As stated before, my second batch is going to be a Chocolate Oatmeal Stout. Being a beginner, I went with the recommendation of the employees at my local homebrew shop (George, I’ll try your recipe sometime, I just wanted a little more personal guidance). This is basically what we came up with for a recipe. The only thing that was recommended, but not on that recipe is the mash. I’ll be mashing the 2+ pounds of grain.
Now, I don’t have the exact instructions in front of me right now, but here’s what I was instructed to do for the mash. bring water to 165°F and steep grains for 30-45 minutes. Bring additional water to 170°F (it might’ve been more, I don’t remember off the top of my head) and rinse grains into brew kettle. Add extra water to bring to my regular boil amount (usually 2.5-3 gallons) and start my boil. What do I do with the original water? It seems like it’d be a waste to just dump that water. I’ll likely be on the phone with the homebrew shop during this batch, but that’s my only question.
I’m putting about a cup of Ghiradelli cocoa powder in the boil for the chocolate flavor and will try it before racking to secondary to see if I need to add some more. This batch is going to be quite the experience. Brewday is Saturday. Bottling the first batch on Sunday.
I’m a little confused which water you’re talking about. It sounds to me like you should be using ALL that water. As in, you are mashing in your boil kettle. This isn’t optimal, but it’s fine for now.
What you should do to “mash” in a simple-and-not-optimal,but-great-for-your-second-batch manner:
Grains in grain bag (muslin or nylon), in boil kettle.
Add 2 qt water per lb of grain, water should be at about 165F before adding it to the grain. Make sure all the grain is fully wetted.
Mash/steep for 30-60 min. The mash temp should be somewhere between 150F and 156F. 165 is too hot for the mash temp itself, though it’s probably about right for the water you add to make the mash.
Rinse (“sparge”) the grain with another 2 qt/lb ~170F water.
At this point, all the water you’ve used should be in your boil kettle.
Dump the grains in the compost bin or trash.
Add whatever other water you want to bring the kettle up to your boil volume.
Add extract, boil, hop, ferment as usual.
This will work OK. You might end up with some haze and astringency, and it’s more complex than a simple extract/hop brew, but it’s a half-step toward all-grain. And you’ll love it. A stout can probably cover up a little grainy astringency that you might get from your process. You can fine-tune your process in future batches.
The recipe looks basically fine, though you could also add a little flavor hops at ~15 min, and/or aroma hops at 0 min, if you’d like. I’d probably put the cocoa powder in near the end of the boil, like 5 min till the end of the boil maybe.
Sounds like you’re making a big jump to partial mashing already! Good on you! Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t turn out great, my advice would actually be to get a couple more extract/steeping grain batches under your belt before you go to partial mash, but more power to ya, and good luck!
Alright, that makes a little more sense. The guy explaining it to me was confusing me a bit. He did suggest I leave the grain loose for the mashing and then put it in the muslin bag for the sparging to get as much of the grain in contact with the water as possible.
I’m the kind of guy who likes to just do it rather than mess around with the simple stuff for too long. I enjoy jumping right in.
Right on. Yeah, it’s best if you let the grain loose for mashing. If you do that, I would lower the mash water to about 1.3-1.5 qt water per lb of grain. It’ll be thick, like oatmeal.
But there’s a big problem with that: how do you get the grain back into the muslin bag once it’s loose? Remember, it’s at ~155F, and you want to minimize aerating your mash (though that is one of those neverending arguments among brewers — the importance of HSA). Grains that end up in your boil kettle will make things nasty and astringent.
It sounds to me like you should just jump all the way in and get yourself a mash/lauter tun.
There are tons of great designs out there, check out http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ for an easy one. Or check out Papazian’s book for the “Zapap” one using two plastic buckets, a drill, lots of patience, and an insulating blanket. Or, if you’ve got the cash, get yourself a 10-gallon Gott cooler system from your LHBS. Or there are 80 other designs out there on the web too.
However, this is definitely a full-step into all-grain (i.e., it IS as all-grain as you can get, but on a slightly smaller scale), and once you get a mash/lauter tun, there’s no particular reason to use any extract at all except for certain special things.
My original plan was to dump the grain from the pot into a strainer and then from the strainer into muslin bags (I have 2, 1 for each pound of grain).
I don’t really need a mash tun for 2 pounds of grain since I’ll probably be doing mostly extract for a while (electric stove and no turkey fryer yet).
Get a large bag for the grain, so that it (the grain) can still be “loose” even though it’s bagged. Don’t do what you just said (dumping the grain into a strainer and then put them into a bag) – I can’t even imagine the mess that you would create trying that.
Also, if you have a large enough secondary pot, what I usually do is mash the grains in the smaller pot, then filter that through the grains into the brew kettle, just as you do with the sparge water. The grains act as a filter and remove all the crap floating around in there. For a darker beer, like a stout, it’s not as necessary, but it makes a huge difference for lighter ales.
Fair enough. That should work fine.
0f course, you’ll want to save all that “water” (actually, it’ll be wort by then), as I said before. The wort is the good stuff that you’re trying to make — the point of this whole procedure.
You’re right, with 2 lb of grain, a full mash/lauter tun would be overkill.
I’d say the best ways to improve your process after this (assuming you’ve got sanitation down) would be to get a turkey fryer and pot, and a wort chiller. Doing a full-size boil improves lots of stuff, hop-related especially but also clarity and stability-related stuff.
Also, aeration after cooling is very important, and pitching an appropriate quantity of yeast.
And if you wind up being frustrated with your partial mash, don’t feel bad about going back to extract with steeping grains for a bit. Plenty of excellent homebrews are made that way, there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you can make a great partial-mash brew for your second batch, you are a better man than I.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now… let us know how it goes!
BTW, I got my Clifford Ball dvds a few days ago, haven’t had a chance to watch anything yet.
I’ll have to try to find some kind of larger bag for the grain, though the guy did say that it’d make a mess. There’s a closer homebrew shop. Maybe I’ll try to get some info from them and see if they have a bag large enough. If I can’t find anything, I’ll just use the 2 smaller muslin bags (though I can probably get a couple more muslin bags and split the grain up a bit more).
I was planning on doing the mash in a smaller (6 qt) pot and then transferring it into my brew kettle (20 qt).
I don’t think I’m at a point where doing full boils is going to happen. Unless I can vastly improve the beer, the wife won’t let me purchase extra equipment.
I got my Clifford Ball DVDs weeks ago (actually right around the first brew day). I have yet to watch them.
Fair enough on the wife. I’m lucky that mine is fairly understanding (of course, I have to put up with her having a bunch of crap too… funny how my stuff is “stuff” and her crap is “crap” — she probably feels oppositely, heh).
As for the bag, you probably want something like these:
http://morebeer.com/view_product/15688//Grain_Bag_-_8_x_15_Medium
http://morebeer.com/view_product/15689//Grain_Bag_-_24_x_24_Medium
Other stores should have similar bags. They’re not uncommon, though your LHBS may not have anything similar.
Yes, for your purposes I think you definitely need one of those, it’ll be a WHOLE lot easier than trying to use a strainer.
I went out and bought a nylon grain/sparge bag at a nearby homebrew shop (not my usual place, but a place closer than the usual place). It seemed to have worked pretty well. I was able to get all the grain in the water and soaked without having it tightly bagged in the small muslin bags. It was only about $10.
Anyway, how the heck do you clean it? I decided after having it on my counter, that I’d throw it in the laundry. It was probably a mistake washing it with laundry detergent (unscented Tide cold water) with some towels (it’s now got some fuzzies on it). I think I’ll probably wash it with bleach before I actually use it again. It still smells pretty nasty.
My wife is good. She was pushing me to brew the second batch because it was her idea. She’s still kind of pushing me more for reasons that I can’t, at this time, explain publicly. I found a hobby I like. She just needs to find one for herself.