Knuttel Makes Real Beer: Day 2

So I spent pretty much all of Saturday making "real" beer.  What do I mean by that?  I mean I did an all-grain brew, where I extract the wort from the grains myself through use of a mash tun, as opposed to buying pre-made malt extract.

I bought the ingredients on Friday, and began Saturday with a tour of a certain Philadelphia brewery.  My accomplice and I quickly grabbed some cheesesteaks and then escaped back out to the suburbs to brew some beer.

I didn't really do anything fancy, so instead I'll just say where we ran into complications.

-- We didn't have enough water (more on this later, but we only accounted for water lost in the actual boil)

-- The mash tun had to be cajoled into working properly.
  First, we needed 3.5 gallons to sit in the container, as opposed to the 2.5 we originally had heated up for it.  Next, we were doing a batch sparge process, and, well the water didn't want to pass through once we got to a certain point -- and this was not for a lack of water, there was a definite inch sitting on top of everything.  So first we tried fixing this by mixing with something long enough to reach the bottom (in this case, a hockey stick).  That opened things up for a little, but then it was back to nothing as usual.  So then we decided just to press everything through a strainer and fill everything up that way.  We full intend to use the mash tun to its full extent next time around, but it needs modifications.  Also in this stage is where we failed to account for water lost to grain absorption.  An additional gallon of water was added to our planned 6 (the amount we were going to boil).

-- We had a minor boilover (it was minor, but messy).  Resolution, be more vigilant and don't underestimate how early it could start boiling.

-- We did a 90 minute boil as opposed to the 60 minute boil most people use.  My intent was to get more use out of the hops, but again, I failed to account for additional water I would lose during this stage (and you really need the water to boil hard).  Not to mention, the fact that the wort was split amongst one giant dutch oven and two smaller pots means I was dealing with a whole lot more surface area (even more evaporation).  From now on I will do only 60 minute boils, especially with the apparatus I have.

-- COOLDOWN
  Luckily we still have snow, otherwise I don't even know how we'd attempt a wort chill.  Even so, we started by simply placing the open containers in holes we made in the snow, checking periodically to make sure the pot sides were still making contact with snow and to check the temperatures.  Well, two things, first off, leaving the lids open just let everything evaporate off even more.  Secondly, the snow (the coldness) was only surrounding the substance on the bottom and sides.  We fixed this by dumping the remaining small pot (yes, by now we were down to one small pot) into the large dutch oven (and, oh yeah, all of this had lost enough that I could fit it all in the dutch oven), closed the lid, and covering the whole thing with snow.  About an hour after we had started cooling the wort (longer than one should take) we had the wort down to room temperature and were able to transfer it to the fermenting container.  We only lost about a gallon, gallon and a half during cooling.  An alternative cooling process will have to be found, with both the inefficiency of the one I used and the snow (hopefully) going away soon.

-- Yeast
  The yeast was taken out from the refrigerator too early, and was also shaken pretty fully waaaaay too early, so I had to put it in a glass with some sugar to make sure it wouldn't die on me.  No yeast = no alcohol.  This was just carelessness on my part.

-- In order to adjust for the gratuitous water loss (we had only 3 gallons of wort ready to ferment post-cooling) I had to add I think like 12 water bottles to the whole mixture.  I think it brought us around 4 gallons in the end.  Considering we were aiming for 5 gallons, we didn't have much of an option.  Oddly enough we ended around our target gravity (sugar density), so there's that.

PICTURES FROM THE PROCESS

mostly emptied mash tun, with hose being pulled out

trash bag with all of the spent grain

All of our lovely wort, pre-boil

Sooooo, day 2 stuff -- definitely saw bubbles on the air valve this morning, which means it has already started fermentation.  very nice.  Also have already played my beer the entirety of Rush's 2112 album.  Gotta nurture it.  I should also mention I have decided to move the fermentation area from the basement to my closet due to more ideal ale growing conditions.

-- Knuttel