After a year of extract, extract with steeping grains and extract with mini-mash I am making the jump to all-grain this weekend. Brewing th APA from brewing classic styles, repitching a 1056 with yeast starter. No secondary. Adding a dryhop of .5 oz Amarillo each at 7 and at 10 days. Much reading, browsing and lurking here and a year of getting my process down I am ready!
After a year of extract/minimash brewing, you may find the jump to be more of a small step. Good Luck.
Take your time with it and have about a gallon of boiling water ready at any time during the mash. Ice cubes will also save your ass until you learn your system. Half a dozen ice cubes will go much further than you think. Grist/water ratio isn't as important at this point, so add or subtract what you need with extra boiling water/ice. Campden tablets are required. DME is not frowned upon if you're low on your preboil gravity. Just make sure you're reading at 60F or a refractometer. The most important part of your first AG experience is hitting your mash temp with about 5 min and keeping it within a few degrees over your 60 minute mash. Mash temp takes about 4 minutes to settle, so don't even take a temp until you stir out ALL of your dough balls. It's a little longer of a process, but it's not too hard after you understand your system. That might take 2 or 3 batches, so take good notes throughout the day. Go get `em, Tiger!
1) are you referring to just adding ice cubes to bring your sparging/mashing water to the temp you need before using it? 2) I've never heard of taking a preboil gravity. how does this work? Do you have to cool down you wort to 60 after mashing just to take a reading, and then kick it back up to boil?
You can measure the gravity of the wort at whatever temp it happens to be, then adjust. There are many charts out there, including one (IIRC) in howtobrew.com
How am supposed to know what the preboil gravity is supposed to be? especially if I cannot do a a (full) 5 gallon boil? thanks
For a full boil, if you know the volume and target OG for your post boil wort, you'd subtract 1 from that target OG, multiply by the target volume, divide by the pre-boil volume, and add 1. So let's say your target OG is 1.048 for 5 gallons. Also suppose you want 6.5 gallons pre-boil, because you'll boil off 1.5 gallons. You would want your pre-boil OG to be... (((1.048 - 1) x 5) / 6.5) + 1 = 1.037 Most people use software to figure this out for them. I use a spreadsheet... Brew Sheet
If you can't do a full boil, the math is really still the same. Just remember that the gravity 'points' are inversely proportional to the volume. If you know what the gravity should be in 5 gallons, you can compute what the gravity from those same sugars should be in any volume.
Ice cubes are slow to change phase. A cup of 'cold' tap water is just right to lower the temperature about two degrees. One method would be to make the pre-boil volume about a cup more than needed. Draw off the extra cup...cool to 60 in fridge...measure the gravity...store this volume along with the post-boil hydro-sample in the freezer for the next batch's starter.
