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My first AG brew day (almost!)…!
I used to brew kits back in my Uni days – I produced the kinds of beer that affected your sight, and gave you a headache from a single pint. It was nasty stuff! Fast forward 20 years to about 2019 and the Mrs bought me a 5L all grain kit – the kind someone buys as a birthday present cos it looks quite fun, but with no idea what it actually entails to brew and what they might start! We had fun brewing it (mostly!) together and managed to get some reasonably drinkable beer … but it took most of the day, destroyed half the kitchen, and left us with only about 10 small bottles! When a kit tells you that you only need one kitchen pot – its very much lying! But that gave me the bug back, and I have done numerous kits since – moving from a basic 23L bucket setup with bottles, to an All Rounder, cornies, a ferm fridge and a kegerator with 4 taps! Kits have definitely move on and improved hugely, and I have had some great beer out of my fully controlled setup (iSpindels controlling the ferm temp etc – game changer, drop me a line if you want one!
) but ‘proper’ All Grain brewing was always something I wanted to get into!
I started looking at BIAB over Christmas as a pretty cheap and easy way into AG and I started to read up and consume unhealthy amounts of youtube learning about mashing, sparging, lautering etc and even started designing a bag pulley for my garage roof! ...… but then someone posted a cracking deal on the Klarstein Mundschenk All in One! Within a few days of seeing that, it was on its way from Germany, and I’d put together a home made immersion chiller using copper pipe from Screwfix! Kit all sorted, reading done, a couple of grain kits ordered from GetErBrewed, and Saturday was planned in as brew day!
I went with this to break my AG virginity (that other kit doesn’t count, right?)… Italian Style Hoppy Pils *NEW* All Grain Ingredient Kit and decided to use Tesco Ashbeck as water chemistry seemed a step too far for this one, and my local water is hard as nails! (but I do now have a Spotless Water fob ready to use!)
Having read all about mashing, it seemed that 99% of it was fairly straightforward – an hour at 66C.. easy! So why did I chose to start with something that wanted 20C mash-in and a four step mash?! At least it meant I got to work out how to use the Klartstein controller..
The mash went pretty well I think. The dead space on the vessel is about 7L, so with a 5kg malt bill I started with 22L of water (using the rule of thumb 3x malt bill + dead space). I found it took quite a while to ramp the heat up between steps on the mash, so that ended up being about 1hr30min in total. This could be reduced by using the full power of the boiler – but I’d opted for 1800W! If a watched kettle never boils, then a 22L vat of mash certainly takes a while to heat, so I did fiddle a bit with the power and upped it to the 2500W to get things moving, especially for getting up to the boil. I also had the recirculation pump going too quickly at first – causing the water to raise quite a bit over the malt as it was taking longer to run through than it was it being pumped back to the top! Dropping that right down solved the issue – so definitely a learning point for next time. I’d say the valve was only about 10% open.
An issue with my AIO approach is that I don’t have a separate large vessel to heat sparge water. I was going to need about 13L.. I had 8L of Ashbeck left, so dumped that into a clean brew bucket and then boiled up about 8L of tap water in a stock pot on the kitchen induction hob. Adding this into the cold gave me sparge water at about 50C. Not ideal.. but with the mash coming to an end I didn’t have time to do much more than dump a kettle or two more in to try to bring it up. The mash pipe was easy to lift up and stand on the vessel, it took about 10 mins for the wort to trickle through initially, and then about another 20 mins to jug 1L at a time of the sparge water. By the time I was finished, that must have been nearer to 25C - so again, not ideal. I’ve since ordered one of the Aldi ‘mulled wine’ warmers and will look forward to working out how to set up some sort of sprinkler sparge type arrangement using that! I have no idea if jugging the water for 20 mins is the ‘right’ thing to do, but it seemed to work ok and the water was coming through clear by the end.
I started ramping up to the boil about half way through the sparge process to try and cut down the time – the wort was probably up to about 80C by the time all the sparge water was through. It came up to the boil pretty quickly after that with the lid on – I removed the lid once it was boiling as I assumed this is needed to ensure the right boil-off rate (I’d used the 4.5L/hr guide for that in my calcs)?
The first hop addition went into the spider at 60 mins (I’d read about the included bazooka easily clogging, and also the tap – so I got a spider as part of the GetErBrewed order and a coarser bazooka from ebay), second hop at 15 mins and then the Whirlfloc tablet and chiller in at 10 mins to go. Element off at 60 mins, chiller water on, and the temp dropped to about 25C in no time at all! I gathered the chiller runoff in the brew bucket I’d used for sparging so that I could use that for cleaning, and also filled another that went into the flower bed! I think I used about 40L of water to cool – not sure if I maybe had it running a little quickly as that seems quite a lot. I added a ball valve to the chiller to make it easy to control, so I’ll experiment with that next time.
During the boil I got the All Rounder ready, made sure the iSpindel was charged and ready (drop me a line if you want one! ), cooked dinner for the Wife and kids, and then annoyed them by having to disappear into the garage to add the second hops and whirlflock while we ate (bad timing!).
Having only ever used kit yeast and sprinkling it on top, I noticed that the packet of Diamon Lager yeast asked for it to be rehydrated before use.. so I drew off about 100ml of the wort (@ about 25C) chucked the yeast into that, letting it sit while the Klarnstein emptied into the All Rounder via the tap. I was tempted to use the pump, but I wasn’t in any hurry and didn’t want to clog it up. I didn’t measure exactly how much wort I managed to collect, but it looks to be about 24L. The kit says 25L, so with the dead space and not too much tipping at the end, I’ll take 24L. The fall from the tap gave some nice aeration too. I just dumped the yeast mixture into the All Rounder when it was half full.
One pic shows the state of the bazooka by the end. The wort still managed to flow nicely, but I definitely think the finer one that came with the vessel would have clogged. The hops came in bags, so everything in that pic has dropped out of the wort (small bit of malt and the hot break?) I’m also not sure why the whirlflock didn’t dissolve properly during the boil. Instructions were to just chuck it in – but I think about half was left in the bottom of the vessel once it was emptied. Should it have gone in the spider so the boil would agitate it rather than just sinking to the bottom? Not much I could do about it at that late stage – so maybe I’ll crush it up a but next time to make help it on its way?
Its now sat happily in the All Rounder, spunding set to 10psi and the fridge controlled nicely at 14C using the iSpindel (temp is low compared to what I am used to, but as per instructions). Thermowell also in as a backup, using the temp probe from my Nautilis (drop me a line.. )
I managed to hit SG of 1.044 – a tiny snifter off the 1.045 stated in the kit.. but for a first attempt, I’m more than happy with that. The iSpindel reported spot on 1.045 .. (drop me a … sorry!). Fermentation only took about 6hrs to kick off, and 2 days later its dropped to 1.039. So pretty slow, but maybe that’s down to the low ferm temp?
As if by magic, I drained a corny last night, so I now have to wait patiently for the yeast to do its work, dry hop, cold crash, transfer and then condition. I’m not sure how long that will take as this is the first time I’ve brewed this style (even from a kit) – maybe 4 weeks in the corny before its really ready? But I’m sure I’ll give it a sample before then..
Sorry for the long waffle, and hope this might be useful for other first timers.. a few pics too.
I used to brew kits back in my Uni days – I produced the kinds of beer that affected your sight, and gave you a headache from a single pint. It was nasty stuff! Fast forward 20 years to about 2019 and the Mrs bought me a 5L all grain kit – the kind someone buys as a birthday present cos it looks quite fun, but with no idea what it actually entails to brew and what they might start! We had fun brewing it (mostly!) together and managed to get some reasonably drinkable beer … but it took most of the day, destroyed half the kitchen, and left us with only about 10 small bottles! When a kit tells you that you only need one kitchen pot – its very much lying! But that gave me the bug back, and I have done numerous kits since – moving from a basic 23L bucket setup with bottles, to an All Rounder, cornies, a ferm fridge and a kegerator with 4 taps! Kits have definitely move on and improved hugely, and I have had some great beer out of my fully controlled setup (iSpindels controlling the ferm temp etc – game changer, drop me a line if you want one!
) but ‘proper’ All Grain brewing was always something I wanted to get into!I started looking at BIAB over Christmas as a pretty cheap and easy way into AG and I started to read up and consume unhealthy amounts of youtube learning about mashing, sparging, lautering etc and even started designing a bag pulley for my garage roof! ...… but then someone posted a cracking deal on the Klarstein Mundschenk All in One! Within a few days of seeing that, it was on its way from Germany, and I’d put together a home made immersion chiller using copper pipe from Screwfix! Kit all sorted, reading done, a couple of grain kits ordered from GetErBrewed, and Saturday was planned in as brew day!
I went with this to break my AG virginity (that other kit doesn’t count, right?)… Italian Style Hoppy Pils *NEW* All Grain Ingredient Kit and decided to use Tesco Ashbeck as water chemistry seemed a step too far for this one, and my local water is hard as nails! (but I do now have a Spotless Water fob ready to use!)
Having read all about mashing, it seemed that 99% of it was fairly straightforward – an hour at 66C.. easy! So why did I chose to start with something that wanted 20C mash-in and a four step mash?! At least it meant I got to work out how to use the Klartstein controller..
The mash went pretty well I think. The dead space on the vessel is about 7L, so with a 5kg malt bill I started with 22L of water (using the rule of thumb 3x malt bill + dead space). I found it took quite a while to ramp the heat up between steps on the mash, so that ended up being about 1hr30min in total. This could be reduced by using the full power of the boiler – but I’d opted for 1800W! If a watched kettle never boils, then a 22L vat of mash certainly takes a while to heat, so I did fiddle a bit with the power and upped it to the 2500W to get things moving, especially for getting up to the boil. I also had the recirculation pump going too quickly at first – causing the water to raise quite a bit over the malt as it was taking longer to run through than it was it being pumped back to the top! Dropping that right down solved the issue – so definitely a learning point for next time. I’d say the valve was only about 10% open.
An issue with my AIO approach is that I don’t have a separate large vessel to heat sparge water. I was going to need about 13L.. I had 8L of Ashbeck left, so dumped that into a clean brew bucket and then boiled up about 8L of tap water in a stock pot on the kitchen induction hob. Adding this into the cold gave me sparge water at about 50C. Not ideal.. but with the mash coming to an end I didn’t have time to do much more than dump a kettle or two more in to try to bring it up. The mash pipe was easy to lift up and stand on the vessel, it took about 10 mins for the wort to trickle through initially, and then about another 20 mins to jug 1L at a time of the sparge water. By the time I was finished, that must have been nearer to 25C - so again, not ideal. I’ve since ordered one of the Aldi ‘mulled wine’ warmers and will look forward to working out how to set up some sort of sprinkler sparge type arrangement using that! I have no idea if jugging the water for 20 mins is the ‘right’ thing to do, but it seemed to work ok and the water was coming through clear by the end.
I started ramping up to the boil about half way through the sparge process to try and cut down the time – the wort was probably up to about 80C by the time all the sparge water was through. It came up to the boil pretty quickly after that with the lid on – I removed the lid once it was boiling as I assumed this is needed to ensure the right boil-off rate (I’d used the 4.5L/hr guide for that in my calcs)?
The first hop addition went into the spider at 60 mins (I’d read about the included bazooka easily clogging, and also the tap – so I got a spider as part of the GetErBrewed order and a coarser bazooka from ebay), second hop at 15 mins and then the Whirlfloc tablet and chiller in at 10 mins to go. Element off at 60 mins, chiller water on, and the temp dropped to about 25C in no time at all! I gathered the chiller runoff in the brew bucket I’d used for sparging so that I could use that for cleaning, and also filled another that went into the flower bed! I think I used about 40L of water to cool – not sure if I maybe had it running a little quickly as that seems quite a lot. I added a ball valve to the chiller to make it easy to control, so I’ll experiment with that next time.
During the boil I got the All Rounder ready, made sure the iSpindel was charged and ready (drop me a line if you want one!
), cooked dinner for the Wife and kids, and then annoyed them by having to disappear into the garage to add the second hops and whirlflock while we ate (bad timing!).Having only ever used kit yeast and sprinkling it on top, I noticed that the packet of Diamon Lager yeast asked for it to be rehydrated before use.. so I drew off about 100ml of the wort (@ about 25C) chucked the yeast into that, letting it sit while the Klarnstein emptied into the All Rounder via the tap. I was tempted to use the pump, but I wasn’t in any hurry and didn’t want to clog it up. I didn’t measure exactly how much wort I managed to collect, but it looks to be about 24L. The kit says 25L, so with the dead space and not too much tipping at the end, I’ll take 24L. The fall from the tap gave some nice aeration too. I just dumped the yeast mixture into the All Rounder when it was half full.
One pic shows the state of the bazooka by the end. The wort still managed to flow nicely, but I definitely think the finer one that came with the vessel would have clogged. The hops came in bags, so everything in that pic has dropped out of the wort (small bit of malt and the hot break?) I’m also not sure why the whirlflock didn’t dissolve properly during the boil. Instructions were to just chuck it in – but I think about half was left in the bottom of the vessel once it was emptied. Should it have gone in the spider so the boil would agitate it rather than just sinking to the bottom? Not much I could do about it at that late stage – so maybe I’ll crush it up a but next time to make help it on its way?
Its now sat happily in the All Rounder, spunding set to 10psi and the fridge controlled nicely at 14C using the iSpindel (temp is low compared to what I am used to, but as per instructions). Thermowell also in as a backup, using the temp probe from my Nautilis (drop me a line..
)
I managed to hit SG of 1.044 – a tiny snifter off the 1.045 stated in the kit.. but for a first attempt, I’m more than happy with that. The iSpindel reported spot on 1.045 .. (drop me a …
sorry!). Fermentation only took about 6hrs to kick off, and 2 days later its dropped to 1.039. So pretty slow, but maybe that’s down to the low ferm temp?
As if by magic, I drained a corny last night, so I now have to wait patiently for the yeast to do its work, dry hop, cold crash, transfer and then condition. I’m not sure how long that will take as this is the first time I’ve brewed this style (even from a kit) – maybe 4 weeks in the corny before its really ready? But I’m sure I’ll give it a sample before then..
Sorry for the long waffle, and hope this might be useful for other first timers.. a few pics too.
