Wish me Luck

[cynical_writer]

Brewing First All Grain Tomorrow.

Built a Mash Tun, 10 gal rubbermaid cooler with a braided stainless hose as filter.

Bought a new boil kettle. Saw a outdoor turkey fryer with a propane burner and stand on sale that should work great, with drain in bottom and everything. 8.5 gallon capacity. $100 plus we can now fry turkeys, so win win...

Gonna make a blonde and lager it. Maybe dump in a few lbs of strawberries into the secondary... Not sure yet.

I'd like it to be a more smooth subtle strawberry taste and not a tart strawberry taste, any idea how to manage that?

Thanks, and like I said, wish me luck.

[Indytom]

Good luck with the brewing session, and congratulations on the turkey fryer find. 8.5 gal is just the right size for doing 5 gal batches. The extra headspace will help prevent boil overs before you get to the hot break. I have a 7.5 gal and it gets really dicey at times.

You may want to re-think using the pot for frying turkeys too. The lipid residue left behind in the pot at the very least could mess up the head retention of your beer. I dont think there would be enough to affect the taste, but I wouldn't want to risk it.

Again, enjoy the brew session, we want a full report, and above all else, Relax, don't worry and have a home brew.

Tom

[JayShaw91]

AG is easy, man. RDWAHAHB! I'm as accident prone as things can get and I don't think AG is hard at all.

Just be patient and use the iodine test to make sure your starches are converted. That's about the best advice I can give you. After you mash and sparge, the rest is just like extract, i.e. boil, hop, cool, rack, pitch. You've done all of that before, so you're only really adding a bit more in to what you already know how to do.

Let us know how it goes!

Regarding the strawberries, I got nuttin' for you on that. I'd guess a pound in secondary should suffice.

[TeufelBrew]

I just recently went AG as well. It's great! Stick with your plan, and you'll be fine. Post back how it went!

[Fouled Anchor]

Good luck on the AG. Looking forward to hearing how brew day went.

[JayShaw91]

Yeah, but now we should know... how'd it go?

[cynical_writer]

Well had a few hiccups. Didn't really know how much the temp would drop when adding the water, so we guessed, and of course guessed wrong. After we mixed the grains up the temp was about 144 so we just added hot water to raise it up to 153 and left it for an hour...

After that it went well until the boil, burned myself on the spigot from the boil kettle (turkey fryer) but that was my fault obviously... We also realized how great an investment a wort chiller would be since our brew pot is significantly bigger and couldn't be cooled in the sink like our old brew pot...

other than that it started fermenting pretty well (just realized right now I didn't take a gravity reading) and its in the fridge at 54 degrees as i write this.

I'll take a reading now I guess so we at least have an idea, or not, we also dumped in 6 lbs of strawberries so i figure thats gonna throw it off anyway. When we rack in in about a week were adding 6 lbs more as well...

So lots of mistakes nothing critical though, for the first batch of All grain I'd still say it went fairly smoothly... Just got a little forgetful, but thats what happens when you start the brew at 830 at night after a 12 hour day of work that started at 6 am. Plus add a few home brews during that process (of course)...

So next update will be a few weeks from now after fermentation, kegging, slowly carbonating, and then aging for a while in the Keg... This might be the first brew we do everything right and dont rush to drink it haha...

KJ

[Vienna Lager]

Get yourself one of those galvanized wash tubs at the implement supply store of farm and fleet store and put your cook pot in there with a garden hose running cool water into the tub. Should be able to cool 5+ gals. or wort in about 15-20 mins. if you gently stir the wort with a sanitized spoon so more hot wort will contact the cool sides. Also stir the water in the tub with your hand so all the cool water is not at the bottom of the tub.

The tub is a bit cheaper than a copper wort chiller and takes less time to make initially.

[cynical_writer]

Thanks I'll Look into doing that, When I started in the spring we still have a lot of snow outside so we just threw a cover on and dropped the pot into the drifts right outside our door. The snow should start soon and we might try that again this summer. Cooled it down ridiculously fast.

[Mad Scientist]

I'll take a reading now I guess so we at least have an idea, or not, we also dumped in 6 lbs of strawberries so i figure thats gonna throw it off anyway. When we rack in in about a week were adding 6 lbs more as well...
KJ

Did you puree the strawberries? In not then you may want to. And FWIW, fruit is usually best added to secondary, the vigorous primary tends to scrub the fruit flavors out of the beer.

[cynical_writer]

not exactly puree but we did mash them up pretty well so we would be able to get them through the neck of the carboy and not worry about getting them back out.

For the additional 6 lbs I will puree them though with my blender i guess,

This is my first lager and the fermentation doesn't seem to be going as strong as all my previous ales, the temp is around 50. is this just normal for lagers or should it be just as vigourous as my ales? Which have been described by friends as "Erupting with the fury of a thousand suns"

[Mad Scientist]

Since you mashed them pretty well, try the beer first before adding more.

And yes, most lagers are not as vigorous.

[cynical_writer]

So its been over 7 days now, the air lock is still bubbling strong, one large bubble every 2 seconds about...

is it too soon to rack to should I wait longer? How can I tell btw since I also neglected to take a gravity reading...

[BrewDog]

Wait until the krausen falls.
It is too early to rack. I usually go 14 days in primary.

[vw addict]

You can let it sit for 3-4 weeks with no problem. 90% of my beers sit in primary for 3+ weeks, get cold crashed to 38 degrees for 2 or 3 days, and get racked into a keg.

[Botoole560]

Brewing First All Grain Tomorrow.

Built a Mash Tun, 10 gal rubbermaid cooler with a braided stainless hose as filter.

Bought a new boil kettle. Saw a outdoor turkey fryer with a propane burner and stand on sale that should work great, with drain in bottom and everything. 8.5 gallon capacity. $100 plus we can now fry turkeys, so win win...

Gonna make a blonde and lager it. Maybe dump in a few lbs of strawberries into the secondary... Not sure yet.

I'd like it to be a more smooth subtle strawberry taste and not a tart strawberry taste, any idea how to manage that?

Thanks, and like I said, wish me luck.
The first thing that comes to my mind is cleaning and sterilization. If you end up making Blonde Strawberry Peanut-Turkey Beer, then first of all let me get some!! And second of all, I hope the next batch goes better and tastes more like beer!!