My 1st ever “All Grain” Brew Day

[Brewelder]

Well i finally got round to my first ever “All Grain” brew yesterday and what a day that was!!! I’d seen loads of Youtube videos and read countless forum threads about “Brew Day’s” and having only ever made canned extract brews in the past i always wondered why they called it “Brew Day”?

Well now i know. My master plan was to start the brew, get it into the fermentor, have a clean up then go for a game of golf. Well the golf never happened, but that said, i really enjoyed myself and learned a sh*t load about brewing in the process so all in all i’m well chuffed. Not sure how it’s going to turn out yet and i reckon i’ve probably chose the wrong brew to cut my teeth with but it’s done now and here’s how it all went.

The Brew is a Double NEIPA from Get Er Brewed (who i have to commend as the kit arrived very well packaged with very clear instructions so i will be using them again for sure.)

Grain Bill: 5.4kg of Maris Otter Pale Ale, 800g of Malted Naked Oats, 850g of Torrefied Wheat, 250g of Cara Gold Malt & 850g of Flaked Torrefied Oats. A Whirlpool addition of 25g Galaxy, 70g Citra & 30g El Dorada Hops. A dry hop of 60g Galaxy Hops and 11g of Verdant IPA yeast.

Now i’m not sure i did all this correctly, but here’s how it all went. I have a Klarstein 30ltr Mash Kettle so i added 30ltrs of water and brought it up to 65 degrees before adding the bag and the grains. I sort of realised that all of this simply wasn’t going to fit in the kettle so decided to add the grains using a jug just to be on the safe side rather than trying to dump all 8.15kg in at once. I was right as after adding around 2 kg the kettle was full so i let it sit a while hoping the absorbtion would make the levels go down which it did so kept adding more until i’d added half the grains and it was obvious the remainder wasn’t going to fit in so i decided to drain off 5 ltrs of water which by now was infused with the mash. I covered it to keep it clean and then added the rest of the grains to the kettle and gave it all a good stir and let sit with the lid on for 60 minutes.

The next part is where i think i’ve gone worng or will certainly change for the next brew. I lifted the grain bag out of the mash kettle and sat it on a heavy rack to allow the liquid to drain back into the kettle and so far so good. However, after the draining i was left with around 20 ltrs of wort so i added the previously decanted 5ltrs to make up the volume and set up for the boil. The instructions said to boil for 60 minutes so i set the temperature at 100 and let it come to a boil, once boiling i adjusted it down to get a nice rolling boil, but i couldn’t get this and finally decided to let it boil at 95 degrees which was what i would term as a strong rolling boil. The thermostat on the kettle would let me get the right temo for a rolling boil. Anyway after 60 minutes i was left with 17.5ltrs of wort so quite a high boil of rate. In hindsight i guess i should have sparged the grains to increase the pe-boil volume as my target was to get 19ltrs into the corny keg after fermantation. I haven’t a clue how to work out efficiency rates and all that stuff but i’m a little dissappointed to how much wort i actually got.

Anyway, after the boil i added the ”whirlpool hops” followed by the chiller and crashed it down to fermentation temp of 21 degrees, drained the wort into the fermentor and after several temeprature checks i added the yeast and had a good clean down of all the equipment And now i fully understand why it’s called “Brew Day” Forgot to mention that before the yeast addition the SG was 1071 as opposed to 1075 as per the instruction sheet i got from Get Er Brewed.

I still have the dry hops to add in 3 days after fermentation started and then obviously the kegging which i intend to set up a closed keg system to avoid oxidation. Any advice is very welcome as after all that effort i don’t want to lose the brew to oxidation so any help is very welcome.

As i said earlier, i enjoyed myself and the time just seemed to vanish but hopefully at the end of it all i will be left with a nice beer to sit and drink. Now what can i brew next i wonder

 

[MickDundee]

Can’t go wrong with a hop combo of citra, Galaxy and el dorado, it’s one of my favourites, so it should turn out well.

60g dry hop is pretty low for a NEIPA though, you might not get the “wow” effect in the aroma that a lot of NEIPAs give you.

 

[obscure]

I recently switched from using a stockpot and doing small stove top brews, to a 30L klarstein and agree the boil off rate was a tad higher than I expected, coming in at about 4.5L an hour for me.

With regards to efficiency most kits seem to assume 75% efficency while I personally struggle to get above 60% with a no sparge BIAB approach, couple of options one is to increase the grain bill a bit, or you could add a little DME to bring it up, long term it is worth figuring out your efficency as this ensures that you can adjust your recipes accordingly, you may also want to look at adding a sparge to increase it.

Also have to agree with MickDundee Galaxy and El Dorado are a great combination so fingers crossed you will end up with a nice drinkable beer,

 

[Brewelder]

I recently switched from using a stockpot and doing small stove top brews, to a 30L klarstein and agree the boil off rate was a tad higher than I expected, coming in at about 4.5L an hour for me.

With regards to efficiency most kits seem to assume 75% efficency while I personally struggle to get above 60% with a no sparge BIAB approach, couple of options one is to increase the grain bill a bit, or you could add a little DME to bring it up, long term it is worth figuring out your efficency as this ensures that you can adjust your recipes accordingly, you may also want to look at adding a sparge to increase it.

Also have to agree with MickDundee Galaxy and El Dorado are a great combination so fingers crossed you will end up with a nice drinkable beer,

Excuse my ignorance, but what is DME? And surely if i increased the grain bill that would leave less room in the kettle for water/wort? Unless of course i would then definitely have to sparge to get the desired quantity in the keg.

 

[Brewelder]

I recently switched from using a stockpot and doing small stove top brews, to a 30L klarstein and agree the boil off rate was a tad higher than I expected, coming in at about 4.5L an hour for me.

With regards to efficiency most kits seem to assume 75% efficency while I personally struggle to get above 60% with a no sparge BIAB approach, couple of options one is to increase the grain bill a bit, or you could add a little DME to bring it up, long term it is worth figuring out your efficency as this ensures that you can adjust your recipes accordingly, you may also want to look at adding a sparge to increase it.

Also have to agree with MickDundee Galaxy and El Dorado are a great combination so fingers crossed you will end up with a nice drinkable beer,

Bubbling away quite nicely

 

[Brewelder]

Can’t go wrong with a hop combo of citra, Galaxy and el dorado, it’s one of my favourites, so it should turn out well.

60g dry hop is pretty low for a NEIPA though, you might not get the “wow” effect in the aroma that a lot of NEIPAs give you.

Thanks for that and i really don’t know what sort of quantities i need just yet, i’m a complete novice at this and just following what the good folk at GEB are sending me in the recipe. That said, according to the recipe i should have had 25ltrs of wort and then dry hop with 60gms Galaxy, however i only have 17.5ltrs of wort in the fermentor and still adding 60gms Galaxy so maybe i will get a better hop flavour?

 

[obscure]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is DME? And surely if i increased the grain bill that would leave less room in the kettle for water/wort? Unless of course i would then definitely have to sparge to get the desired quantity in the keg.

DME is dried malt extract, and yes you are probably right on this one where your grain bill is fairly big, I mostly make slightly more modest bills when it comes to the grain bill (think 4KG so adding an extra 10% is just an extra 400g an easy adjustment to compensate for my lower efficiency). But yes if you are looking at 25L batches in a 30L boiler you may want to look into adding a sparge, I can just about manage 19L batches in my boiler without a proper sparge but I do tend to run a few litres of extra water at about 75°C or so through the grain basket to bring up the volume before starting the boil.

 

[Brewelder]

DME is dried malt extract, and yes you are probably right on this one where your grain bill is fairly big, I mostly make slightly more modest bills when it comes to the grain bill (think 4KG so adding an extra 10% is just an extra 400g an easy adjustment to compensate for my lower efficiency). But yes if you are looking at 25L batches in a 30L boiler you may want to look into adding a sparge, I can just about manage 19L batches in my boiler without a proper sparge but I do tend to run a few litres of extra water at about 75°C or so through the grain basket to bring up the volume before starting the boil.

I think this is the way to go. I really need to be aiming at 25ltrs pre-boil and hope to get around 20 post boil, this should give me sufficient to fill the corny keg plus have a bit spare for gravity readings during fermentation.

I just went for the NEIPA as i love the stuff and always wanted to give it a try, unfortunately it came with a grain bill of 8.15kg which even i know is on the high side. I might look at something with a smaller grain bill for the next one.

Still looking for advice to stop oxidation if anyone out there has any?