Transition to All Grain

If you feel like you have the basics of brewing down from the extract brews you have made, jumping in should work out fine for you.

If you prefer the incremental approach (that approach seems more comfortable to you), then doing a partial mash first might be more appropriate for you.

Some people like to jump into the deep end of the pool while others prefer to wade in; different strokes for different folks.

Cheers!

 

I don't think the partial mash process really eases the transition to All Grain in any important knowledge related way. i.e. the things you have to get right for all grain also apply to partial mash. If you are already comfortable with the rest of your process, and have the means to build or buy a mash tun, I'd recommend jumping.

 

I jumped in to all grain after 2 extract batches.

I mashed on the stove-top and was able to keep my mash temp spot on. Then used a zapap lauter tun (basically a bucket with a bunch of tiny holes drilled in the bottom inserted into a bottling bucket to serve a rough sieve.) and collected my wort. After two batches of that I purchased a 10 gallon premade igloo mash/lauter tun with stainless flase bottom. Wish I would have done that initially, honestly.
Cheers!

 

I also only did a couple extract batches (Mr. Beer) then jumped into all grain with a couple friends (who had also started with just a few extract batches). I say jump right in.

 

Jump right in, but if cost is an issue especially for equipment, that I would recomment BIAB (Brew In A Bag).

 

Just jump on in.

I would say to get a handle on your water before your first brew day though. Unknown water chemistry can ruin an otherwise perfect brew day. I suggest getting your water profile, and reading the water chemistry primer, here. Then find a water calculator you are comfortable with, such as EZ Water, MpH, etc... Or perhaps some brewing software that includes a water calculator like Brewcipher.

 

I find the guide to water chemistry that @JohnSnowNW linked to to be needlessly simplistic. I realize water chemistry is extremely complicated in its details, but the basics are simple and there is no reason to dumb it down so much. A while ago I wrote a reasonably brief summary designed to get you 85% of the way there, and looking back at it I think I did a pretty decent job. People will give you different advice on eliminating chlorine (some people use Campden tablets, some people use carbon filters), and there is a lot more nuance when you are ready for it, but I feel that you will be doing pretty well if you follow the advice in that post. You sort of think about things sequentially, essentially solving a bunch of equations simultaneously. It's easier than it sounds if you have good software, and in terms of water chemistry, there is an embarrassment of riches out there. The hardest part will probably be entering the data from your local water report into the spreadsheet (but the good news is you only have to do that once). Everything else is reasonably easy, and once you learn to navigate whichever spreadsheet you choose, you will find that it becomes second nature.

 

By all means...jump right in if you don't care about the quality of the home beer you have to drink.
Sure...over time it should get better but there might could be a lot of swill in between.

 

A bit of an overgeneralization, IMO.

 

Partial Mashes are great but IMO the only reason to do them would be if you wanted AG but had some size constraints, like me.

 

Lucky for him, you'll be right there every step of the way, demanding drain pours.

 

You're absolutely right b/c there's absolutely no learning curve.

 

Don't do it! Your basement will be full of carboys and your wife is going to hate you!

 

Perhaps you could enlighten the OP and all of us, and tell us, in your considered opinion, when the right time to move to all grain is, rather than just whizzing indiscriminately on others' advice.

 

...and how, exactly, will this learning curve be navigated if not through experience? Would you, likewise, advise your kids against going to college because there's a chance they may not be successful?
You've alluded to this philosophy in previous posts. I'm trying to understand why you started homebrewing at all, given that it carries some risk of failure.

 

Yeah, I mean, here's how I think about it. There are skills that you use to brew extract beer, skills that you use to brew extract beer with partial mashes, and skills that you use to brew all-grain beer. Obviously there is a lot of overlap, inasmuch as from the boil onward there shouldn't be any meaningful difference. We know (or can assume) that the OP has the skills to handle extract brewing, which means the only thing missing is mashing.

So then the question is how much does partial mashing teach you about mashing? And I think the answer is not much. There are obviously similarities in those activities, but for most people there is not a tremendous amount of overlap in the relevant skills. Speaking for myself, even for my first batch I steeped specialty grains, and it wasn't long before I was doing partial mashes by steeping a bit of base grain along with the specialty grains. But I wasn't adjusting my water chemistry, using a mash tun, vorlaufing, or anything like that. I was just heating some water to ~160° and putting a bag full of crushed grain into it. At most I might check the temperature periodically to make sure it was within a reasonable range. Then I pulled the bag out of the pan, rinsed it a little, added the liquid to my kettle, added more water, added the extract and hops, and boiled. To emphasize the point: I didn't learn a damn thing about mashing from this experience.

Now a lot of people don't want to rush into all-grain, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a partial mash. But the question is whether it's important to get a partial mash under your belt before doing an all-grain batch, and I think the answer is no. What are you going to learn? How to obtain crushed grain? Not a serious hurdle for most people.

This isn't to say that all-grain is easy. Water adjustments take a certain amount of effort (but less than people often assume!), and dialing in the mash temperature is not trivial. (I find it helps to have some near-boiling water and some ~140° water on hand to make fine adjustments, but other people may have different approaches.) But that stuff doesn't get any easier as you gain experience partial mashing. It's also honestly not that difficult. Anytime you add more steps, there are more things that can go wrong, and we are all going to make mistakes from time to time. (I remember I had a tube running from my mash tun to my kettle, and I managed to knock it out of the kettle while the wort was flowing, sending hot wort all over my stovetop.) But fundamentally all you are doing is adding a few grams of salt to water, heating it, adding it to some crushed grain, and then draining it into a kettle. It is eminently doable even for a beginning brewer, and there is no reason whatsoever to expect that you will have to brew a lot of swill before you get good at it. My first all-grain beer was just fine - I think I fermented too cool to get the full character of the Belgian yeast, but I would have made the same mistake if it had been an extract beer. The mash went smoothly and I hit my target gravity with no trouble. You can do the same, particularly if you choose a relatively easy recipe. (I would do a single-infusion mash, batch sparged or not sparged at all, with no unmalted grain except for maybe some rolled oats or flaked wheat or something.)

[Edited to add: an important point I forgot to mention is that all-grain brewing is fairly forgiving along the dimensions we are talking about. If you mash 2 degrees too hot, or even 4 degrees too hot, your beer will still be tasty - definitely you don't go from "good" to "swill" in 4 degrees. Likewise, if you end up with 75 ppm chloride, when really you should have gone for 150, your beer will still taste good. Or if your mash efficiency is not what you expected: you can either adjust the length of your boil to make up the difference, or you can brew a somewhat weaker or stronger beer. Again: it just isn't going to turn your beer into swill. To be honest, except for huge screw-ups, I can't think of anything that happens pre-boil that will seriously jeopardize your beer. If you get the variables into a reasonable range, you will do fine. And getting the variables into a reasonable range is something you can expect to do on the first try.]

 

If someone is forcing you to read my posts, please consider asking them to stop.

 

Note to OP: this response has some relevance to my response to your other post about water chemistry. If you are worried about your water, you could try partial mash.

I had one batch that I did as a partial mash in transition from extract to AG brewing. For some, partial mash is about equipment - you can do it without a dedicated mash tun. In my case, I built a mash tun, but I wasn't sure about some details about water chemistry and how important it was going to be for conversion/mash efficiency. So I made a recipe that had about half the sugars were coming from extract. This way, if my mash efficiency was lower than anticipated, I would not be drastically off target and still had a good chance of making good beer. It was a very simple recipe for a Sierra Nevada pale ale type of beer. I think it was useful to keep it simple and have a familiar target in mind. On brew day, I evaluated my mash efficiency and it was fine, so the next batch, I moved to all grain.