First Try in an All-Grain

OK, so it's been awhile. Since the last post (Irish Stout), I've brewed #11 (American Pale Ale - bottled), #12 (Blackberry Hefeweizen - in secondary) and #13 (Imperial IPA - in primary).

I was in the car and had little to do (not driving), so I looked up all-grain brewing techniques on my iPhone (love it!). I found a web page describing how to brew 1 gallon batches at home on the stove with basically nothing more than I already had. The only thing I needed to buy were the ingredients (duh!) and a 1 gallon bottle for primary/secondary.

So, here's my journey through the wonders of all-grain brewing. I found a simple, straightforward 10 gallon batch recipe for an American IPA and all I had to do was move the decimal place.

My ingredients were:
2.1 lbs. American Two-Row Pale Malt
.3 lbs. Rye Malt
.1 lbs. 40L Crystal Malt
.33 oz. Cascade hops (6.3% for 60 minutes)
.33 oz. Cascade hops (6.3% for 15 minutes)
.33 oz. Cascade hops (6.3% for 5 minutes)
1 sachet SafAle US-05 Dry Yeast

I didn't quite follow the recipe exactly, but we'll get to that later.
Here's a shot of the entirety of my ingredients:


I steeped (maybe "mashed") my grain at 150 degrees for 90 minutes. I was supposed to do it for 60, but I like big, strong, flavorful beers at the moment, so I wanted to wring out whatever these grains had to offer. Here's a shot of the grain almost as soon as I added it to my brew pot.


Here are the 3 hop additions. This was simply a 1 oz. bag of Cascade to start with. I separated them as evenly as possible (one for you, one for you, one for you...)


After I mashed the grain for an hour and a half, I strained it through a grain bag to get all of the stuff out that I could. Then, I added the wort back into the brew pot and started the boil. Here's a shot of the pot as it's starting its boil. Not much foaming action here.


These are all of the accessories I needed to use. Note the absence of any sort of racking or siphoning devices. I used the 1 cup measuring cup to get my sample for gravity readings and used the funnel to pour straight from my brew pot into the fermenting bottle. I'll probably skip the racking equipment when I transfer from primary to secondary, too. I think I'll simply carefully pour the beer through a grain bag into a sanitized pot, clean the fermenting bottle and pour the beer back into it through the funnel. Small batches are easy!!!


Here's the wort as it's cooling. If you look closely, you can see some weird looking stuff under the surface. Not important to brewing (I don't think), but a cool picture nonetheless.


Here's the batch in its final setup, ready to ferment in primary.


So, I kind of messed this batch up a little. I was supposed to add 2.25 gallons of water to my mash, but when I added 2, it looked like so much that I didn't add the next quart. Then, I was only supposed to boil for 60 minutes. By the time I started my boil, I was afraid I'd end up with 1.5 gallons or more, so I started planning for a 90 minute boil. Well, about 50 minutes in to it, I was shocked at how much water had boiled off, so I did a 75 minute boil (yes, 75 minutes of .33 oz Cascade for bittering) and I added my flavor hops at 20 minutes. I still ended up with well under a gallon of wort at the end, as you can see in the picture above. From my measurements, I actually brewed an Imperial IPA (again) rather than a standard American IPA. Oh, well, not a bad miss in my opinion.

*****Targets*****
Batch Size: 1.0 gal
OG: 1.066
SRM: 6.6
IBU: 67.9

*****Actual*****
Batch Size: ~0.75 gal
OG: 1.088
SRM: 8.6
IBU: 70.3 (not a ton of difference)

*****Hoped-for final numbers*****
FG: 1.017
ABV: 9.3%

It was a fun first foray into all-grain brewing! I might try another batch, say, Thursday or so. Well, I'm off to smoke a no-name brand cigar to see whether I've become too spoiled by my Padrons!