All grain brewing

[3/5 King]

So I watched a video on Utube an eight part series on AG brewing, it is not as difficult as I though. I'm sure it takes a life time to perfect but other than that it seems to be just more exspensive to start up than extract. Let me get this right a sparge is just running water over your mashed grain and collecting it in a bucket and adding it to your brew? It showed grains getting grinded, then you boil your water and get it to your starting temp I.E. 169 add grain hoping to hit your strike temp I.E. 153 stir it up so all the grain is soaked. Leave it in the MLT for 45 minutes rack to your bucket, then sparge the existing grain and add that to your wort and then your done, right?

[Lerxst]

more or less...as always, the devil is in the details.

[ben the brewman]

So I watched a video on Utube an eight part series on AG brewing, it is not as difficult as I though. I'm sure it takes a life time to perfect but other than that it seems to be just more exspensive to start up than extract. Let me get this right a sparge is just running water over your mashed grain and collecting it in a bucket and adding it to your brew? It showed grains getting grinded, then you boil your water and get it to your starting temp I.E. 169 add grain hoping to hit your strike temp I.E. 153 stir it up so all the grain is soaked. Leave it in the MLT for 45 minutes rack to your bucket, then sparge the existing grain and add that to your wort and then your done, right?

to help answer your questions a sparge is running water over the mashed grains but its not added to your brew it is your brew. it is also to stop the enzyme activity ie mashing out. you dont need to bil the water to get your strike temp for the mash it needs to be about 20 deg higher than your mash temp should be but you need to find out how much heat you loose in your system to determin a specfic number. its always better to be hotter and cool it down than to be too cool and try to heat it up. i dont recomend a 45 min mash because i dont get the best efficency when i do it that long. the mash should be 60-90 min to get the max efficency. when you sparge your grain what you collect is your wort. hope this helps let me know if you need more info.

[davebl]

I bet you watched Chris Knight's All Grain series. That's actually a great all-grain tutorial.

[3/5 King]

I bet you watched Chris Knight's All Grain series. That's actually a great all-grain tutorial.

That is the one, I really enjoyed it

[Peteoz77]

Yeah, it's actually pretty simple. I didn't say easy, but simple.

[Common]

I think it's pretty easy. I guess at least until/if I get shitty efficiency. So far so good though. First was 75% at 1.072. Rest have all been 70 something. I still need to make a better sparge arm. I "hybrid" fly sparge. Current one was a makeshift one. My 2nd brew ever was an extract (GF brew) and I enjoy All Grain much more.

[Tankard]

Yeah, those Chris Knight videos helped me out a lot when I first started doing AG.

My first all grain was a bit of a mess, because it felt like I had to do 20 things at once, but I still ended up with a good beer. It's gotten much easier since then, almost second nature. Just watch your temperatures carefully and everything will be fine.