Going All-Grain: Guide to Your First Batch of All-Grain Beer with your beer brewing system
- Aug 05, 2021
- 149
- tiantai
There are a couple of different ways to approach your first all-grain brew day with all grain brewing system. There is a vast amount of information in the home brew literature about all-grain brewing, and you could try to read most of it first and then proceed. Or, you could jump right in.Learning to brew well at home requires some practical experience that you can only get by actually brewing . . . on your beer brewing equipment, with your water, etc. Getting to know the mechanics of brewing — including the quirks of your setup — is just as important, in terms of beer quality, as knowing many of the more advanced academic ideas. In this article, we'll cover the bare minimum of technical information you need to get started and give a practical guide to successfully brewing your first all-grain beer on your microbrewery beer brewing system.
ALL-GRAIN BASICS (THE MINIMUM)
All-grain brewing differs from extract brewing mainly in the wort production stage. As an extract brewer, you made your wort by dissolving malt extract in water, and likely steeping some specialty grains to add some additional flavors. As an all-grain brewer, you will make your wort from malted grains and water. The basic idea behind all-grain wort production is this:
You soak crushed, malted grains in hot water to change starch into sugar, then drain away the resulting sugary liquid, which is your wort.
That's it. Once your wort has been created in the brew pot then everything can be handled in the same way as in extract brewing. The only caveat is that you need to do full volume boils and no longer have the ability to opt for partial boils. This can pose a few challenges that are tackled with a few extra pieces of equipment.
ALL-GRAIN EQUIPMENT
Traditionally all-grain homebrew set ups included three vessels. A more recent trend has moved a lot of brewers towards a more simplified Brew In A Bag (BIAB) format which is a single vessel set-up. For this article, we will outline the traditional three vessel system, but if you are interested in the simplified BIAB technique.
For a three vessel system, the first vessel is used to heat all the water for your brewing session. As brewing water is sometimes called brewing liquor, the name of this vessel is the hot liquor tank, or HLT. Second, a vessel to hold the grains for both mashing (soaking the crushed grains) and lautering (separating the wort from the spent grains). This is called a mash/lauter tun. (In commercial brewing, these are often separate vessels.) This needs to have a false bottom or some sort of manifold installed to let the wort flow from the vessel while retaining the spent grains. You will also need a large paddle to stir the mash (mash paddle). Lastly, you need a vessel to boil the wort in, called the kettle.
A 5-gallon (19 L) brewery can consist of three 10-gallon/40-quart (38-L) vessels. Systems such as this work well for most average to moderately-big brews.
If you don't already have a wort chiller, we recommend buying or building one. Quickly cooling your wort can help improve beer quality and help shorten your brew day.
Finally, you will need a heat source capable of boiling your entire pre-boil volume of wort vigorously. For 5-gallon (19-L) batches, you will need to boil at least 6 gallons (23 L), more if you want to make high-gravity beers. For many all-grain homebrewers, the heat source of choice is a propane burner. Brewing with electric has become more and more popular with those folks who would prefer to brew indoors as has brewing with induction burners.There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing all-grain beer brewing equipment, too many to detail here. Keep in mind that great home brew has been made on a wide variety of beer brewing setups.
Derrick
Sales Manager
[email protected]
Tiantai Beer Equipment
ALL-GRAIN BASICS (THE MINIMUM)
All-grain brewing differs from extract brewing mainly in the wort production stage. As an extract brewer, you made your wort by dissolving malt extract in water, and likely steeping some specialty grains to add some additional flavors. As an all-grain brewer, you will make your wort from malted grains and water. The basic idea behind all-grain wort production is this:
You soak crushed, malted grains in hot water to change starch into sugar, then drain away the resulting sugary liquid, which is your wort.
That's it. Once your wort has been created in the brew pot then everything can be handled in the same way as in extract brewing. The only caveat is that you need to do full volume boils and no longer have the ability to opt for partial boils. This can pose a few challenges that are tackled with a few extra pieces of equipment.
ALL-GRAIN EQUIPMENT
Traditionally all-grain homebrew set ups included three vessels. A more recent trend has moved a lot of brewers towards a more simplified Brew In A Bag (BIAB) format which is a single vessel set-up. For this article, we will outline the traditional three vessel system, but if you are interested in the simplified BIAB technique.
For a three vessel system, the first vessel is used to heat all the water for your brewing session. As brewing water is sometimes called brewing liquor, the name of this vessel is the hot liquor tank, or HLT. Second, a vessel to hold the grains for both mashing (soaking the crushed grains) and lautering (separating the wort from the spent grains). This is called a mash/lauter tun. (In commercial brewing, these are often separate vessels.) This needs to have a false bottom or some sort of manifold installed to let the wort flow from the vessel while retaining the spent grains. You will also need a large paddle to stir the mash (mash paddle). Lastly, you need a vessel to boil the wort in, called the kettle.
A 5-gallon (19 L) brewery can consist of three 10-gallon/40-quart (38-L) vessels. Systems such as this work well for most average to moderately-big brews.
If you don't already have a wort chiller, we recommend buying or building one. Quickly cooling your wort can help improve beer quality and help shorten your brew day.
Finally, you will need a heat source capable of boiling your entire pre-boil volume of wort vigorously. For 5-gallon (19-L) batches, you will need to boil at least 6 gallons (23 L), more if you want to make high-gravity beers. For many all-grain homebrewers, the heat source of choice is a propane burner. Brewing with electric has become more and more popular with those folks who would prefer to brew indoors as has brewing with induction burners.There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing all-grain beer brewing equipment, too many to detail here. Keep in mind that great home brew has been made on a wide variety of beer brewing setups.
Derrick
Sales Manager
[email protected]
Tiantai Beer Equipment
.jpg)
