First AG - 5l brew

[Nicks90]

I've decided to take the plunge and do an all grain this weekend.
But before I do, can I just run past you all what I plan to do so I'm sure I'm not completely going wrong.

1kg Maria otter pale malt crushed
Bring pan of 3l water to 75c and place a muslin sheet in it
Add malt on top of muslin sheet and gently stir to remove lumps
Adding the malt should drop it to 68-70c
Leave for an hour wrapped up with the lid on.
in another pan have 3l water at 85c
Lift muslin sheet out of pan 1 and then drop it in pan 2 and lift in and out a few times to "mash out" / sparge.
Remove muslin and malt and feed to the pigs
Pour both pans in to one and boil for 60 mins
At 15 mins add 10g challenger hops
At 45 mins add 10g challenger hops
(I have these to hand from my last wherry tweak dry hopping experiment)
Make a starter from 200ml with some s-04 yeast
Pour the 4.2l of remaining wort through a strainer /funnel in to a demijohn
Put DJ in to the sink and cool rapidly under the cold tap
Add starter when it's at 20c and leave it as per normal brewing for 2 weeks
Bottle it in 500ml PET bottles with 1/2tsp sugar in each
Condition for 2 weeks
Store in the cold cellar for 2 weeks
Get stuck in!

Does this sound like a sensible simple AG or am I utterly misunderstanding the whole thing and any rough ideas what the approx abv will be?

Cheers
(Very excited) Nick

 

[Oneflewover]

I've decided to take the plunge and do an all grain this weekend.
But before I do, can I just run past you all what I plan to do so I'm sure I'm not completely going wrong.

1kg Maria otter pale malt crushed
Bring pan of 3l water to 75c and place a muslin sheet in it
Add malt on top of muslin sheet and gently stir to remove lumps
Adding the malt should drop it to 68-70c
Leave for an hour wrapped up with the lid on.
in another pan have 3l water at 85c
Lift muslin sheet out of pan 1 and then drop it in pan 2 and lift in and out a few times to "mash out" / sparge.
Remove muslin and malt and feed to the pigs
Pour both pans in to one and boil for 60 mins
At 15 mins add 10g challenger hops
At 45 mins add 10g challenger hops
(I have these to hand from my last wherry tweak dry hopping experiment)
Make a starter from 200ml with some s-04 yeast
Pour the 4.2l of remaining wort through a strainer /funnel in to a demijohn
Put DJ in to the sink and cool rapidly under the cold tap
Add starter when it's at 20c and leave it as per normal brewing for 2 weeks
Bottle it in 500ml PET bottles with 1/2tsp sugar in each
Condition for 2 weeks
Store in the cold cellar for 2 weeks
Get stuck in!

Does this sound like a sensible simple AG or am I utterly misunderstanding the whole thing and any rough ideas what the approx abv will be?

Cheers
(Very excited) Nick

I reckon that you'll end up with a decent beer :thumb:

it'll take some time for all the liquid to drain out of the muslin / grain. Bit of a squeeze would help, or leave over the 2nd pan in a colander to drain whilst you're heating up the wort. Are you confident that 4.2 l of fermenting wort will be contained in a DJ?

The only other thing I'd definitely recommend is to treat the water you use with campden tab before use to remove the chloro-something or others (read strange Steve's simple water treatment thread).

 

[Nicks90]

Well , i say DJ - but I'll be using a 5l water bottle and using that water to make up 5 of the 6l of boil water.
Will 500ml headspace be enough? Dunno... Will it?

 

[Nicks90]

Alternatively if there isn't enough room for 4.5l in a 5l bottle, I could stretch to doing 8l and boil down to 6 (pan size constraints) and add 200gm honey to up the OG and put 3l in to two water bottles?

 

[JHart96]

Hey Nick,

I do something very similar to what you're planning but I don't normally prepare the second pot of water, I just heat the main one up, but your way sounds more similar to what the pros do so that may be better!

I'd be interested in what kind of mash efficiency you're getting with this method, I haven't had much luck at getting more than 65% but I've heard other people report upwards of 85% so it might be more of a water issue. It's hard to know what kind of ABV you'll be getting without knowing the mash efficiency, for me, this recipe would give me around 5.5% ABV.

I've found that I get around 4L of wort in a demijohn, any more than that and I've had the bung pop out of the top due to a lot of fermentation. This means I normally only get around 3.5L of beer per batch by the time I've left the trub behind.

It looks like this is going to be around 65 IBUs, is this what you wanted? It'd be a little too much for me but I'm not a big fan of bitterness.

It might be worth taking a look at some of the recipe builders like Brewer's Friend or Beersmith if you haven't already, they will help to answer questions about ABV and bitterness etc :)

It sounds great though, good luck!

Jordan

 

[Nicks90]

Been having a bit of a think about this and decided to buy 3kg of Maris otter crushed, mainly because my local HB shop is currently closed and the postage costs were the same for 3kg as 1kg.
So I am going to do a 6l steep with 1.5kg of grain and mash out / sparge with 3l. Totalling 9l
Boil to 7l and dump in my full size vessel.
Rinse and repeat, giving me 14l wort.

But my question is, can I do all my hop additions in one of the two boils, or does it need to be split across the two evenly?

Now I appreciate that this will double the time I need, two steeps, two boils... But I ain't got a pan big enough and needs must.

 

[MyQul]

Been having a bit of a think about this and decided to buy 3kg of Maris otter crushed, mainly because my local HB shop is currently closed and the postage costs were the same for 3kg as 1kg.
So I am going to do a 6l steep with 1.5kg of grain and mash out / sparge with 3l. Totalling 9l
Boil to 7l and dump in my full size vessel.
Rinse and repeat, giving me 14l wort.

But my question is, can I do all my hop additions in one of the two boils, or does it need to be split across the two evenly?

Now I appreciate that this will double the time I need, two steeps, two boils... But I ain't got a pan big enough and needs must.

You can do the hop additions in one of the boils as long as you combining then after. I've done something similar before and it worked well enough

 

[MyQul]

You can do the hop additions in one of the boils as long as you combining then after. I've done something similar before and it worked well enough

Having said that, If you're putting the full hop additions in half the amount of wort, you'll get a lower hop utilisation. There are calculators to work this out but I make a concentrated wort and dilute down in the FV and I dont bother adding any more hops to account for this (I used to) and havent noticed any difference. I'm contradicting myself here arent I :lol:

 

[Nicks90]

Myqul,
You have me confused with concentrated wort and water down.
Are you suggesting i could potentially put all my grain in to one and make a really concentrate wort and just water it down to the target OG ?
How concentrated could I go? All 3kg in a bag and mash in 6l then sparge with 3. Giving a preboil of about 8l, post boil of 6? Then water it down to about 1045 (approx 14l)?