My first all-grain homebrew day

On Sunday I took the leap from extract brewing to all-grain brewing for the first time. Here is the recipe I was following:

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Bell Two Hearted (5 gallon all-grain)

9# american 2 row malt
1.5# Vienna 6 row malt
.75# 40L crystal 6 row malt
.5 wheat malt

Mash for 75 minutes at 152F Sparge with 180F water (grain bed to 170F) collect 6.5 gallons. Add 1 oz of centennial hops

Boil for 90 minutes - add 2.5 oz centennial at 15 min - add 1.5 oz centennial at 30 min - add 2 oz at 80 min - add 2 oz centennial at flame-out - cool to 70F

OG=1.062

Pitch American 1056 starter - 5 days primary add 2oz centennial to secondary 14 days

FG=1.013

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I followed this recipe closely, though I substituted my own yeast that I had cultured from the dregs of three bottles or Bell's Two Hearted Ale.

Here are a few pictures of my brewday:


My crushed grains prior to mashing:

My Mash Lauter Tun. This is used for mashing the grains at a consistant temperature and then straining off the sweet wort that will become beer. I made this unit from a $12 cooler at Wal-Mart and about $20 woth of CPVC and hardware from Lowes.

Another picture of my MLT:

One more showing the slits that I cut out of the bottom of the manifold:

Here is my mash of 12.5lbs of grains and about 4 gallons of 152* water just after mashing in.

Here is a picture of the sweet wort being collected after the mash was completed. After collecting the initial runoff, I then added an additional 4 gallons of 180* "sparge water" to rinse the remaining sugars from the spent grains. I collect a total of 6.5 gallons of pre-boil wort.

Here we are a few minutes into the boil. I will boil for 90 minutes, adding hops along the way for bittering and flavoring the beer. After 90 minutes I'll have approx. 5 gallons that will go into the primary fermenter.

Did you taste the wort Jeff? What was it like? I know, I know, but I taste everything that goes into my beer. http://www.straightbourbon.com/forum...mlins/grin.gif

For this batch I cultured my own yeast from the dregs of a few bottles of the real Two Hearted ale. Basically, I pour all but the last ounce of a bottle into a glass to drink, then I take that last ounce and add it to a small amount of wort that I made especially for this. This "revitalizes" the yeast in the bottle and gets them going again. I stepped this up over a week until I had about a pint of yeast "starter". I add this to the wort after it has been cooled to around 70*.

Here is the almost finished product. As you can see the fermenter is capped with an airlock that will let the CO2 out, but nothing in. I'll ferment for about a week at 66*, then I'll transfer to a second fermenter to get the beer off of the sediment of proteins and dead yeasts. I'll "Secondary" for about 14 days before bottling. I'll post more pictures along the way.


BTW: That's Casey