Brew #2 - My First Go At All Grain Brewing

Wooooo! The brewing of my second batch of beer, also my first all-grain, is behind me! What's the difference you ask? For my first batch, I used malt extract, which is a concentrated version of all the sugars and good stuff you get from the malt if you were to steep it. There's nothing wrong with it, and it saves you money on the equipment you would need to steep the grain yourself. But it does make the beer taste different. 

My first batch is very close to having the carbonation I'm looking for, which is awesome! But it tastes like sticky, processed malt extract to me instead of something more fresh and organic. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of my first brewing effort, and do enjoy drinking it. 100% satisfaction isn't a very good motivator, so not knocking it out of the park on my first try is a great thing. My desire for better beer has propelled me to my next step, which is a step into the world of all-grain brewing! It was an expensive, time consuming step, but I'm glad I made it! 

Using all-grain for brewing instead of malt extract is like using homemade pasta sauce for baked ziti instead of something store-bought. Using store-bought sauce is fine, but using something you made yourself can boost the quality of your dish to a whole new world. And the amount of personal satisfaction you get from having crafted something from scratch is an equally great perk to brewing from grain.

Perfect. The benefits are seemingly awesome. Let's do it! There are, however, costs in both money and time. I chose to make my own mash tun, which is the piece of equipment you use to steep the grain, and filter it as you drain the liquid into another vessel. One stop at home depot and about $70 later, I had all the pieces I needed. Putting it together was fairly simple as well. I used this design. It was actually pretty darn easy to clean, too. Bonus points! 

The most time consuming part was waiting for my water or wort to boil. With malt extract, you boil half the liquid, and add the remaining water at the end of the boil. But with all-grain, you boil everything all at once. My small, electric stove is not the best tool for this kind of project. I'm thinking a portable gas burner is in my future. My total brewing time, from boiling the water for the grain to cleaning up after everything was in the primary fermenter, was about 6.5 hours. Better equipment and more experience will cut that down, I'm sure. =)

Everything but two things went quite smoothly. First, and possibly most unfortunately, my wort chiller sprung a leak at the vinyl tubing/copper pipe connection, and I got about 3 oz total of tap water in my chilling wort. I was eventually able to hold it at just the right angle so I could finish chilling, but the damage was already done. Having sanitary conditions for the beer is of utmost importance, and that amount of tap water may have contaminated the batch. But there's nothing I can do now but cross my fingers and wait. 

Speaking of fingers, that's the second thing that went wrong. The adapter that changes my tap from a hose connection to a regular flowing tap (it otherwise gushes water in any direction it pleases) broke above the thread, and my finger tips were already shredded by the time I realized. Fortunately, this occurred while I was cleaning up, but it still sucks. 

Judging by the progression of my first batch, I think this one will be ready to drink in about two months. By the way, it's a brown ale, and I got the recipe from John J. Palmer's How To Brew. =)

And here's a little video of my process!

It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it. Can't wait for my next batch!