I've posted up homebrewing with extract(http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2364913). This time I have it for all-grain to show you how it works. If you have all your equipment prepared and ready it will take you about 4 hours(not all day like that brewstore employee said on that Good Eats episode "Amber Waves"). Again, if you have questions, go to http://www.howtobrew.com
There are many ways, different setups, and equipment, all which will get the job done, this is one of them so you don't have to copy everything exactly. This is a 5 gallon batch of beer.
I think we all know what grain looks like, so here it is being milled.
Here's a close-up of the teeth in the miller.
Here's the milled grain.
Your going to need a lauter tun. Its insulated and this is where the mashing will take place.
This is what the inside looks like.
Here is a false bottom. This will keep the grain from escaping when you drain the tun. Put your false bottom in the tun and fill it up with grain. Then pour water on, 150-170F, and mix so all the grain is wet and it is covered by the water. Put on the lid and let it mash. It will take 60-75 minutes so you can go off watch tv or something. About 30 minutes into the mashing, heat up water(however much you need to fulfil your batch size goal. The water also has to be 150-170F
The mashing is complete. The starches have been converted into sugar for the yeast to digest.
This step is important, fill up pitchers with the wort. Because there are holes, some parts of the milled grain will squeeze through.
Take the pitcher and pour it onto a spoon and back into the tun. You want to be sure you don't just pour it in from the pitcher or it will create a well all the way down to the bottom, defeating the perpose of recirculating in the first place. Recirculating will just compact the grain on top of the false bottom. All the small particles will be poured back on top and will be trapped there because the bigger grain will act as a filter. I suggest doing this until it runs clear and not full of grain chunks. 20 pitcher fulls of wort were recirculated. After it runs clear, the hot water you were heating 30 minutes ago was poured into another bucket and connected to a sparge arm. The bucket was raised and the sparge arm is placed on top of the tun.
The water runs into the arm and flows through many small holes. It also rotates fast. The point of this is to wash all the sugar from the grain, but also not to disturb the natural filter bed the grain made.
Here is a longer exposure of the arm spinning around, you can barely see the tracers of the arm.
While this is going on, you will want to drain your tun into your pot for boiling. Be careful to not drain the tun too fast because you want to make sure the grain is covered with water at all times. My suggestion is a 6.5 gallon pot to put your wort in because you want to make sure all the sugars are completely washed out. It is very dark right now(again depending on style and grains you use, it will be different colors), and will eventually lighten to nearly water, a good indication that you have drained out all the sugars.
After your pot has your desired wort volume, begin heating and bring to a boil. Do your hop additions and what not.
About 30 minutes before your going to be done boiling the hops, I suggest taking a few teaspoons of Irish Moss and hydrate in some water. Pour into the wort 15 minutes before your done boiling the hops. Irish Moss is a clarifying agent. It will cause protein to clump together and fall to the bottom of the beer as it fermets, clearing it up.
This is a wort chiller, and thats what its suppose to do. Chill the wort so your yeast won't be killed when you pitch it. This is your basic wort chiller, they can get a lot more complicated and efficient, but this one works great too.
Put this into the put about the same time your are going to pour in the irish moss to boil and sanitize the wort chiller.
Here is the wort chiller hard at work. You screw one end into the faucet and turn on the water. It works best in the winter when there is very cold water coming out of the faucet. The cold water flows through the chiller, heat from the wort is transfered through the copper into the water and then comes out of the other end. As this is running, and you touch the pot, you will notice the bottom part is fairly cold, and the top part of the pot is probably very hot. You should wait until the entire pot is cool before you transfer it to your fermentor.
This time I'm using a glass carboy. The funnel has a fine filter in it to catch particles that may have slipped through the false bottom.
If you want to know what the alcohol content of your beer will be, take a hydrometer reading by taking a sample of the beer, pouring it into a graduated cylinder, and then put in the hydrometer.
Plug the carboy with a sanitized bung. Shake well. You want to aerate the wort for the yeast, because all the oxygen was boiled out. The air inside the carboy will be plenty.
This is a yeast starter. It has water that was boiled with some dried malt extract, cooled and pitched with the yeast you want to use. This can be done up to 2 to 3 days before you plan to brew. The point of a started is to have more yeast when you pitch. This ensures a quick, vigorous, and complete fermentation. Its about the equivalent of pitching 8 tubes of yeast. It is a very good idea to make one for whatever your brewing. The list of benefits is long and you can google it to find out.
After your wort is down at the right temperature, pitch the yeast. Give it a swirl to get out all the yeast that has settled on the bottom. Replace bung on carboy and shake vigorously.
Here it is, ready to go. All you have to do it put on an airlock.
Just cover it in a black trash bag or store in a cool dark place, and let it ferment.
Enjoy everyone.
Edited by daussaulit (03/07/05 01:56 PM)
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