First all grain brew.

[DaveB81]

Hi guys.

I`m new to the forum but not new to brewing, I`ve been brewing beer from tins of wort for years but i`ve been wanting to step up to all grain brewing for a while now. A couple of weeks ago I decided to get on with it and bought myself a Klarstein mash kettle (25L). Took me a couple of weeks to get all the ingredients delivered due to this Covid lockdown but, finally, yesterday was my first all grain brew day and I just wanted to shared with others who can tell me where I might be going wrong and give me a few pointers.

I decided to keep things really simple and went for a SMaSH pale ale.

60 min mash @ 64C (ish)

5kg extra pale malt

Citra hops
- 20g 60min
- 20g 30min
- 21g 0min

Mangrove Jack New World Strong Ale Yeast.

Had a few issues with the equipment, I set the temp to 64C for the mash but the kettle would allow the temp to drop to 61C before bringing the temp back up, Not sure if this will have an negative effect. Then as I started to get close to the boil the kettle tripped and I had to hit the reset, some bright spark at Klarstein decided that the best place for the reset button is underneath the kettle, this person needs to be fired. Everything after that seemed to go as planned until I came to cleaning the Kettle and noticed some wort had scorched a stuck to the element, fingers crossed it doesn`t ruin my beer.

I took a few pics and I`ll upload them for anyone who is interested. I`d love to hear your opinions/questions about the equipment, ingredients used etc.

Cheers
Dave.

 

[Arrakus]

I’ve had similar amounts of burn in various kit over the years, it never seemed to impact the taste that I noticed. A good tip is to give it a stir a few times during the boil to stop it happening.

I’ve not used Klarstein kit so not sure if the pre-boil cut out is a fault (?).

What OG did you end up with?

 

[DaveB81]

Hi Arrakus.

I'll definitely be doing plenty of stirring next time. The OG was about 1.055.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Hi Dave, i have a klarstein fullhorn, when i first got it it kept tripping i was using a multi plug exstention i changed it for a single plug no problems since, i have had the scorch i find it happens when there is a fair bit of flower in the grist i also knock it down to 1600w when its boiling, if you use dextrose or sugar melt it in a pan and add last 5 mins of boil, my temp settings read 3c high so if i am mashing at 66c i set temp at 63c yours may be different just play about with it and i use a digi thermometer give it a stir first then check temp, happy brewing

 

[matt76]

Dave - I have the exact same system and I'm really pleased with it, great bang for buck. I've done 14 brews on it since I got it at Christmas.

Much as I like it, there are two main issues:
1. Temperature is not accurate - the error seems to vary from one system to another.
2. The dead zone on the thermostat is too wide

However, what I've found is that the error is consistent and repeatable - that's good because it means I can plan for it and work around it. Once you've done a few brews and figured out the errors you should be able to do the same.

For example, on my system if I want to mash at 65degC...

I set the temp to 63degC (i.e. 2degC below desired mash temp) and heat with 3kW... (or 66degC with 1.5kW)

Because of the errors the water will actually end up at 70degC. But once I mash in I end up bang on my desired 65degC.

For mashing I would set my system 8degC below mash temp (57degC) and 1.5kW - still fine tuning this, it eventually starts to lose heat but since I do quite short mashes is not much of an issue in practice.

I use 3kW again to bring it to the boil, then switch down to 1.5kW to maintain a gentle rolling boil (I set it to 102degC but because of the error it never gets there so the thermostat never cuts the heat).