Friday, March 12, 2010

First All Grain-The Breakfast Stout






Now that the mash tun is built its time to brew. As I told you in the last post I decided to do a clone of Founders Breakfast Stout. I knew that going all grain was the only way to make better beer. Now that I have made one batch I'm not scared by the mysteriousness that surrounds all grain brewing. It's not that hard or different than doing a partial mash batch. I was ecstatic after I realized that I hit 76% efficiency. Not bad for my first time.

Recipe
-13.2 lbs Breiss Organic Two Row
-22oz Flaked Oats
-1lb Chocolate Malt
-12oz Roasted Barley
-9oz Debittered Black Malt
-7oz Crystal Malt 120
-2oz Good Quality Ground Coffee
-3.2oz Dark Bittersweet Chocolate
-1oz Galena Hops
-0.5oz Willamette Hops (30 Min.)
-0.5oz Willamette Hops (0 Min.)
-1/2tsp Yeast Nutrient (15 Min.)
-1/2tsp Irish Moss (15 Min.)
-Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale
Mash the grains with 3.75 gallons of 172 degree of water. Mix the hell out of the mash to get rid of dough balls. Once the grain temps at 155 close the lid and hold at that temp for 60 minutes. I probably should have preheated the mash tun, but I forgot. Slowly drain the wort and sparge with 4.29 gallons of 170 degree water. This should give you 6 gallons of wort. Since I don't have two large pots yet, I used my bottling bucket to collect the wort. Everything was then poured into the pot and the boil was started.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Building the Mash Tun






So in my last post I made a oatmeal stout. It didn't turn out as well and I would have liked. Decent flavor but a little on the weak side. Since I want to add a few pounds of blueberry's in the secondary I figured I would try another stout. Like you can ever have enough stout around. This time would be my first all grain batch. I thought about using the same recipe I used before, but decided on a Founders Breakfast stout clone. This came out great for me in the past.


I first had to make a mash tun. It was quite easy. One trip to the big orange box hardware store and I had everything I needed.


Shopping list
1-1/2" Ball Valve with a 1/2" male connect on what will be the inside of the cooler
1-3/8 barb(where the hose connects to) to 1/2" male thread
1-1/2" female adapter-This will screw onto the ball valve and accept the 5/8"outside diameter copper pipe
1- long piece of copper pipe 5/8" outside diameter
5-90 degree elbows 5/8" inside diameter
3- copper t 's 5/8" inside diameter

It took me 30 or so minutes to round all of that up. I was glad that I sneakily ripped open the packages for the adapters to test that they fit right. The first ball valve I picked up would not have worked at all. After that it was time for cutting. I found a good guide on this blog. It served as a template for the manifold design. My cooler is a bit different than the one on the site so I improvised a bit. The cooler was measured and I cut the copper pipe with a pipe cutter. That made it a lot easier than a hack saw. Once the pieces were cut I dry fitted everything together. The one piece from the manifold to the ball valve had to be cut down a few times to get the correct fit. Then you can cramp the t's and elbows with a wrench just a little bit to get the pipe to fit nice and snug. I don't think solder will be necessary. t will make cleaning allot easier too.

Time to drill. A 5/64 drill bit was what I used. Small but not too small. There are a ton of different drill patters out there. Figuring I could always drill more if it doesn't work I drilled holes about 1/2" from each other just on the bottom of the manifold.


Once everything was put back together I got the cooler ready. For x-mas I received an Igloo Ice Cube cooler. The spigot was removed and saved the gasket. From there its was super easy to screw in the ball valve and female adapter with the gasket in between. The manifold hooked up to the adapter perfect and it was now time to test her out. 5 gallons was placed in the cooler and that's when I found to one and only flaw. Since the hole in the cooler is recessed my ball valve wouldn't close all the way due to the long handle. Not a big deal. the handle was removed and I used a wrench to open and close the valve until I can cut the handle shorter. Shockingly the cooler drained all but a few dribbles out the 5 gallons. I was really worried about the valve being higher than the bottom of the cooler. All and all I'm quite happy with this setup so far. It only cost me $25 and took around an hour to build.

Next post the first brew.