How to Brew All-Grain Beer - Part 1 - Ben's Homebrew

[paulyJW]

wow to much hard work iam stickin with kits

[peterneorr]

At about 7 minutes in, you describe how "clear" it is. What do you mean by this? It looks very brown to me. What is the purpose of the vorlauf? Thanks for keeping it simple. BTW, thanks for keeping it simple. You've boosted my confidence that I can make the switch to all-grain.

[neightwatts]

You rock ben. You showed me how simple all grain can be. You ggave me confidence to jump in.

[jaellman]

@fatsachs You are crazy, and possibly a dick. Fact is the boiling process kills all bacteria. So if it's "CLEAN" before boiling you will be fine. It's AFTER brewing that sanitation is key!

[SiriusFisherman]

honey smoked porter, that is one of those beer names that makes your mouth water

[leedorham]

Makes me want to get a pump.



[SmokingTiresV6]

I can see dirty floating around in the bottom of the cooler when you filled it with water....

[benshomebrew]

@fatsachs

Out of the dozens of batches of beer I made, never had a problem with sanitation. Remember, it's AFTER you brew the beer where sanitation is THE most important thing. Anything before the boil doesn't matter.

[rawimpact]

@benshomebrew yes it does... it has to do with clarity and taste. Sure you might not get fungus or anything but there is a reason why breweries keep everything sterile preboil

[medameda80]

these are grains or malt (germinated grain)? sorry for the stupid question, i am begginer.

[BeerDiddleyBeer]

Do you not lose all the heat in your mash tun with the lid open for so long as you vorloff? Would that not be a problem? Im a noob and worry about all these things....

[bmr21021975]

were they hop plants near the pump?

[DevonHomeBrew]

@bmr21021975 yes those are hop plants

[BattGSA]

Your mash didn't look mixed well enought. I saw what looked like dry grain on the right side.

[Crypticx666]

Where did you get your pump from? I need to put in a pump but it needs to be suitable for potable water cause lots of pumps have grease in them so you don't want that getting into your beer.

[benshomebrew]

@Crypticx666

It's a march impeller pump. I got mine at a yard sale for $50! What a deal. You can do a search on google and find them relatively easy. Thanks.

[MrSlaphappy44]

Excellent video bro. I have not done an all-grain batch yet, but with videos like yours the fear of doing so goes away.

[deadsaid]

dude that is an awesome brew system. very helpful, and also confirmed some of my techniunque. thanks for the great post man.

[hophedbrewhaus]

Good job on the video. Some parts may be confusing to to new or aspiring AG brewers, but overall you did a good job of making it easy to understand and follow.

[akashm2611]

what the fuck is all that shit in your ton, clean that bitch mannnn

[benshomebrew]

@akashm2611

What are you talking about? The 5 pieces of loose grain that's in the bottom of the tun?

[cber8860]

@benshomebrew hey i had beer go into the air lock. and i had bad nat problems

do i throw it out

[dinkydao]

@cber8860 Obviously it is to late to keep you from throwing out the batch, so this will be more for others who may read your question. I would have just removed the airlock, cleaned it and replaced it. I assume you did not use a larger blow off tube (if you were using a carboy) to avoid this. Even with blow off tubes you can have issues though.

[dinkydao]

@dinkydao One time i had a blow off tube that was sucking the water back up the hose due to the vacume in the carboy (very slowly but it was creeping up the hose - i think from a temperature change), so stupidly instead of removing my blow off tube from the carboy- I was drinking at the time- I tried to "drain the hose". Well of course when I pulled the hose out of the trash watter, the air forced the stuff up the tube into my carboy potentially infecting it.

[Ironchefgabe]

@akashm2611 LOL!

For real! shit got tidbits at the bottom

[unfun72]

I think I will give it a try next time.. Id have to use a 5 gal igloo drink cooler (with a plastic valve i installed to use it as a smaller mash tun) as my HLT instead of a nice keggle pot like you have :)

[benshomebrew]

You don't have to do it that way. One guy in our club heats up his fly sparge water in his kettle and then adds a half a gallon at time to his mash tun with some foil on it. He just scoops it out and collects the wort in a bucket. This way you don't have to worry about a 3 tier system and using gravity. It's a little more work but you can do it that way.

[unfun72]

thats a pretty good Idea... I might give that a try instead.

Thanks!

[unfun72]

I used your method today, and did my first fly sparge, using the alum foil method and slowly pouring my sparge water over the alum foil as to not distrub the grain bed. I had problems with flow because The mash tun i use, is primarily used for batch sparging, and i had only a plastic hose clip to regulate the flow out of the mash tun. With the hose clip on the first notch i was able to make it slow enough to work. However, I think my efficiency was WAY low. My entire sparge was done is 30mins.

[unfun72]

then again it was only a three gal. batch.

[benshomebrew]

If you stick with it you can work out the kinks in your system and get better efficiency. It's all about dialing in your system. Maybe use higher temp sparge water or go slower. Generally, you want to do the fly sparge for 45-60 min. Don't give up on it because it does work well, unless you're just comfortable with batch sparging.

[unfun72]

I liked this Idea, and will be brewing a blonde ale tomorrow, to give this fly sparging another try. Ive decided to up my base malt abit though to account for the lack in efficiency, and plan to go sparge slower (was done last time in 20-25 mins) and use a 5gal gott cooler for the sparge water as a HLT to retain the warmth.

thanks for the info, ill let you know how trail 2 comes out.

[unfun72]

nice job.. fly sparging intimidates alot of people unfortunately (myself included).

[benshomebrew]

I think the biggest thing with fly sparging is just figuring out the flow rate of the wort leaving the mash tun.  You can have 2-3 inches of water on top of the grain bed, it's the output that you need to pay attention, too, but it's not hard.

Give it a shot some time.