Journal of Brewing

It was a last minute decision. I had been thinking about it for awhile and muttering about it at the brew club meetings. I happened upon two 7 gallon coolers and fitted them with ball valves. That’s right everyone, it was all-grain time.

Needless to say I didn’t enter this little exercise without preparation. I did however come by the ingredients at the last minute. Father Neill and brother Brian (neither of which i’m related to) were the two men good enough to guide me down this treacherous path. They called Thursday evening at around 9:30 and said “hey, you comin’ to pick up this damn stuff?” This time around I was able to get my ingredients locally. Brian provided all the grain and hops that I would need. Neill gave me some of what he described as “super-yeast.” I showed up at the doorstep of his brewery with a sanitized flask and a dream. Like a coach before a big game, he gave me a quick pep-talk.

But enough with the theatrics, let’s look at the lineup:

8 lbs Belgian Pale Malt (2-row)
3 lbs Vienna Malt
1/2 lb Black Patent Malt
1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
1/2 lb Roasted Barley
1 lb Quaker Quick Oats

2 oz Fuggles Pellets (boil)
1 oz Fuggles Pellets (flava charge)

1/2 tsp Irish Moss

1 flask full Neill’s super yeast (combo of American Ale yeast and some secret strain)

And so it begins……

Mash

The mash wasn’t really hard. I read lots about it and had the proper equipment. I preheated the tun with boiling water to minimized the temperature change when I doughed in. Since this was a single step mash I was able to precalculate the water needed and know the temperature that I wanted to hit. I planned on mashing for 1 hour at around 153F. I heated my mash water to 170 and used 1.25qt per pound of grain. This gave me roughly 4.2 gallons of water. When I mashed in the thermometer read 154 in a few spots. I stirred well to make sure all the grain were exposed to the water. Note to self, get a mash paddle!

Sparge

Sparge was certainly the tricky part. I used a strainer from an old pot to spread the water. I preheated the second cooler with boiling water and then added the sparge water to it. We measured it around 170F which seemed perfect. We then (Phil and I) set up the gravity system with which we were to perform the sparge. Attempting a continuous sparge on our first attempt was probably a bit over the top but that’s how I like to to things. In retrospect, I don’t see this two cooler setup lasting for long. The cooler for sparge water can only hold 7 gallons. That’s not going to be enough for sparging a larger grain bill. I also think I want to actively heat the sparge water while I’m sparging but that’s another show. The point is, after I recirculated the wort, the sparge happened too quickly. I now understand that it has to be a much slower process. It probably should have taken 45 minutes to 1 hour. Mine took probably 20 minutes. I think I left lots of sugar in the tun. I collected around 7 gallons of wort though for the boil.

Boil Starting Gravity: 1.048

I boiled for an hour and hopped as specified in the recipe list. It was quite dark by this point and getting cold. Still, I brewed by the moonlight and it felt great. After the boiling and wort chilling, my SG for this brew is 1.060. Next time i’ll certainly make sure to perform a better sparge. Also, my bazooka T got all clogged up with hop gunk and cold break material. I’ll need to figure out a way around this and it may involve a Polarware pot.

All in all i’m quite happy with the way things turned out. I finally had an all-grain session and I got to see what real brewing was all about. Without running any hard numbers I’d say that I hit somewhere between 50% and 60% for my extraction efficiency. Not so bad for my first time. The taste of the wort was very nice. A deep brown with all the grain elements, chocolately, roasty and smooth from the oats. The body seemed low for a stout but I can learn to tweak that in the future. The hop presence was excellent with the fuggles contributing that mild yet earthy flavor. Fermentation was evident within an hour of pitching. Looking forward to bottling this one.