Why is all grain brewing better

Keep in mind that these burners are intended for outdoor use only so their use can either limit your brew days to those where weather permits or force you to get creative in how you account for less-than-optimal conditions.

All of these additional items certainly add to the initial cost of brewing and also require more space, not only for when in use but also for when it all needs to be stored away. These reasons alone can be a turnoff to all-grain brewing, but for some — say, those in a small apartment — it simply makes it impossible.

All-grain brewing involves additional steps that are not necessary when brewing with extract such as mashing and sparging, which ultimately makes for a much longer process.

Also, the greater amount of brewing equipment used in all-grain brewing means more equipment to clean up in the end. Dependent upon the recipe, an extract brew may take about three to four hours to complete from start to finish, whereas an all-grain brew will take around five to eight hours to complete — in many cases, about twice as long as its extract counterpart. To put things into perspective, an extract brew could be completed after you get home from work while an all-grain brew would need an entire day set aside.

Your job as a homebrewer is to figure out which of the two is best suited to your needs and capabilities. Plagued by a chronic case of curiosity, Jeff Flowers is just a dude that annoys everyone around him with his loquacious goofiness.

From beer to home living, Jeff is just trying to hack his way through life and write a few notes about it along the way. You can follow his ramblings here, or listen to him complain about Austin traffic on Twitter at Bukowsky. This was a very informative article. I am going to start brewing lower gravity 2.

Good article. I extract brew kits and would like to make that process more affordable. The cost of yeast depends on the type of beer your making. Some yeast are more refined for more delicate brews where others are like little He-Men and work harder to get the process moving.. So for example the cost between a Pilsner yeast and Stout yeast is probably going to be about two dollars.

The beauty of yeast is that after your fermentation has ended you can wash your yeast and save it for another brew. They can be reused up to 4 times but you can get four or five containers of yeast from one batch.

If you or anyone would like me to write a tutorial on washing yeast just let me know I would be happy to do so…. Is wheat less expensive than barely Malt? Is this why we are seeing so many commercial brewers not listing their ingredients? Very practical explanation!

I have brewed both ways and definitely like all grain because you can be creative with any style beer and to me it is just more fun and it tastes better!!

I started out with extract brewing and after making a couple of great brews I realized that the beer that you made was ions above what you buy commercially and hence the start of craft beers these are far better than commercial beers and is closer to the beer you can make with all grain brewing.

The recipe should specify the length of this rest; often, it's one hour. During the mash rest, your goal is to hold the grain bed at a constant, uniform temperature.

Odds are, however, you won't be able to do this. At a homebrew scale, the mash will lose heat over the time of the rest. And, the sides of the grain bed will cool off faster than the center. Fortunately, a small change in temperature is not going to hurt the quality of your beer.

After your first mash, quickly take the temperature near the side of the mash vessel, and then near the center.

Stir the mash to even out any temperature differences and take the temperature again. Record all three temperatures in your brewing notebook. You can use towels, sleeping bags or blankets for this.

If your mash vessel is heatable, you can also add heat directly during the mash. If you do, stir the mash and do not heat too quickly. More advanced all-grain systems often utilize a recirculated method of holding or heating the mash. If you are interested in recirculating systems, check out this article. During the rest, you have the option of stirring. Stirring ensures a more even mixture of grain and liquid and evens out temperature differences across the grain bed.

Unfortunately, opening the mash vessel releases heat to the environment. Likewise, using a "cold" mash paddle absorbs more heat from the mash. As such, most homebrewers simply leave their mash undisturbed during this rest.

If you overshot your mash temperature by a few degrees, stirring a couple times is great way to gradually bring the temperature down. While the mash is resting, begin heating the water you will use to rinse the grain bed the sparge water.

How much sparge water will you need? Running out of sparge water is a pain, whereas leftover hot water can be used for cleaning equipment.

So, err on the side of heating too much sparge water. For a 5-gallon L batch, this may mean 7. If you want to try to leave your grain bed dry at the end of sparging, subtract the volume of strike water from this amount. Also, if you mash out by adding boiling water to the grain bed see the next section , subtract this volume from the required volume of sparge water.

Your goal should be for the sparge water to be at the correct temperature when the mash is over and the wort has been recirculated. Use the length of time it took to heat the strike water to estimate how long it will take to heat the sparge water. At the end of the mash, you have the option of performing a mash out. Mashing out makes the wort less viscous, and easier to collect.

This can be done either by applying direct heat or by stirring in boiling water. If you heat the mash, be sure to stir as you do. This is fine as you can simply rinse with hotter sparge water to compensate for this. Record the details of your mash out — final temperature and volume of boiling water added if any.

The aim of recirculation is to draw some wort off from the bottom of the grain bed and return it to the top. Once enough wort has been recirculated in this way, the wort clears up substantially. Keep a timer running and collect wort at a rate that would fill the pitcher in about 5 minutes.

Once full, gently pour the pitcher back on top of the grain bed. Repeat this until the wort looks clearer or 20 minutes have passed. Some homebrew rigs allow you to recirculate using a pump. Once recirculation is finished, it's time to start collecting wort. In this article we cover the traditional continuous or fly-sparging technique. For a more simplified batch sparge technique, check out Denny Conn's article found here.

If your lauter tun is not positioned above the kettle, you can let the wort flow into a pitcher and then pour wort into the kettle. Collect the wort at a rate such that takes about 60—90 minutes to collect the entire volume. To do this, keep the dip stick in the kettle and check on it every few minutes. Write down the time you start collecting wort and the time you cross the 1-gallon mark, 2-gallon mark, 3-gallon mark, etc. The basic idea with continuous sparging is to apply water to the top of the grain bed at the same rate as it drains from the lauter tun.

In theory, that should be simple. In practice it can be hard to match the flow rates. On my old setup, I used to pour a couple pitchers of water on top of the grain bed, then, about 10 minutes later — right before the grain bed would be exposed — I'd add another two pitchers. During this time, wort would be flowing from the lauter tun to the kettle at a steady rate.

Now, I do essentially the same thing by turning on and off my pump. Some more savy homebrewers set up a float switch, similar to those found in your toilet. The float switch will add water at the appropriate level to keep the flow from the hot liquor tank even with flow to the kettle. Write down the details of your sparging in your brewing notebook. There are a few ways to determine when to stop collecting your wort. For average-strength beers, the easiest way is just to quit collecting when you've got the full pre-boil wort volume in your kettle.

With a propane burner, on homebrew-sized batches you can expect to boil off about a gallon an hour with a full rolling boil. So, for a 5-gallon 19 L batch, you could collect 6 gallons for a one-hour boil or 6.

A better way to know when to stop collecting wort is to monitor when you've gotten everything you reasonably can from the grain bed. The easiest way to do this is to take the specific gravity of your late runnings the stream of wort you are collecting from the grain bed and wait until they fall to about 1.

If you do this, you may end up with more or less wort than your planned pre-boil wort volume. If you are low, as happens on many low-gravity brews, just add water. If you have collected more wort than you planned, you can extend the length of your boil. When you are done collecting wort, write down the volume of wort in your kettle, the time you quit collecting and the original gravity of the wort. Also record if you needed to add any water to reach your target pre-boil volume.

For extract brewers who do full wort boils, the rest of your brew day is identical to what you are used to. If you are looking to build a wort chiller, here are two easy projects to make one yourself.

If not, just expect that heating and cooling a larger volume of wort will take longer. Now you've got your first all-grain brew day under your belt. You also have a record of all the relevant volumes, temperatures and times of your first all-grain batch. Before you grab a celebratory beer, write down any other observations that you feel may help you with future brews. Later, before your second brew, review your notes and determine what aspects of your brew day you want to improve upon.

Knowledge comes quickly at first, so be sure to write absolutely everything down for your first several beers. So now that we've covered the basics of your first all-grain and you're now chomping at the bit, ready for more information. Well, good news, we have the solution. You can ask for it at your local homebrew supply retailer as well.

Mash grains in 3. Lauter collecting roughly 6 gallons 23 L of wort in your brewpot. Bring to boil and add Target hop pellets. Boil for 50 minutes and add Willamette hop pellets. Boil 10 minutes longer and then add the Goldings hops.

Remove from heat, give the wort a stir to create a whirlpool then let settle for 5 minutes. At that point you can transfer to a secondary vessel, or condition for another week in primary.

Rack into bottles or keg with corn sugar. Try lowering the amount of priming sugar to mimic the low carbonation level of Fat Tire. Lay the beer down for at least a few weeks to mellow and mature for best results. Log In Support Cart 0. Search for: Index. All Grain All-Grain Brewing. All-Grain Basics The Minimum All-grain brewing differs from extract brewing mainly in the wort production stage.

The basic idea behind all-grain wort production is this: You soak crushed, malted grains in hot water to change starch into sugar, then drain away the resulting sugary liquid, which is your wort. All-Grain Equipment Traditionally all-grain homebrew set ups included three vessels. Calibration and Calculations Before your frist brew day, you should make a dipstick or calibrate your sight glasses, if your brewery has those so that you can measure the volume of liquid in your HLT and kettle.

Crushing the Grains For your first all-grain brew, you will probably buy crushed malt or get the malt crushed at your homebrew shop. You heat up your water to a certain temperature, add your steeping grains, let them soak for a bit, remove them, add dry malt extract or syrup extract and heat it up to a boil to start your boil schedule.

With all grain brewing, well over half of your grains are going to be a base grain such as Pale 2 Row or Pilsner malt. With the Brew in a Bag BIAB method, your steps are heating the water up to a certain temperature, adding your crushed base and specialty grains to the Brew Bag , holding the temperature for an hour, removing the grain-filled bag, and then proceeding with the boil schedule as normal!

These two methods are very similar, you are just dealing with much more grain and holding them at a set temperature for a longer time.

It is true! Why is this? With extract brewing, the dry malt extract or syrup you use is basically concentrated wort that companies such as Briess make by extracting sugars from grains such as Pilsner malt and making it into a dry form or syrup form. Briess takes the extra steps for you to extract the sugars whereas with all grain brewing, you do this yourself! Typically, with the higher amount of sugars needed, ending in higher ABV, the higher the difference will be in cost. If you just look at the difference in one kit, it may not seem all that much, but after a few batches you will end up saving money!

One hesitation you may have with switching to all grain is the amount of equipment required. You will see a lot of videos or guides on all grain brewing showing three main vessels.

You have your mash tun, a hot liquor tank, and a boil kettle. The Brew in a Bag method requires… one vessel! Just one large kettle that you mash in and boil in. With that being said, you will almost definitely need to upgrade your kettle as with brew in a bag you will want to do a full volume boil and it also needs to be able to hold up to around 15 pounds of grain, the brew bag, and the water that will become wort during the mash.

With extract brewing you can do a partial boil, just filling your kettle as much as you can and then if you need to add water to your fermenter you can do that. With all grain, to maximize your efficiency and hop utilization, you really need to do a full boil so that after your boil schedule is done, you end with around 5 gallons of clean wort to transfer to your fermenter.