Step by Step Part 1

Your First Batch Equipment List

Hot liquor tank (HLT)

Mash Tun

Brew Pot (Brew Kettle)

Siphon

Stir paddle

Ingredients (grain)

I find that planning makes for a good batch and a good time when brewing. I would suggest watching a You Tube video on beginner home brewing using either all grain or extract recipes.  It helped me to understand the flow and the steps. Getting your recipe at least a day in advance of your brew day helps to read the recipe, understand the ingredients and practice some of the calculations that will help you get it right. A couple of absolutes before you proceed.  Do you own a boil kettle large enough for either 5 or 10 gallon batches?  Five gallon recipes usually call for around 3.5 gallons of water with a final boil of 5 gallons. Keep in mind that boiling anything for an hour is going to cause evaporation. So if you want to end with five gallons you're probably going to have to boil around 6 or 6.5 gallons to account for evaporation. Another trick that hasn't ever failed me is to add water at the conclusion of the boil to top off at five gallons. 

Water source is another factor to have figured out days before your first brew day. Perhaps easiest is to go down to the market and buy 7 gallons of drinking water. You can also pull 7 gallons off the typical refrigerator water spigot as long as the filter is in place. Water can affect your final taste. In the picture above, my son is helping me fill a 15 gallon kettle with the garden hose for a pre boil boil of tap water. You can also run tap water through a micron filter found at any Home Depot or Lowes for around $50. 

Laying out your ingredients in order of what is added to the boil will help you to easily predict what's next as the timers ding. Building on one of my previous blogs about cleanliness, this is the most vital process. Remember anything that is boiling is sterile. Anything that touches the post boil mixture including stir sticks, siphons, fermentor container, tubing, your hands and fingers have to be sanitized with Star San or One Step.  Even the lid to the fermenting bucket or carboy and the airlock should soak in your sanitizer solution until use. 

Using propane burners are very efficient but so is the stove top. I would suggest migrating to the garage or patio at some point and particularly if you are using larger kettles or burners. As you can see in the above picture, there are valves and thermometers on each pot. It's nice but each kettle can run $175-$350 with all the gadgetry.  A simple thermometer and timer will make beer that tastes just a good as the plumbed kettles.  

Let's talk about a 5 gallon all grain batch. 

Step 1 - prepare your water source

Step 2 - prepare your hot liquor tank (HLT). 

Step 3 - calculate your water volume

Multiply the total weight of the grain by 1.3, then divide by 4. This will give you how many gallons to add to the HLT.   So 8 lbs of grain would go like this:

8 x 1.3=10.4 / 4= 2.6 gallons of water into the mash tun. Preparing for a later process called, sparging, add the extra amount of water to the first amount and heat it all at the same time. This second amount of water can be calculated based on your recipe and figuring the final boil will can an evaporation rate of about a gallon per 5. Make sure the remaining water in the HLT stays at 170 degrees. We will need it later. 

Now notice the temp range between 140-160. This is the temperature range for starch conversion when the grain meets the water. Getting the grain stirred into the water naturally causes a 9-15 degree temperature reduction so you have to compensate for that. If you want to shoot for a mash temp of 158 then add say 12 degrees to that and heat the water in the HLT to 170f. When you dump in the grain, the temp will fall naturally down to the 158 range. Now the grain will need to sit at 158 in the mash tun for one hour. I would recommend a cooler based mash tun which is insulated and holds temp perfectly. If using a kettle mash tun, you will likely need to keep it on a burner to maintain temp for the hour. In a pinch, you can add warm water and stir to get the temp back up. Once your

At 30 minutes pull about a gallon of the mash liquid out of the mash tun and into a pitcher. Gently poor the contents back into the mash tun.  Repeat this one more time. This process is called, Vorloff. This process allows the grain bed to set firmly on the bottom of the mash tun. At the hour mark, drain the contents of the mash tun into your brew kettle. Get as much liquid out of the grain as you can. 

Sparging is the process of rinsing the grain once you have pulled the first runnings. A batch sparge is easiest and effective so refill the mash tun with the prescribed amount of water (left over in the HLT) and if you have to error on the side of caution, add more than you think you need. Make sure not gently introduce the water as opposed to pouring it in and upsetting the grain bed you just set by the vorloff. Give it 15 more minutes and drain again back into the brew kettle.  Your ready for the final boil. 

We will explore the rest of the process in the next segment.