Welcome to the world of all-grain brewing.
In this video, we're going to give you a crash course of everything you need to know to get
started.
We'll talk about what things you need, what those things are called, and how those things
work.
So first, the good news: you don't have to replace most of your equipment from your old
extract brewing days.
Carboys, buckets, siphons...all of that will continue to serve you well in your all-grain
brewing endeavors.
Now, the great news: you get to upgrade your brewery with brand new equipment.
What new equipment is that, you ask.
Well, the first thing you have to ask yourself is what size batch you want to brew.
Some people stick with the 5-gallon batches they're used to in extracts, but many come
to realize that with minimal extra time and effort you can double your output to 10 gallons.
And that's what we're going to show you in this video today.
To accomplish this, you're going to need: a 15-gallon boil kettle, an external propane
burner, a mash/lauter tun with a false bottom, and a hot liquor tank.
All-grain brewing means new equipment.
The mash/lauter tun is where we mix the heated water and the grains to convert all the starches
into sugars.
It comes with a perforated stainless steel dome called a false bottom.
This helps lauter, or separate the liquid from the grain when we rinse it with water
from the hot liquor tank.
In brewing, liquor refers to the water that's been treated for brewing.
So, this is the hot liquor tank where we keep our heated brewing water.
These Fermenter's Favorite coolers are great for all-grain brewing for several reasons.
First, they're well insulated, which means you'll be able to hit your target mash and
hot liquor temperatures and keep them there for hours.
Second, they're engineered to be bigger.
The 5-gallon system comes with 7-gallon coolers, and the 10-gallon system can hold up to 11.7
gallons of mash or water.
Finally, they come with valves, which makes transferring liquid from vessel to vessel
a breeze.
Just open a valve, and let gravity do all the hard work for you.
When you get your all-grain system, you have to do a little bit of assembly.
Namely, putting your valves on and hooking them up to the false bottom.
Here's how you do that.
Take the front half of the valve and place it through the opening in the cooler.
Now, attach it to the back half inside the cooler and screw them together.
You can repeat these steps for your other cooler and your kettle.
To assemble the false bottom, screw the two pieces of the elbow assembly together, through
the dome false bottom, and place it in the cooler.
Thread the included barb fitting into the back side of the valve assembly and then connect
the two barbs together with the included tubing.
Use the clamps provided to secure them.
Now you're ready to get brewing.
What we're going to show you in this video is called a single step infusion mash.
This means we're going to hold the mash at one temperature the entire time to convert
the starches into sugars.
There are more advanced schedules out there where you hold different temperatures for
different amounts of time, but you can learn about those as you become more experienced.
The first step is to heat your strike water.
This is the water that will bring your mash to the correct temperature.
You'll need 1.3 quarts of strike water for every pound of grain.
But this amount will vary from recipe to recipe.
The general rule of thumb is that your strike water should be 10 to 15 degrees hotter than
your target mash temperature.
Once it's heated, carefully move your strike water to your mash tun, and then slowly add
the grist.
You'll want to stir well to avoid clumping and get an even temperature throughout.
The ideal range for mashing is between 148 and 158 degrees Fahrenheit.
Whatever you do, do not exceed 168 degrees in the mash during this step, or you may destroy
the enzymes needed for starch conversion.
We're going to let the mash sit here for 60 minutes while science works its magic.
Inside the cooler, the hot water is activating enzymes in the grain that are converting the
stored starches into fermentable brewing sugars.
While this is happening, you can start collecting the hot liquor for the sparge.
Heat the sparge water, or hot liquor, to 175 degrees and transfer it to the hot liquor
tank where it will stay warm until it is needed.
After the mash has sat for 60 minutes, it's time to do the mash out.
This means we'll raise the temperature of the mash to roughly 170 degrees by adding
near-boiling water and stirring well.
This is a great place to use your old extract kettle.
This step helps prevent the mash from becoming too cold and gummy, and also denatures the
enzymes to ensure that no more starch conversion takes place.
Leave the mash at this temperature for about 10 minutes.
Now it's time to start collecting some wort.
Open the valve on the mash/lauter tun slightly, and collect the runoff in some intermediate
vessels.
The initial runoff from the mash/lauter tun is cloudy and filled with draff, small solid
grain particles.
Recirculating helps clear the runoff.
When the first vessel is near-full, switch it out with the other vessel.
Poor the contents of the first vessel gently down the side of the mash/lauter tun to avoid
tunneling a hole into the mash.
Continue switching back and forth, filling and dumping, until the wort appears clear.
Sparging is the act of rinsing the mash with hot water to rinse all the residual sugars
through.
The easiest way to let gravity do the work is to place your three brewing vessels in
a three-tiered setup.
Place the hot liquor tank towards the top, the mash tun in the middle, and the boil kettle
on the bottom.
The secret to getting all this to work is to make sure that the rate of water going
into the mash is equal to the rate of wort coming out of the mash tun.
The ideal rate for optimum sugar extraction is one quart of wort per minute.
Open the valve on the hot liquor tank to gently disperse the sparge water over the top of
the grain bed.
The fitting on the end of the tubing will help disperse the water and prevent tunneling
through the mash bed.
Sparging a 10-gallon batch will take roughly 45 minutes.
During this time, you want to keep an eye on everything to make sure the grain bed doesn't
go dry, or that you get a stuck sparge.
You can stop sparging once you have collected an adequate amount of wort.
For a 10-gallon batch, this will be around 12-13 gallons in the boil kettle, or when
the runoff reaches a specific gravity of between 1.0008 to 1.012.
Now it's time to boil your wort.
Boiling your all-grain batch works much like boiling an extract batch.
Add the hops, chill the wort, pitch your yeast, but there's one big thing you have to keep
in mind, and that's your boil volume.
With all-grain brewing, you generally don't add water after chilling.
So you have to boil the entire volume, and then make sure you can chill it all.
This means you're basically doubling, even quadrupling, the thermal mass in your kettle
that you have to chill.
This is why you'll need a bigger kettle and a propane burner, especially for 10-gallon
batches.
Most kitchen stoves can't put out enough heat to boil 6.5 gallons, or even 13 gallons of
wort.
The more BTUs you have, the easier it's going to be to get a vigorous boil, capable of maximizing
your hop utilization.
If you still have your old immersion chiller, you can still use this.
It will work well on a 5-gallon all-grain batch, but will really struggle with a full
10-gallon batch.
Another alternative is to look into the world of counterflow chillers.
These will help you chill your wort quickly while you transfer it, which will help speed
up and improve your brewing process.
Like a lot of things in home brewing, there are many options.
It just comes down to finding what works best for you.
As you become a more experienced brewer, you'll surely find new products, new techniques,
that might make your brewing day easier, faster, or both.
But the most important thing to remember is never stop brewing.
Cheers!