Flat Tire Ale - my first all-grain

This is a longish post, but I guess that someone will want read this. Make comments if you like.

Today was my first all-grain batch. I purchased a kit from Midwest just to take some of the complication out, plus they crush the grains. It was the Flat Tire kit, and I bought the Wyeast Belgian #1214 to go with it.

First of all, equipment. I have a 12 qt stainless pot, an 18 qt aluminum pot that I’ve been using to extract brew, and now a 30 qt aluminum pot of the turkey fryer variety, brand new. I have the base for that, too.

I built a combination mash & lauter tun.

I built an immersion wort chiller from (nearly) 50 ft of 3/8” copper tubing, some hosing, and fitting to put a garden hose on the chiller hose.

Here’s the chronology:

Last night I finished up calculations using Beersmith and printed out a brewsheet. Awesome.

I got up this morning about 5:45am and filled the two small pots with hot water, and put them on the kitchen stove to boil. I’m guessing I had four gallons in one and about 2.5 gallons in the other. Then, I went to the gas station around the corner to replace my propane tank (I have two, one was empty, the other nearly so). The water took almost 30 minutes to boil.

I transported the water outside and put it all in the large pot, and tested out my new burner. Works perfectly. Of course, the water was already nearly boiling, so it began boiling again in about two-three minutes. Question: of what use is the little contraption that controls the air flow into the burner? I just left it wide open the whole time.

Beersmith said I needed 15.75 qts of water at 167.2F. So, I used the 18qt pot to mix in nearly boiling water with some cold from the tap. The best I could do was 166.8F. I was using a 2qt pitcher to move water around, so none of these measurements for water are all that exact. Question: how do you know how much water you’re moving around?

I had 10.5 lbs of grain. That is: 9lbs 2-row, 1/2lb crystal 120L, 1/2lb munich 10L, and 1/2lb special b, whatever that is. I mixed at 1.5qts to lb ratio. I’m not sure why I did that, but anyway. 166.8F water and 10.5lbs of grain averaged out to 153.5F, which I was shooting for 154F. I figured, close enough. Closed the lid at 7:05am.

At 8:15am (I had kids to get to school), I had a temp of 151.1F. Question: if you know your temp is going to drop 2.5 degrees, do you shoot high? Ie., I wanted 154, so should I go for 155.3, and expect a drop to 152.8, or what?

I added 3qts of water at 168.1F, stirred the mash, and drained two quarts of it into my pitcher, recirculated that (it looked pretty clean anyway), and drained it all into the 18qt pot (the brewpot still had hot water in it!). Note to self, it would be helpful to have another large pot to heat water in. An HLT of some kind.

I added 3.5 gallons of 168.0F water to the lauter tun, stirred it, and then remembered to close the valve! :) I dumped the remaining hot water out of the kettle, poured the first draining into the kettle, and then drained the second amount into the kettle. I gave Brewsmith 2qts of dead space in the tun, but I ended up with 6.75 gallons, about 1qt over what I was hoping for.

The preboil gravity was 1.024 at 47F, adjusted up to 1.039. Significantly less than the 1.048 I would’ve gotten at 75% efficiency. I think, I didn’t reach that efficiency, and I had too much water. I brought it all to a boil, which took maybe 20 minutes or so.

I had an extremely full pot, I was using an unfamiliar heat control, and I nearly had a boilover. I avoided it, but then added the hops and that did it. It came out, hops first of course. Then I couldn’t find my matches to relight the stupid burner. Note: buy a long lighter. Geez.

Got a boil again at 9:05am. I was hoping I still had a good amount of Northern Brewer hops, but who knows? I saw quite a bit floating around in there during the boil, so let’s hope for the best.

I gave the boil about 10 extra minutes just for the hell of it. I added some Irish moss at about 15 minutes left, and I dropped the new immersion chiller in. I had tested it out during the boil, so it was full of water, which began to flow rapidly out of the hose as soon as I dropped the chiller in the wort. Cool. I added 1oz Saaz with 2 minutes left, at 10:14.

At 10:16, I cut the heat and started the chiller. I got it down to 80F in about 14 minutes. I got the wort into the fermenter, and it looks like I have about 5-2/3 gallons. The OG is 1.051, lower than the 1.056 Brewsmith expected. Again, too much water is the main problem, and a lower efficiency than expected is a secondary problem. The efficiency came in around 68%.

After cleaning up everything, it was 11:15am. Time:5.5 hours. Plus, I did a few small garden tasks during the boil, once I was sure there’d be no more boilover. I’ve let the thing sit in the fermenter for an hour, and I’m going to rack it off the trub into a carboy, then rack it back again, and pitch the yeast starter.