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Brewing SetupBrewingEquipment:
A typical brewing session for us these days lasts for about 5 hours, and includes the following: 1. If we plan far enough ahead, we make a starter with the yeast a day or two before brewing day. This includes boiling a liter or two of water along with some DME (I ususally go with a cup of DME per liter of water). Boil for a few minutes, dump into a small container (I like to use an empty Juicy Juice bottle because the stopper fits nicely in the top), cool to room temperature, and pitch the yeast. Attach the stopper and airlock and let it go. 2. Brew day. Now that we do all-grain brewing, the temperatures at various steps are a bit more important. First, we dump some 170F water into the mash tun, and let it sit for a while. This heats the mash tun, which helps us in the temperature calculations for the next step. Once the strike water is ready, this warming water is moved over to the sparge tank, to be used as sparge water later. 3. Once the mash tun has been warmed up, it's time to add the strike water and grains. We usually aim for a final grain+water temperature of about 153F. In order to hit this temperature, it's necessary to calculate what temperature the strike water should be initially, such that when it's added to the cooler grains, the final temperature settles where we want it. There are tons of good calculators on the web for this purpose. One that we like is that of the Green Bay Rackers. Their mash calculator is easy to use. Just enter the number of quarts of water per pound of grain being used, the initial temperature of the grain, and the final temperature you want. 4. The strike water is added to the mash tun, and then the grain is slowly added and mixed in, to prevent little dough balls from forming. Once all the grain is in, and we make sure we're at our desired temperature, we close the lid on the tun, and let the mash go, generally for an hour. During this time, enzymes in the grain are busy converting the starches in the grains into sugars, which the yeast will feed on later. While that's going, we start heating a lot (7 or 8 gallons) of sparge water to 170F.
5. The 170F sparge water is put in the sparge tank, which is then lifted as high as we can get it. Once the mash has finished, we open the ball valve and collect some of the wort in a container, usually a large glass or brita container. We collect wort, and then pour it back in the top of the mash tun, repeating this step at least several times. The point is to flush out any grains that have managed to slip through or around the false bottom of the mash tun. Once the wort starts coming out of the ball valve relatively grain-free, we move on to sparging, where the hotter water stops the enzymes, dissolves the newly-formed sugars, and carries them out into the boiling kettle.
6. Once the wort is collected, the boiling kettles are brought to the stove, and brought up to a boil. From this point on, the brewing is identical to extract brewing. Once the wort is at a boil, any hops and extra ingredients are added according to the schedule for that specific batch of beer. Since we like to use wort chillers, we add those to the kettles with about 20 mintues left in the boil. 7. After a (generally) 60 minute boil, the heat is turned off, and the wort chiller is hooked up. With that, we can generally cool down ~3 gallons of wort from near boiling to about 80 degrees in only 15 or 20 minutes. Generally at this point, we have 2 kettles, each with somewhere between 2.5 and 3 gallons of wort. 8. After cooling, the wort is transferred to a 6.5 gallon carboy or bucket, an original gravity reading is made, the yeast is pitched into it, and the whole thing is aerated (usually by a couple minutes of violent shaking). Then the airlock is attached, and the fermenter is set aside for a couple weeks for the yeast to do their thing.
FermentingEquipment:Bottling/KeggingEquipment:
Storage/DrinkingEquipment:
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