My First Time Brewing From Grain - Pale Ale (with pics)

marko

I've been home brewing for 2 and a half years now, in that time I've probably done over 20 kits. As great as some of the kits are, and being inspired by a recent trip to the black sheep brewery, I've decided to take it up a level and try making my own beer from scratch. I've decided to go for a simple pale ale recipe to start of. I didn't really read up much on how to do it, so i was guessing/experimenting for most of the process. Which i think is the best way to do things.

Greene King Style Pale Ale 3.4%

1500gm Briess CBW Golden Light (top extract)

500gm Crushed Crystal Malt

500gm Brown Sugar

50gm Northern Brewer

60gm Goldings

Notts Yeast

The only additionally equipment I needed was a huge pan. Next time I brew from grain I'm going to get myself a nice electrim mashing bin to make things easier, quite a lot of money but a nice piece of kit. It was pretty tricky at times using the very basic equipment.

So all I had to do was get 11 litres of water to the boil and throw the Malts, hops, sugar and a teaspoon of Irish Moss (copper finings i think) in and boil for 45 minutes. The smells that were produced were amazing and filled my entire house with a fresh malty, hoppy fragrance that lasted for a couple of days.

Top Tip - Next time I am definitely using a grain mashing/sparging bag as it was a right pain in the arse separating the grains and hops from the wort.

After 45 minutes I was left with a chocolaty porridge. Now I had to sieve the contents into my fermenting vessel leaving the grain and hops behind (wishing i did it in a grain mashing bag at this point). Then you pour a couple of kettles worth of boiling water over the grain and hops to wash the remaining essential sugars into your vessel (this is called sparging).

Top up with Cold Water, leave till room temperature and pitch the yeast. Left fermenting for 6 days till i achieved a constent reading of 1.008 which worked out at 3.4% (spot on).

Racked of into another vessel and added BeerBrite finings, left for another 5 days. Now its time to keg/bottle up.

I love my Corny Keg, 19 litres of my brew went into that, which i found out today fits in my fridge. Not much room for my food now but its a sacrifice i'm willing to pay for a cold beer. The rest I put into swing top bottles.

So now I have to wait a couple of weeks, which is the hardest part of home brewing. I had a little taste, whilst siphoning i had a good mouthful and was pleasantly surprised how good it tasted. It smelt really good as well, I can't wait to taste this one, i'm like a child waiting for Christmas.

I'll post in a couple of weeks of how good it tastes. 

Next brew will be a Rigwelter Style beer. Quite a complicated recipe compared to this one but I'll be well prepared for it next time. I've even experimented in making a yeast wash (yeast cake) from the trub from this batch for the next batch (also inspired by the recent black sheep brewery visit which they've had the same strain of yeast for over a hundred years). Not sure how it will turn out but I like to try these things.

mozza

Did you not mash? If you've thrown it all in and boiled it you've probably got some off flavours in your finished product. But I'm sure it will give you beer! Cheers,

Sam

mozza

Just reading it again and you should mash/lauter your grains first before boiling. Generally speaking you mash for 90 minutes (soak the grains) in water at about 67 degrees. Then you drain off and sparge which rinses out more sugars. So then the wort goes into your boiler and is boiled for 90 minutes. Your buttering hops go in straight away and then about 10/15mins from the end of the boil you throw in your aroma hops with 3 grams of Irish moss which gives the brew its hoppy smell and also clears trub ect.

Then you need to cool the wort to room temperature. I use an immersion cooler made from copper. And then you can siphon it into your fermenter.

There is a lot of steps with all grain so I think you should look on jimsbeerkit forum or there are loads of books you can buy. Graham wheeler's is excellent.
Hope this helps for next time!

Sam

marko

Hey mozza. This recipe doesn't need the mashing stage as most of its from extract, its from brewing beers like those you know book. It's why i tried this one for my first go as it seemed nice and simple. Next one I do will be completely from grain which involves the steps you've posted above. Thats why I want a decent mashing bin to get the temperatures right, I got the recipe from jimsbeekit for the Rigwelter and it gives some very specific temperatures. Thanks for the tips, i'll look out for that book.

mozza

Oh right that's all good then! Yeah wheelers book has 100 recipes to clone some really nice ales, I would definitely get your hands on one.

And with the mash tun, why not have a go at making one? It's really easy and a lot cheaper than buying one

Cheers,

Sam

marko

I seen the one you made on here, looks really impressive. I might take another look before I splash out. Whats it like for keeping your brew at the right temperature?

mozza

My mash tun drops maybe half a degree, it's very good at insulating and the beauty is if something breaks it will be cheap as chips to replace as its basically two fermenting buckets and a drum tap! I never get a stuck mash with the false bottom design. It's idiot proof which was great for me!

sine_nomine

Well done, Marko. Good luck with your all-grain brewing and here's hoping this one will turn out to be your best brew yet.

I purchased the Electrim EB1D recently from Home Brew Online (for a very competitive price!). I intend to use it for 19 litre BIAB brews so I also bought a bag 24" x 24" which fits the Electrim perfectly. I've just done a trial run and hope to brew with it for the first time tomorrow. The main advantage with BIAB is that it simplifies the brewing process — for instance you don't need to sparge as you should get the same efficiency without. 

If you wish to do larger brews you could perhaps purchase a Buffalo 40 litre stainless steel boiler which does exactly the same job as the Electrim and is only fractionally more expensive than the Electrim EB1D.

mozza

I don't think the efficiency will be quite as good but I have no experience with BIAB

marko

Thanks for the tips @sine_nomine. Let us know how the BIAB brew goes. A couple of pics would be great if you can.

I had a look at the Buffalo boilers to. Could do some big batches with those things. Not a bad price either.