First AG Brew Day

Brew day began roughly around 9:30 AM when I began measuring out water. I calculated that I would need just over 7 gallons between Mash and Sparge. I used the figures of 1.25 qts per lb of grain, with 8.7 lbs of grain. Using 1/2 gallon of water per lb of grain for sparging, adding the two I came up with 7.1 gallons needed.

I started heating strike/sparge water a bit before 10 AM. By 10:20 AM I had set 2.75 gallons with the grain for the mash. Temp going into the tun was done at 168F, I checked it after 30 minutes and it had settled down to 148F, perfect target for the recipe (see Ranger IPA post).

The Mash. Using 8.7 lbs of grain the MT was a little over half full.
Bigger beers using up to 12 lbs of grain should be no problem with this MT.

At 11:20 I had the heated sparge water at 174F and into the HLT it went. Started setting the grain bed and then draining the wort. I learned that the flow of water from the HLT to the MT is slower than draining the MT into the Kettle. The flow fluttered out after about 20 minutes, so I closed the valve and let the sparge water build back up. When I resumed I used a slower flow out of the MT to the Kettle so that all the water would not drain off the grain.

Flow of water out of the sparge arm.

The grain seemed to have absorbed a bit more water than I anticipated as once the wort was drained I ended up with 6 gallons, instead of the 6.75 that I anticipated. I will adjust next time and prepare a bit more sparge water to use.

HLT on the left going to MT, and then the Kettle. Eventually I'll build a 2 Tier stand for the HLT and MT, and let the kettle stand on the legs from the burner.

Once all the wort was in the kettle I started to bring to a boil. I hit boiling at 12:15 and did first hop addition. From there it was a standard 60 minute boil with Tons of hops, some pellet, some leaf (LHBS only had Simcoe in leaf).

The large amount of hops, with some being leaf made the trub at the end of the boil cost me a gallon of water. I didn't want to drain to much of the sludge into the fermentor so I ended having to top off with a gallon of water to hit my 5 gallon total. Next time my calculations will be taking into account a better estimate of losses from HLT, MT, and Kettle.

As a consequence of the loss to the kettle I missed my target gravity, but was very close. My BrewR calculator gave me an estimate of 1.061 OG and I ended up with 1.059. Not to shabby for my first attempt if I do say so myself (and I do!).

I ended up tweaking the Ranger IPA recipe from the post below to the following:

• 8.25 lb 2-row
• 3 oz Chrystal 120
• 30 oz of corn sugar (I had 6 packs of priming sugar sitting around not being used, as I keg 99% of my brews)

I haven't yet bothered to figure out the efficiency of my mash, but given how close I was, and how much water I used to top off I think it was pretty good.

All in all, I would call today a smashing success based on my goals. From the very beginning at 9:30 AM to finishing clean-up of all equipment, putting it all away, yeast pitched, etc... I was done at 2:45 PM.

And, I have dubbed the brew 'Ranger Danger' as I altered the hops bill a bit as well (I like hops, alot). The IBU's calculated out a bit above an American IPA style, and a bit above the recipe I used as a guidline.

• 1 oz Chinook @ 60 mins
• 1 oz Simcoe Leaf @ 30 mins
• .75 oz Cascade @ 15 mins
• .75 oz Cascade @ 0 mins
• 1.5 oz Cascade Dry Hop

Recipe was targetted at 70 IBU's, BJCP style 14B is 40-70 (really? 40? wusses), with this hops schedule BrewR came up with 72 IBU's for Ranger Danger.

Looking forward to drinking it in a month.