All Grain Batch Sparging

All Grain Brewing

Now that you have your mash tun ready to go, you may be thinking what the next steps to all grain brewing will be. The overall process to all grain brewing is really simple. Here is a simple outline of the steps:

• Mash - Soak your grain in hot water for 60 minutes
• Runoff - Drain the water from the mash tun.
• Sparge - Add additional hot water to the mash tun and drain again.
• Boil - Boil the wort (the water that was drained). Hops are added for flavor and aroma.
• Chill - Quickly cool the wort.
• Ferment - Add yeast to the cooled wort.
• Bottle - Take the fermented wort and bottle
• Drink - The best part that needs no explanation.

Step One - Mash

The mash is a simple process where we are taking grain and breaking down the starches into fermentable sugars. This happens between the 150 - 160 degrees. A lower mash temperature of 150 degrees will give you a thinner bodies but drier beer. A higher mash temperature of 156 degrees will give you a sweeter, but less fermentable beer. The target that we are aiming to mash our grains at is between 151-152 degrees.

To get the mash to that perfect temperature of 151-152 degrees, the strike water (the water that we pour into the grain) needs to be at a higher temperature because as the grain starts to absorb the water, the temperature will lower. Based on the amount of grain that you are mashing, there are simple online calculators that will let you know the extact temperature (see the Other Topics section at the end), but generally, the strike temperature will be around 168 degrees. Simply stated, we need to heat enough water to cover the grain to 168 degrees. Once we add the water to the grain, we will be at the perfect mash temperature of 152 degrees.

Once the strike water has been stirred into the grain and the mash is sitting at 152 degrees, the mash will sit for 60 minutes create the fermentable sugars.

Step Two - Runoff

After 60 minutes of mashing, the sugars need to be removed from the mash. This is done by a simple process of draining the water out of the mash tun. To help the sugars release from the grain, we will add 1 gallon of 185-190 degree water, stir it into the mash, then drain the water fairly quickly. The water that is drained off is called "wort".

As the first quart is drained off, there may be some small pieces of the crushed grains that have made their way through the filter. To help keep these from going into the wort, we will add a small step called vorlauf. Vorlauf is a simple simple process to help clarify the wort. The first quart will be drained into a small container, then as the remaining wort is drained, you can pour the vorlauf back into the mash tun. Adjust the valve draining the wort so that this process takes about 5 minutes.

You may see other brewing methods that call for the runnoff going very slowly, taking 30-60 minutes to drain the wort. With the batch sparging method, you want this process to go quickly, taking about 5 minutes to drain the wort. Also, other sparging methods will call for a vorlauf of 1 gallon, but this is also not necessary with batch sparging due to the filter that is being used.

Step Three - Sparge

Looking at the wort that has been drained off, you will notice that there is only 2.5 - 3 gallons of wort and we are targeting a 5 gallon batch. The reason for this is that there are still fermentable sugars that are attached to the grain which need to be drain off.

To get these sugars and get our wort volume up to 6 gallons, we are going to add another 3-4 gallons of hot water in the 185-190 degree range to the mash. After stirring to make sure the hot water is distributed well we will drain or sparge the additional liquid. Once again, you will vorlauf a small about of the wort, about 1 quart, then after pouring that back into the mash, you will drain the remaining wort into the boil pot. When this is completed, you will have approximately six gallons of wort ready to boil.

Step Four - Boil

With your boil pot full of wort, you will boil the wort for 60 minutes.

Once the wort is at a full, rolling boil, you will begin the first hop addition and set your timer for 60 minutes. Depending on the recipe, you may add hops at different intervals throughout the boil. Typically, the hops you add early in the boil are for bittering flavor while the hops you add late in the boil are for aroma.

Keep a close eye on the boil pot because when you add the first hop addition, your boil pot will have a tendency to try and boil over. Keep a close eye on it for the first 10 minutes and reduce the heat if necessary to keep your boil pot from boiling over, then bring the heat back up to ensure a vigorous boil.

This is the best point in your brew day to sit down with a homebrew and enjoy watching the wort boil. Besides the pure enjoyment of a good homebrew, you want to keep a close eye on the boil pot to make sure you do not boil over and also be close by so that you are ready to add additional hops at the right time.

Step Five - Chill

Before you can get to the fermenting step, you need to reduce the temperature of the wort. There are a few reasons for this.

First, yeast cannot live in boiling wort. To safely add the yeast, the wort needs to be under 70 degrees.

Second, there are bacteria that can live in wort as hot as 140 degrees. Even though the bacteria that may be able to get into your beer as it chills, you do not need to worry about getting sick from the bacteria, but it does have the potential to add an off flavor to your beer. The quicker you can chill the wort, the quicker you can add the yeast which will keep this bacteria from surviving.

Third, there are off flavors that can be created if the wort is not chilled quickly. Not to get into the science side of things too much, DMS or Dimethyl Sulfide, is created when the wort is hot, During the boil, this escapes in vapor form. The longer the wort sits at warm temperatures after the boil, the greater the chance of this chemical adding a buttery flavor to your beer.

There are 2 ways to quickly chill your wort.

The first way is to put your carboy (the container that your beer will ferment in) into an ice bath, then siphon the wort from the boil pot into the carboy. If you use this method and have a glass carboy, be careful because a glass container full of hot wort sitting in an ice bath may have a tendency to crack. Siphon slowly if using a glass carboy. If you have a plastic bucket, you do hot have to worry about this.

The second way to chill your wort, and the most preferable, is to use a wort chiller. This can be purchased or made from a few items at your local hardware store. See the additional information on making your own. A wort chiller is a simple spiral of copper tubing with hose fittings on one end that you can run cold water though the copper. This will chill your wort in about 15 minutes. After your wort temperature has dropped below 70 degrees, you can siphon it into your carboy.

Step Six - Ferment

With the wort now in the carboy and at a temperature that is safe for the yeast to live, you can pitch your yeast into the carboy. Pitching is a homebrewers term for adding the yeast to the carboy.

Before pitching your yeast, there are 2 things you will want to do.

First, take a gravity reading. This will tell you what the original gravity (OG) is. This reading will help you figure out the percentage of alcohol once your beer has finished fermenting.

Second, you will want to aerate the wort. This will help the yeast get to work fermenting your beer quicker. The quicker your yeast starts fermenting, the better your beer will taste. A simple way to aerate the wort is to shake the carboy for a few minutes. In the additional information section there are a couple other methods described that can be used to more effectively aerate your wort.

Put an airlock on your carboy and wait for about 2 weeks for your wort to turn into beer.

You can tell that your beer is ready to bottle in a couple of ways. One way is to take a gravity reading of the beer once you see that there is no activity or bubbling in your carboy. If the gravity reading is the same 2 days in a row, you are ready to bottle. Another way is to wait 2-3 weeks and watch your airlock for a minute or 2 and make sure you do not have any air being forced out.

Step Seven - Bottle

Once your beer has finished fermenting, you are ready to bottle or keg your brew. If you are interested in kegging your brew, there are many sources to help you with that. We will discuss the steps to bottle here.

Before you can bottle, you need to do a little sterilization of a few items. Your bottles, caps, bottling bucket and any other items that will come in contact with the beer need to be sterilized. See the additional information for some tips on these steps.

Once everything that will touch the beer is sterilized, you are ready to start bottling. To add the carbonation to your beer, you will boil 3/4 cup of corn sugar in 2 cups of water. Let this boil for about 10 minutes. Add the water and sugar to your bottling bucket and siphon the beer from the carboy into your bottling bucket. For a typical 5 gallon batch you may need to add a little water to get the volume back up to 5 gallons.

At this point you are ready to drain the beer from your bottling bucket into your bottles, but before you do this, take a final gravity reading (FG) so that you can finish the alcohol percentage calculation.

Drain the beer into each bottle leaving about 1 inch of room in each bottle so that as it carbonates, it does not blow your caps off. If you have 2 people, this process goes fairly quickly. If you are doing this yourself, fill about 6 bottles, then cap them. Repeat until all the beer has been drained.

Let the bottles sit in a cool 60-70 degree location for about 2 weeks.

Step Eight - Drink

I am not sure that much needs to be said on this step, be enjoying your homebrew with others is the best way to drink it. Good friends will give you good feedback on how your beer tastes. Not every brew is perfect and a good friend or two can help give you input on what tastes good and where you have room for improvement.

Brew Day

Now that you have all the steps laid out for you, a sample brew day walk though will be helpful because there are things that can be done before each step that will help your brew day run smoothly. Things like having your water hot and ready when you want to add it to your mash or having your bottles sterilzed before you are ready to start filling them, will make your brew day more successful and less frustrating.

Here is the outline of a typical brew day:

• Clean boil pot and mash tun
• Bring 4 gallons of water to 168-170 degrees
• Add 1 gallon of hot water to mash tun
• Grind grain
• Drain mash tun
• Add grain to mash tun
• Add the 4 gallons of hot water to mash tun
• After 30 minutes, bring additional 3-4 gallons of water to 185-190 degrees
• After 60 minutes, drain quickly into boil pot
• Add additional 3-4 gallons to mash tun
• Stir, then drain quickly into boil pot
• Bring boil pot to a boil
• While waiting for the boil, clean mash tun
• Once boiling, add hops over the 60 minute boil
• Chill quickly to 65-70 degrees
• While wort is chilling, clean boil pot
• Drain into carboy
• Pitch yeast

If everything is moving smoothly, this process will take about 4 hours, but don't feel rushed. Better to take 5-6 hours and do things correctly and enjoy the process. Typically you will have a break during the mash and then again during the boil to enjoy a homebrew.

Recipes

The internet is full of homebrew recipes, some good, some great, some not so good. Here are a few sites that are a good source for good and great recipes:

• Brew 365 - http://www.brew365.com/recipes.php
• BeerSmith - http://www.beersmithrecipes.com/
• Brew Your Own Magazine - http://www.byo.com/stories/recipeindex
• Brew42 - http://food.yonke.org/recipes/homebrew

Other Topics

Brewing Software

When you learn to cook, a good cookbook is a great resource. Brewing is much the same. A good source for

recipes is a must, but what most homebrewers find is that they are quickly starting to change recipes. The changes may come from slightly different ingredients or from a desire to make the brew a little different. One of the things that will help you in either pursuit is brewing software. There are 2 things that the software helps with.

Water volumes - Depending on the amount and types of grain you use, the volume of water that you use in the mash and sparge will change. Brewing software can give you the exact amounts as well as temperatures that the water needs to be heated to so that you can easily achieve the correct mash and sparge temperatures.

Recipe design - Software such as Beersmith & Promash will help with the water volumes, but will also take you a step further and help you with recipe design. Whether you are designing a recipe from scratch or modifying one, these software packages will help you immensely.

• Free Sparge Calculator - http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php
• Beersmith - http://beersmith.com (highly recommended)
• ProMash - http://www.promash.com

Buying in bulk

When homebrewing, you can spend as much money as you would like. If you want to brew on the cheap, you can. If you wish to spend money on really cool stuff, you can. One of the tips for brewing on the cheap is to buy in bulk.

I would recommend buying from your local homebrew shop (LHBS) as much as possible. They are a wealth of knowledge and they are worth paying a little more for some of your supplies.

Knowing that the LHBS is typically a little more expensive than some of the online stores, one of the ways to keep your costs down is to buy in bulk. Many homebrew shops will sell you 2-row (your base malt) in 55lb bags. Buying a 55lb bag of 2-row can take your cost from $2 a lb to $0.70 a lb.

Another way to save money is to buy the grains whole (un-ground) and grind them yourself.

That said, depending on what you are buying, you can save quite a bit by purchasing from websites such as www.MoreBeer.com, www.NorthernBrewer.com & www.atonofhops.com.

Grinding your own grain

Grinding your own grain is a great way to take a little more control of your brewing process and save a ton of money in the process.

A grinder is one of the more expensive items that you will purchase when batch sparging, but is well worth it.

I highly recommend the Barley Cusher (http://www.barleycrusher.com/). You can get a discount on this from Beersmith.com.

Grinding your own grains not only saves you money, but you will get a much better conversion than the pre-ground grains that you buy from your LHBS.

• Yeast starters
• aerating
• Yeast Substitue
  • http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast.htm
• Chilling Quickly
• Bottle Cleaning