MartijnFranke
New Member
Hi all,
Today I started my all-grain brewing carreer. A couple of years ago I did some extract brewing but the last couple of months the idea of brewing from scratch became ever more attractive. After having been to the UK in november, drinking some very tasty craft ales, I decided to go for it. I still had some equipment from making wine and from the extract brewing and I bought a Klarstein Brauheld Pro all in one system and build a temperature controled fermentation closet. Furthermore I read most of 'How to Brew' by John Palmer.
Today I did what Palmer suggested: just go for it and learn. I went for a clone of Brewdogs 'IPA is dead: Chinook'. Some things went well some other things need some thinking over. Or advice. And that's how I stumbled into this forum.
One of those things: based on the indications inside the Klarstein I thought I had about 25 liters after boil (I was planning on using a bucket fermenter for this batch, so I couldn't have more than 22 liters, so I boiled 15 minutes longer). I ended up with a little under 19 liters at 1066 (target 20 l / 1064), so the indication inside the machine seems to be off quite a bit. I'll sort that out filling it with known quantities of water and marking those on the monitoring tube on the outside of the kettle.
Another thing that didn't work well was the recirculation during the mash and pumping the wort through the plate exchanger for cooling. During the mash I didn't notice at first it wasn't recirculating anymore, after the boil I found the filter inside the Klarstein clogged up in seconds, the wort contained quite a lot of small solids and clouds of flour. I ground the malt at 1.4 mm in my Brewgorilla Pro mill. I did some research yesterday on how to grind, but found serveral contradictory advices of grinding finer or coarser, so I ground based on pictures of what it should look like (started fine, going coarser after that). Sparging went without a problem. Could someone give me some advice on this? Some other data: 6,4 kg lager malt, 25 liters, strike temp. 50C, mash temp: 65C.
Cheers,
Martijn
Today I started my all-grain brewing carreer. A couple of years ago I did some extract brewing but the last couple of months the idea of brewing from scratch became ever more attractive. After having been to the UK in november, drinking some very tasty craft ales, I decided to go for it. I still had some equipment from making wine and from the extract brewing and I bought a Klarstein Brauheld Pro all in one system and build a temperature controled fermentation closet. Furthermore I read most of 'How to Brew' by John Palmer.
Today I did what Palmer suggested: just go for it and learn. I went for a clone of Brewdogs 'IPA is dead: Chinook'. Some things went well some other things need some thinking over. Or advice. And that's how I stumbled into this forum.
One of those things: based on the indications inside the Klarstein I thought I had about 25 liters after boil (I was planning on using a bucket fermenter for this batch, so I couldn't have more than 22 liters, so I boiled 15 minutes longer). I ended up with a little under 19 liters at 1066 (target 20 l / 1064), so the indication inside the machine seems to be off quite a bit. I'll sort that out filling it with known quantities of water and marking those on the monitoring tube on the outside of the kettle.
Another thing that didn't work well was the recirculation during the mash and pumping the wort through the plate exchanger for cooling. During the mash I didn't notice at first it wasn't recirculating anymore, after the boil I found the filter inside the Klarstein clogged up in seconds, the wort contained quite a lot of small solids and clouds of flour. I ground the malt at 1.4 mm in my Brewgorilla Pro mill. I did some research yesterday on how to grind, but found serveral contradictory advices of grinding finer or coarser, so I ground based on pictures of what it should look like (started fine, going coarser after that). Sparging went without a problem. Could someone give me some advice on this? Some other data: 6,4 kg lager malt, 25 liters, strike temp. 50C, mash temp: 65C.
Cheers,
Martijn
