to go out and buy another pot!!!

 

[Simonh82]

This new to me, but sounds interesting. But... if it stops the wort foaming, does it then stop the beer foaming - i.e. no head??

Not at all. Given how effective it is during the boil, I'm surprised that it doesn't affect the head retention at all.

I've got a beer which is suffering from severe over carbonation at the moment and I end up with a 3" head on that if I pour it carefully. I can get about an inch of head sitting above the top of the glass. There is some torrified wheat in there too, which undoubtedly helps but I can safely say the head isn't affected by the anti-foam.

The instructions on the bottle say to mix 2ml in 50ml of water and apply with a spray bottle as it comes to the boil. I just dip the wrong end of teaspoon in the bottle and scrape of as much as I can so their is only a minuscule amount on the spoon. Then stir it in. That works well.

 

[phildo79]

That reminds me; I bought a 500ml bottle of sanitiser from the homebrew shop. It says to mix 1.5ml to every litre of water. How the hell do you measure out 1.5ml? And if I put too much in, will this taint the equipment?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Get a syringe from the chemist, i use one to measure my KwiK Clear finings. (2ml per gallon)

 

[Rocksaga]

That reminds me; I bought a 500ml bottle of sanitiser from the homebrew shop. It says to mix 1.5ml to every litre of water. How the hell do you measure out 1.5ml? And if I put too much in, will this taint the equipment?

You could always multiply up - 1 teaspoon is near enough 6ml so that would do 4 litres of water. :thumb:

 

[fourbob]

My advice would be to buy the 20l pot and a muslin bag big enough to fill it, follow the clibit "have a go at a simple ag" thread multiplied by 3 (handy if you've got another pot large enough to sparge in - saves tipping wort back and to between your pan and FV), and you'll end up with around 15l of beery goodness for you to savour, while you consider how much you've learned about the process and begin speculating on all the grain / hop / yeast combinations you simply must try next....