Faking it----all grain brew equipment

Discussion in 'Homebrewing' started by sckoehl11, Jul 29, 2013.

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  1. sckoehl11

    sckoehl11 Initiate (179) Mar 6, 2013 Illinois

    Hi All,

    Last week on a whim I bought some ingredients to experiment with making a rye beer. Without me getting into a bunch of detail, I would like to have my makeshift all grain procedure assessed.

    Basically, I used my 8 gal brew kettle as a mash tun. I cooked the grain at around 150 directly on the stove and because it was just a regular kettle, I lautered by pouring hot wort into a Colegate cooler through a muslin bag as a filter, and then sparged with water that I had been heating on the stove, and pouring it through yet another muslin bag.

    Once I had about 4 gallons of clean (looking) wort in the cooler, I discarded the spent grain, cleaned out the kettle, and returned the wort to the kettle for the boil.

    My experiment was performed on the fly so I don't have the numbers for an efficiency reading, but my OG ended up being a respectable 1.080.

    Outside of it being a slightly more painstaking process, as long as I can control temperature and get proper filtration this should be OK, right?

    I have not tried the finished beer as it is still in primary, but I tasted the wort from the hyrdometer reading and it was rather tasty.
     
    #1 sckoehl11, Jul 29, 2013
  2. AlCaponeJunior

    AlCaponeJunior Grand Pooh-Bah (3,452) May 21, 2010 Texas
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Can't see why you couldn't wing it and wind up with tasty beer.

    However, you could convert that cooler pretty easily. A bazooka tube and a little hardware and you've got a mash tun. I'm only using a 5 gallon water cooler right now and my beer comes out great. Yeah, the 5 gallon size limits my OG a little bit, but for all practical purposes I can still get 5 gallons of 8% beer without issue. Stronger than that and I'd have to reduce volume a little, but not biggie. I usually make beers less strong than that anyway, so it's hardly a concern. After that you'd just need something to heat water in besides your main boil pot, and that's pretty easy to wing it on. My guess is after you've gone this far, you won't want to go back to extract brewing again (not that there's anything bad about extract beers tho).
     
    #2 AlCaponeJunior, Jul 30, 2013
  3. FATC1TY

    FATC1TY Pooh-Bah (2,564) Feb 12, 2012 Georgia
    Pooh-Bah

    You could probably see about skipping a step in there.

    Get the bags, and put them in the pot with the grain and your strike water.. Instead of keeping heat on the pot, pre-heat your oven to your mash temp, or slightly above it.

    Heat strike water, mash in the bag with the grains and stir really well. Put a lid on it, and put it in the oven.

    When done, pull the bag and let it drain into the pot. Put a grate or collander or something under it to hold it. Put the bag in another pot with your grain bag and sparge it with some other heated water and stir and dunk it a couple time. Drain.

    Should give ya pretty clean looking wort and then put it all in your pot and boil away.
     
    #3 FATC1TY, Jul 30, 2013
    checktherhyme likes this.
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