Hi all,
So after years of extract brewing I took the plunge to try my hand at all grain. My first brew was Bells 2 Hearted IPA off the recipe list. I was suppose to start at noon, but due to some equipment technical difficulties I didn't get started until 2 p.m. The time is only relevant because I didn't finish until midnight - yup - 10 hours later. At least it gave me a lot of time to drink some fine brews.
I purchased the Dark Star Burner from Northern Brewer - $50 for 54,000 BTUs with a ton of good reviews. I live in San Diego and was brewing in my garage, not exactly in-climate weather. I estimate that when I when I started brewing it was about 64 degrees out. A little cooler in the garage. It took about an hour or more to get my filtered tap water to 165 degrees. Later that day, getting the HLT water to 175 took even longer. Finally, when I was ready to brew I could not get the kettle to boil. It was driving me nuts, I finally put a lid on (I know that's a big no no b/c DMS). I had about 6.5 gallons of wort and couldn't get it to roll. So I finally I dragged my 15 gallon kettle inside and put it on the stove, where it promptly boiled over because I still had the lid on. (Level of attention at that hour was a wee bit low due to too much time to drink beer while brewing). So my first question - what the heck did I do wrong? Why couldn't I get the boil? Do I just need a stronger burner?
After the mashing process, I tried to clear the wort by manually recirculating and it looked good to me after about 15 minutes of that but I ended up with a lot of garbage in the boiler, which resulted in a lot of floating particles. When I did my actual boil and then was cooling down I tried to start a whirlpool but no dice? I spun and spun before I turned off the burner, after, and during the cooling process with my standard wort chiller (which BTW leaked, possibly infecting my beer with hose water).
Next issue is that the OG, pre-hops, was about 1.054 instead of the 1.068 i was shooting for. I did not sparge very much b/c I already had so much wort from the initial mash. Bells 2 hearted IPA calls for around 15 lbs. of grain so I started with about 5.5 gallons of water. Did I use too much water in the initial mash? I then sparged but stopped when I had 7 gallons of wort in my brew pot. What did I do wrong?
Overall disaster but a good experience. Sorry such a long text, any tips would be greatly appreciated.
So after years of extract brewing I took the plunge to try my hand at all grain. My first brew was Bells 2 Hearted IPA off the recipe list. I was suppose to start at noon, but due to some equipment technical difficulties I didn't get started until 2 p.m. The time is only relevant because I didn't finish until midnight - yup - 10 hours later. At least it gave me a lot of time to drink some fine brews.
I purchased the Dark Star Burner from Northern Brewer - $50 for 54,000 BTUs with a ton of good reviews. I live in San Diego and was brewing in my garage, not exactly in-climate weather. I estimate that when I when I started brewing it was about 64 degrees out. A little cooler in the garage. It took about an hour or more to get my filtered tap water to 165 degrees. Later that day, getting the HLT water to 175 took even longer. Finally, when I was ready to brew I could not get the kettle to boil. It was driving me nuts, I finally put a lid on (I know that's a big no no b/c DMS). I had about 6.5 gallons of wort and couldn't get it to roll. So I finally I dragged my 15 gallon kettle inside and put it on the stove, where it promptly boiled over because I still had the lid on. (Level of attention at that hour was a wee bit low due to too much time to drink beer while brewing). So my first question - what the heck did I do wrong? Why couldn't I get the boil? Do I just need a stronger burner?
After the mashing process, I tried to clear the wort by manually recirculating and it looked good to me after about 15 minutes of that but I ended up with a lot of garbage in the boiler, which resulted in a lot of floating particles. When I did my actual boil and then was cooling down I tried to start a whirlpool but no dice? I spun and spun before I turned off the burner, after, and during the cooling process with my standard wort chiller (which BTW leaked, possibly infecting my beer with hose water).
Next issue is that the OG, pre-hops, was about 1.054 instead of the 1.068 i was shooting for. I did not sparge very much b/c I already had so much wort from the initial mash. Bells 2 hearted IPA calls for around 15 lbs. of grain so I started with about 5.5 gallons of water. Did I use too much water in the initial mash? I then sparged but stopped when I had 7 gallons of wort in my brew pot. What did I do wrong?
Overall disaster but a good experience. Sorry such a long text, any tips would be greatly appreciated.
