Moving onto all grain - some help please

[-Bezza-]

I joined the forum as I'd been dabbling with homebrew kits on-and-off with mixed success and wanted to improve consistency and move towards all-grain. Thanks to the advice on here, things have massively improved on the kit front and getting well-fermented, clear beer each time. :thumb:

So now for the next stage - stove-top all-grain.

I wanted to knock up some single-hop ales of around 5%, so planning on using the Single Hop Ale recipe from Greg Hughes. This calls for 4.7kg Pale Malt and 235g Carapils for a 27l boil (23l into the FV).

I have a 20l (30cm diameter, 30cm height) SS pan for the main affair and a spare 7l one that I can use on the side. So in scaling the recipe, I was hoping to get some views on water quantities and approach.

I was generally thinking:
- Mash in the 7l pan with all the grain in a big grain bag, filled to the brim. Leave for an hour.
- Heat the "sparge" water in the 20l pan and transfer the bag of grain from the smaller pan, gently dunk the bag a few times to extract sugars. Leave for about 15 mins. Remove bag.
- Mix small pan of mashed wort into big pan, topping up to about 18l? (or could I get more in there without boiling over) and boil for 1h10m (per the recipe) with various hop additions etc.
- Cool in sink of ice, top up to 18l and transfer to FVs.

I'm guessing that suggests I should use a bit more grain than a simple scaled recipe as I'll be topping up with water after the boil.

Could I get some help on the maths and approach please?

Ideally looking to get 18l into the FV, split between 2 10 or 12 l jerry cans each with a different yeast for side-by-side comparison.

 

[AdeDunn]

Give me a few and I'll convert the recipe down for you. Be right back.

 

[Leon103]

You planned is flawed unfortunaely. You will never be able to mash that much grain in a 7l pot. Plus boiling 18l of wort the 20l pan will create a boil over.

 

[Leon103]

I would use a fv to mash. Do a full volume mash in there, using your pans to bring water to temperatute. No sparge and then use both pans to boil

 

[-Bezza-]

I would use a fv to mash. Do a full volume mash in there, using your pans to bring water to temperatute. No sparge and then use both pans to boil

Thanks - will that not be an **** with the hops then?

I think the grain bill is likely to come out at 3kg pale and 150g carapils.

 

[AdeDunn]

Ok, feel free not to use this at all. I made some assumptions: 1: A 65% efficiency (it's your first AG), 2: That you mean the Amarillo single hop ale as it's the first one in the book.

Your 7 litre pan, use it to heat 5.1 litres of water to 75 degrees, you're going to sparge with 5 litres of this after the mash.

In your main pan, heat 13,59 litres of water to (now this is assuming your grain is 20 degrees C) 67 degrees C. Fit a BIAB (grain bag) into your pan, and slowly stir in (make sure you get the grain off the bottom as you do this):-

4328g Pale Malt (5.5 EBC)
216g Carapils Malt (4 EBC)

Mash for 60 minutes at 65 degrees C, stir every 20 minutes (again, lift the grain off the bottom into the liquid). Raise the temperature of 7 minutes to 75 degrees (stirring the whole time), hold it there for 10 minutes. Once that's done, slowly raise the grain bag and place it over the pan on a cooling rack or the like to drain.

Once it's fairly well drained, place it on a rack over a vessel large enough to take the grain bag AND 5 litres of the 75 degrees sparge water, very very slowly pour 5 litres of the water from the 7 litre pan over the grain in the bag (NOT over the outside of the bag, but into it). Once you've done that, treat the bag like a big teabag and give it a dunking in the sparge water for about 5 to 10 minutes, then back on the rack and let it drain.

Once it's drained, at the contents to the big pan with the rest of your wort, and start bringing it to the boil. Keep adding any more drainings you get from the bag, until it reaches boiling.

This will give you about 15.46 litres in your boiling pan. Once you get a GOOD rolling boil, start your boil timer:-

Assuming whole hops with alpha acids of 9.1%.

@ 70 (start of boil) minutes Amarillo 32.5g
@ 15 (before end) minutes Amarillo 16.3g + 1/4 Protafloc/whirlfloc (or equivalent Irish moss) tablet
@ 5 minutes (before end) Amarillo 16.3g
@ 0 minutes (end of boil, turn the heat off) Amarillo 50g

You now need to cool this as quickly as possible, eg. putting the pan in a bath of cold/ice water, down to about 18 degrees C (20 tops).

Whilst it's cooling, rehydrate your yeast (you want a US pale ale yeast). Once the wort has cooled, add another 7 litres of sanitary water (you could actually use this to cool too, like you would doing a kit), transfer to your fermenter/fermenters (This is gonna give you 15 litres, which is 3 x demijohns, or 1 x 20 litre bucket FV) (if using a 20 litre bucket, you can add the wort first, then add the sanitary top-up water). Once it's all in, pitch your yeast (if you are using 3x demijohns, split it 3 ways).

Leave it for at least 2 weeks, it should hit an FG of 1.012 if you hit target OG of 1.050. Bottle (use an online tool to calculate priming sugar) and keep at room temp for 2 weeks to carbonate, then if you can move somewhere cooler for at least 6 weeks to condition (it's gonna have an ABV of about 5%, so needs 6 weeks to taste right).

This SHOULD give you a beer with 40 IBUs bitterness, 5% ABV with a colour of 10EBC as per the book. I used BIABacus to scale it for you though, so no guarantees. I also took the simplest route imho, others may have other methods for you equally good or maybe even better.

BIABacus tells me you will be mashing 17 litres total, boiling 15.46 (giving you plenty of room for a rolling boil). Other methods may give you more beer, but I'm not familiar with those methods. If you get a much higher OG, but lower volume, just adjust the top up water appropriately so you get the same 1.050 OG and 15 litres volume. If you get a lower OG and/or volume, you have a choice between adding dry malt extract (to increase OG), or just taking it as it comes. If you get a lower OG but a higher volume, boil a bit longer, or again just take it as it comes (boiling longer will give you a higher bitterness).

This is not the only way to do it, or possibly even the best way to do it, it is merely my suggestion. :thumb1:

PS. The larger grain bill is because I adjusted for a lower efficiency than the book uses. It'll be amazing if you get a better efficiency, and give you more beer, or stronger beer (if you get a large volume at a higher OG, consider using 2 packets of yeast).

 

[-Bezza-]

Cheers - 15l at the end will be perfectly acceptable to me!

Interesting that you have dropped efficiency to 65%. I was reading in How to Brew that BIAB can be more efficient than 3-vessel brewing because when 'dunking the tea-bag' the grains are able to move more freely, therefore giving the sugars the space to escape. That was at the expense of slightly more cloudy wort.

 

[Leon103]

Thanks - will that not be an **** with the hops then?

I think the grain bill is likely to come out at 3kg pale and 150g carapils.

Sorry not sure what you mean here.

 

[AdeDunn]

Cheers - 15l at the end will be perfectly acceptable to me!

Interesting that you have dropped efficiency to 65%. I was reading in How to Brew that BIAB can be more efficient than 3-vessel brewing because when 'dunking the tea-bag' the grains are able to move more freely, therefore giving the sugars the space to escape. That was at the expense of slightly more cloudy wort.

Totally true that you can get higher efficiency with BIAB, my last brew for example I got a mash efficiency of 90.7%, and a brewhouse efficiency of about nearly 88%. I reduced for this though because of my experience with my first 2 brews. The first was a largish BIAB in a 33 litre pan, and I got 62% brewhouse efficiency and had to add dry malt extract to reach target. My second AG was a stove top, and I got 58% efficiency and ended up with 4.5/5 litres of wort, from a starting volume of 14.5 litres into the boil. So I figured you'd probably prefer to end up with a higher than target OG should you do better than I did when I started out.

Heck, if you want to try it with a higher efficiency set, let me know and I'll happily adjust for you, I kept the BIABacus file open just in case you did, or in case I had the wrong recipe (ie. you wanted one of the other hops, rather than Amarillo). :thumb:

Also, feel free to download the desktop client for Brewers Friend and have a play, it comes pretty close usually.

 

[-Bezza-]

Sorry not sure what you mean here.

Sorry, I was wondering what you would do with the hops if brewing across 2 pans. Would you not have to put proportional amounts of hops in each pot as you go?

 

[-Bezza-]

Totally true that you can get higher efficiency with BIAB, my last brew for example I got a mash efficiency of 90.7%, and a brewhouse efficiency of about nearly 88%. I reduced for this though because of my experience with my first 2 brews. The first was a largish BIAB in a 33 litre pan, and I got 62% brewhouse efficiency and had to add dry malt extract to reach target. My second AG was a stove top, and I got 58% efficiency and ended up with 4.5/5 litres of wort, from a starting volume of 14.5 litres into the boil. So I figured you'd probably prefer to end up with a higher than target OG should you do better than I did when I started out.

Heck, if you want to try it with a higher efficiency set, let me know and I'll happily adjust for you, I kept the BIABacus file open just in case you did, or in case I had the wrong recipe (ie. you wanted one of the other hops, rather than Amarillo). :thumb:

Also, feel free to download the desktop client for Brewers Friend and have a play, it comes pretty close usually.

That makes sense - if I overshoot the mark by too much I could always water down.

It was the Amarillo recipe (and others) that I was intending to follow. The AA is likely to be different so expecting to need to tinker with the hop additions slightly.

I'll see if I can recreate everything in Brewersfriend as you suggest, and if I come out with the same numbers as you I'll know I'm doing things right and can scale accordingly.

Thank you!

 

[AdeDunn]

Yeah, that's why I put the AA% I based it on, using the whole hops Amarillo sold by malt miller. :thumb:

 

[Covrich]

Cheers - 15l at the end will be perfectly acceptable to me!

Interesting that you have dropped efficiency to 65%. I was reading in How to Brew that BIAB can be more efficient than 3-vessel brewing because when 'dunking the tea-bag' the grains are able to move more freely, therefore giving the sugars the space to escape. That was at the expense of slightly more cloudy wort.

BIAB does not contain a sparge step just a full volume mash and (optional) mash out.. compared to other variations of this (doing a sparge so more of a hybrid setup) or a 3 vessel or automated it can suffer efficiency but I can easily hit 70-75% everytime. It does require a big vessel as you will need all your grain and all your water which volume wise can be well over 40L collectively. I do however get very clear wort doing it.. I think a good quality bag can help with this (not a cheap pain strainer) as well as a good rolling boil.

 

[AdeDunn]

BIAB CAN contain a sparge step, those saying it can't are just been purists who believe that it's only BIAB if you don't sparge... Personally, I see shooting yourself in the foot re efficiency just to be a purist as silly. There are plenty of guides to BIAB that include a sparge step. BIAB just means brew in a bag, and that's exactly what you are doing even if you sparge. There are quite a few variations of BIAB.

For every definition on the internet saying that BIAB is ONLY full volume mashing, there is at least one other saying that you can add a sparge step etc and it's still BIAB.

 

[-Bezza-]

4328g Pale Malt (5.5 EBC)
216g Carapils Malt (4 EBC)

So I've entered the original Greg Hughes recipe into Brewersfriend, changed the efficiency to 65% and then used the scale function to work out the grain bill.

For a 15l batch size, i.e. 15l in the FV, it's giving me a boil size of 19l and grain of 3.53kg and 176g for Pale and Carapils respectively.

For a 15l boil, I end up with a batch of 11l at the end, with 2.72kg total grain.

In either case, I'm quite short on the 4.5kg you have come up with. What have I done wrong?

In my head, I should be using the grain for the 15l batch but the water for the 11l batch, to account for the topping up at the end.

 

[AdeDunn]

Hang on, let me run it through again, not the first time BIABacus messes quantities up.

 

[-Bezza-]

Cool - I'll plan on 3.5kg and 175g to get me to 4.95%. :thumb:

 

[AdeDunn]

Right, did you set it to BIAB before you used the scale function?

Putting the grain bill I gave into Brewers Friend directly, with 65% efficiency, 15 litres batch size, I'm only getting a smaller discrepancy, it's giving me an OG of 1.065 rather than 1.050. Past experience tells me that this happens a lot using different software. Beersmith 2 does the same thing to my recipes regularly, probably because BIABacus the setting is kettle efficiency, the others are Brew House efficiency.

Leave it with me a moment, I'll redo it in Beersmith 2.

 

[AdeDunn]

Right, first up you can't boil 19 litres in a 20 litre pan, it'll leave the pan. Don't try it. lol The most you could manage is a simmer, which won't do the job. I'd say aim for 14.5 litres, giving you plenty of head space.

I'm still trying to get it to work in Beersmith 2. The problem been getting your equipment profile in there so it doesn't try to get 22 litres into a 20 litres max pan... lol

Finally dialled in, ish.

Strike water volume: 16.64 Litres.
Sparge water volume: 5 Litres.
Pre boil volume: 13.66 (estimated).
Boil off: 2.21 Litres (estimated).
Post boil volume: 11.46 Litres (estimated).
Fermenter top up: 4 Litres.
Volume into fermenter: 15 Litres (unless you leave the trub behind, in which case less).
Volume into packaging: About 14 Litres.

3690g Pale Malt
190g Carapils malt
Same mashing instructions etc.

Then boil for 70 minutes:-

@ 70 minutes: Amarillo 9.1% AA 21g
@15 minutes: Amarillo 9.1% AA 11g
@5 minutes: Amarillo 9.1% AA 11g
@0 minutes: Amarillo 9.1% AA 34g

This will give you a beer with an OG of 1.050, FG approx 1.009 (US-05 yeast), 39.8 IBUs

BS2 isn't as big a pita for insisting on more malt than needed, BIABacus is. That's why I usually use the 2 together when building recipes for myself. lol

This was based on 65% BREW HOUSE efficiency, rather than kettle efficiency. Is suspect that that is what causes the difference between BIABacus and Beersmith 2.

 

[-Bezza-]

Sorry I'm causing a fuss - I thought it would be a simple answer!

Completely noted that 15l is the maximum I can boil. Rather than trying to work back from the original recipe and get an optimal answer, would it be easier to assume I'll go with 3.5kg + 175g of grain in a 15l boil, expecting 4l to boil off and 65% efficiency and figure out all the mash parameters from there?

I have the large FV which I can use for mashing of course - that'll take 30l. I also wouldn't be adverse to investing in a large cool box as that would have plenty of other uses, especially if it was on wheels.