The Simplest All Grain Brew Day

hi guys welcome to mash hacks my name is Ben co and today I'm going to be showing you the simplest all grain brewing method possible brew on a bag now this particular video is for beginners to intermediates and it's really to get you up and running with the burner bag process or if you've never brewed all grain before this is a great way to get started now the first thing you're going to need to do is check out my required equipment video which will be showing just up here somewhere and the second video to watch after that is going to be the water calculations video because we're going to assume a bit of knowledge there and we won't bother touching on that in this video we'll just get stuck straight into brewing alright set aside about six hours because it's going to take a while especially on your first run but it's going to be super exciting let's get stuck into it okay now the first thing to mention about this video is that everything you see today can be done on the stovetop but you're going to want to brew less so you probably want to batch size between 5 and 10 liters or for the Americans like 1 to 3 gallons at most because it's getting all that liquid to a boil on a stovetop is actually really really quite difficult especially if you've got a big heavy-duty pot like I do if you've got a smaller pot feel free to use the stove but yet make sure your batch size is nice and small now instead of using stovetop today I'm going to be using a gas burner outside and we'll get to that in just a sec you'll see the first thing that we're going to do is fill up our stainless steel pot with our strike water now I've gone and calculated the strike water as per my other video in doing the water calculations and for this particular recipe that I'm doing today which by the way is a white rabbit dark ale clone and I'll throw a link up to the recipe now but essentially the key figures you need to know that there are 5.6 kilograms total grain weight and that I'm going to then use 16.8 leaders of strike water so anywhere it you don't have to be super critical with your volumes but about 16.8 liters is what I'm going to put into my pot so this is the initial hot water that we heat up to put the grain into and that's called our strike water so let's go do it right that's 16.8 litres let's go put it on the burner if you Duke just going to fire up the burner now and I set the gas to full whack and we'll go and heat up our strike water now the goal here is to get the strike water to just above where you want to mash your grains so I'm shooting for 72 degrees which is about 163 Fahrenheit for an ideal mash temperature of 66 degrees which is about 150 Fahrenheit and here we can see that I've skipped ahead and we are getting pretty warm I'm going to give the water a bit of a stir just to make sure I've got the right temperature reading and I'll show you now but I've gotten up to about 73 degrees Celsius she gathers about 163 Fahrenheit so we're ready to tip in our grains and and our brewing a bag back you can see I've just quickly turned off the gas burner because we're at the correct temperature we don't want to burn our bag okay so adding the Bruner bag bag you want to get the seam on the inside so although you might think that you just saw that is all on the outside so you don't get any grains caught in any of those seams and we just add that straight in it's better add a little and we'll be ready to tip out grain directly into that now make sure you go ahead and buy pre-crushed grain from your homebrew store don't just go tipping your non crushed green I've milked my own here but you also will usually come it may be a vacuum sealed bag or just a bag but yeah now I'm tipping in half and I'm going to give this a really really good stir if you had two people helping you out you might be able to have one tip in slowly as the other one stirs and do it all in one go but I'm just going to do it half and half so here we can see the second half of the grain going in now and I'm going to give this another really really good stir sit there for a couple of minutes and just keep stirring because you want to make sure you don't have any dough balls which I'll show you one in a minute and you want to have nice consistent mash so here you go let's see I'm giving it a good stir and I'll pull out a dough ball I think in just one second there's one this is the clump of clump of flowery doughy you know masse sort of mess and you want to get it rid of all that so you just kind of smushed up against the side all right I've given it a really good stir probably three four minutes of stirring the temperatures looking pretty good I think I'm on 67 or 66 degrees again about 150 I'm going to insulate the pot because it's I don't want to lose too much heat over the hour then I'm going to be mashing here and there we go I'm going to set my timer for one hour and we'll let that we'll let that go so here you can see I'm about 20 minutes in I'm just going to take the lid off and I'm going to get a good stir so one of the things I freaked out about early on when I was in my brewing career is the mash temperature you know dropping really quickly and it's just cus you know the little probe isn't representative of the whole pot it's just that one little bit so give it a good stir every you know 20 minutes or so maybe twice during the during the mash and that all you'll see the temperature shoot back up again to roughly the correct temperature but if it drops don't freak out don't add heat just you know just let it ride it's not going to drop so far that it won't be manageable okay so give it a stir it's going to insulate it again and wait for the rest of that mash to finish all right we have 60 minutes is up I'm just giving it a quick stir before I pull out the bag so here we go I'm going to very carefully pull the sides together grab all four corners and I'm going to lift the bag out of the pot I'm just going to kind of dangle it there now this can get a bit heavy and it is a bit warm keep in mind so don't burn yourself but I'm just just lifting it out leaving it out there for maybe I know 30 seconds to a minute just to drain as much liquid as I can into the pot I'm giving it a bit of a squeeze you can see here don't worry about squeeze don't be scared of squeezing I might even do give it a bit more on the sides press it up against the side of the pot again just trying to get as much liquid as we can out and I'm expecting to get 11 point 2 litres out of this first runnings here that's sitting in the pot I'm just transferring the bag into my fermenter bucket because it's a convenient little vessel and what we're going to do here is sparge now I'm going to do a batch sparge which just means you put all the put it into a different vessel put all the water in and give it a good stir just like we did it's kind of like a second a little mash and all we're doing is rinsing the sugars off that grain so I'm adding in 16.8 leaders of sparge water again that's about four point four gallons and going to give that a few minutes just to soak in that water and this is just cold water by the way you know typical typical procedures will tell you to use 78 degree water or what's that it's about 170 ish water but now she's in cold water because it works just as well it's much much much easier now I've turned the burner back on as well to get the work in the pot heating up because we want to get this whole thing to a boil it's going to take quite a while but after a few minutes and a few bits of stirring probably 5-10 minutes of sitting in that bucket I'm going to pull that bag out again I've brought my jug along just so I can transfer that bag to the kitchen without making a mess it's just going to catch my trips and there we go now I'm just checking the side of the bucket there to see when I reach my target second runnings here of about what am i shooting for sixteen point eight liters or so and once I've reached that volume I'm going to move that bag into the kitchen and that that volume that sitting in that bucket now is called the second runnings it's the second rinse of the green after the primary mash okay that what the pots heating up nicely I'm going to add all my second radix now and then even though despite adding cold water the residual heat in the grains is really warm to that second runnings up it sits at about 50 degrees 40 50 degrees so that's pretty good that about hundred twenty hundred thirty degrees Fahrenheit but yes now going to put the lid on to get that boiling and while we're waiting for it to get up to boiling I'm going to do our hop additions so I've got three hop additions to make today now typically for those who don't know a hop addition has a time against it in a volume or a weight so this particular first one is 23 grams which is what roughly 0.8 ounces and it's 60 minutes so if you have a 60 minute addition it means that you need to add it with 60 minutes to go so it boils for the full 60 minutes you'll typically have one early boil one like a 1 bittering 60 minute addition and then several you know flavoring additions which come later in the boil usually between 15 minutes to go and 0 minutes to go okay and one other thing you might want to add is a fining agent you can use Irish moss or some people use worth lock powder and essentially this just precipitates a bunch of the protein out of the beer during the boil now I'm adding that to my second last addition which is about 15 minutes but you can add it anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to go in the boil now I had to run out and grab a gas bottle because I was almost out of gas which is why it's now nighttime but still waiting for this to boil and you'll see it comes up to a boil very shortly here we go so that stuff at the top there is the hot break and you need to be really careful at this point because that foam especially with a vigorous boil can go right over the top you'll get a boil over which you get sticky sugary liquid everywhere it's awful you don't want to do that so I am stirring my work stirring that foam to break it up if you have a more vigorous burner though you're probably going to want to turn the heat all the way down just while this foam dissipates but it's at about this time just after the foam dissipates that I start the 60 minute timer for a one-hour boil and here you'll see me add that first edition which was at 60 minutes to go and again you need to watch out because this can also foam up very rapidly so make sure you put your heat down and you're ready with a stick like I am here but there we go okay so I've been boiling for quite a while now I'm just adding the last addition here now you can see that the volume has reduced which is good and what we're going to do just so you're not afraid of the big jump are about to make is as soon as the 60 minutes is up turn your burner off and we're going to use the note shell method so I carry that pot of boiling liquid inside very carefully and I start filling up my fermenter bucket directly with the boiling word now of course I've gone and cleaned out that fermenter bucket and made sure it's nice and clean but all I'm doing is transferring the boiling hot liquid directly into that bucket now please make sure you only do this to HDPE or type 2 plastic because it can handle the boiling temperatures don't do it to glass carboys they'll all shatter now this no-till method is pop is a quite popular in Australia and it basically saves time and effort because you don't need to chill your work normally you'd be chilling the word at this stage getting it down to picture will temps but we're not going to do that we're going to fill up this bucket completely we're going to whack a lid on it and it's going to chill overnight now don't worry about people telling you you think will be too bitter or you know to ruin the hop additions and all that it doesn't make too much of a difference and it certainly makes for a very simple brew day now it's just a silicon tube hooked up to the valve at the front there and I'm just draining straight out okay I've completely filled the bucket I'm just going to go and put a lid on that and I'm also going to put a little tiny bowl over the top just to stop anything from flying through that hole at the top there no insects no nothing I can still get in but that's fine I'm going to leave that to sit overnight and cool down to pitch oval temps and here we go a new day new pants and a space a spray bottle full of stars' and I'm just going to sanitize the edges here and open it up ready to pitch the yeast now I've cooled this down to about 21 degrees which is about 68 Fahrenheit anywhere between 15 and 25 degrees is acceptable to pitch yeast and to ferment in which is about 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit you go too far south you might get you might not get fermentation at all if you go too far north of that you'll get to some bad or flavors now here you can see I'm using a flask full of yeast this is called a yeast starter you don't need this that's a future video that's a bit of a level up video all you're going to do is pitch in your vial or smack pack if you've got that just chuck it straight in or if you've got dry yeast you can go ahead and just throw that straight in as well don't worry about rehydrating you can do that if you want but it's certainly not necessary we're going to go give this a good spray with stars' in and make sure we get a good tight seal on that bucket beautiful now I'm going to grab our airlock and we're just going to fill it up with a bit of the star sound solution from our spray bottle just enough to you know halfway fill the two chambers is good as long as a co2 can get out and air doesn't get in where we're happy excellent plug that guy in and we'll put the lid on as well go ahead and move this to a cool dark spot in your house again you're going to want to shoot for about 20 degrees or 68 Fahrenheit and and that'll sit there and ferment for you know roughly ten days that's a good that's a good length of time oh what a brew day I hope you've enjoyed this simple brownie bag process again keep in mind this is the easiest way to brew it's the simplest way to brew but it's not exactly the best practice if you'd like to continue learning along with me I'm going to be posting several level up videos this will include things such as properly telling your words yeast starters you know some proper batch barging technique lots of things that will improve your brewing process that aren't necessary at the beginning but will certainly help you out in the log run if you have any comments questions or suggestions feel free to pop them in the comment section below and I'll get back to as soon as I can otherwise I look forward to seeing you in the next mash hacks video cheers guys you

Channel: Mash Hacks

Views: 325,786

Keywords: Homebrewing (Hobby)

Id: ZYOaZ8g8-ho

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2015