Help with my First All-Grain 'Recipe' Instructions!!!!!!

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Hey guys my All-Grain recipe kit arrived today with an "easy" to follow instructions?? from the BrewShop it's an American Pale-Ale. I have a few questions about it that have me confused. My main concern is the amount of sparge water to add after my mash? and how much to start with before I do the mash? It is a 23 litre batch. Without the use of a sight glass how will I know how much is in my pot after I remove the grain bag? any help and advice would be great please. The other is in my recipe instruction sheet for the hop additions it reads like this....

Hops

Boil     75min     7gm   Cascade

Boil     30min     14gm Cascade

Boil     10min     34gm Cascade

Boil       0min     42gm Cascade

Dry Hop  5-7days 42gm Cascade

What is Dry Hop? and does the rest refer to the top of list goes in first and is therefore boil for 75mins?

Once brought to the boil? and the 0min put in just as you turn the heat off?

Also says, at the completion of the boil(75min), leave in pot for 20-30mins "Then" cool rapidly to around 20 degrees.

Please help me make sense of this in particular the sparge issue and how to gauge how much water I have and how to tell? I was thinking of using a long metal ruler as a guide and mark it at certain levels and place in the wort to see how much is in there after grain bag comes out!.

Cheers guys.

[oliver]

Yeh you're on to it with the metal ruler, I marked out a wooden stick using a measuring jug + water. How big is your pot?

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

its a 50L pot. hey when you sparge do you do it over a empty fermenting bucket or over the kettle ? then put the wort back in kettle?

[oliver]

So I use a separate chilli-bin mash tun and transfer the runnings across to the kettle. I assume you're using brew in a bag? People usually hold the bag above the pot using either a rope or an oven shelf/grill, then sprinkle the sparge water through the bag so it runs through the grain and drops out the bottom of the bag into the kettle. You can also fill another vessel with your sparge water and dunk the bag into that vessel (then give it a stir and leave it for 10-15min before lifting the bag out and transfering the liquid into the kettle).

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Yeah I'm using the BIAB system, first home brew I've ever done too. Never heard of that last suggestion but sounds pretty good. Appreciate the tips.

[oliver]

plenty of videos + instructions out there too if that helps:

http://homebrewmanual.com/brew-in-a-bag/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlz_858ooWE

[oliver]

You've got it right with the 75min addition being the first addition you do, and the 0min being the last, right before cutting off the heat. Don't worry about being too accurate with the timing of things, you can boil for 90min or more and it will be fine. I usually add the first hop addition about 10min after the boil has started (after what is called the hot break) so if I was brewing this beer I'd probably do a 90min boil and start keeping track of time once I've put in the first hop addition.

[oliver]

Sounds like you've pretty much got it all figured out, should make a good beer :) 

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Hey cheers Oliver that helps heaps!! I didn't realise either that the hops came in one packet and that I was to weigh them out for each addition, I thought that was all done for you. All good.

[oliver]

Yeh I would have thought they'd weigh them out for you, but all good. Dry hopping is when you add hops to your fermenter at the end of fermentation. I'd wait 2-3 weeks to make sure everything is done and the yeast has had a chance to clean up after itself, then drop the hops in a couple of days before bottling.

[oliver]

So for volumes: you lose roughly 1 litre of water per kg of grain (due to absorption). I punched the numbers into beersmith for ya, you could start with 30L of strike water at 69 deg C (roughly aiming for 67 deg C as your starting mash temp). Then you'll need roughly 12L of sparge water at 75 deg C for the end of the mash.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Hey Oliver where you say 69c roughly aiming for 67c for mash temp on my Recipe kit says mash temp 64c for 60min for the single infusion.....so are they wrong? cheers.

[oliver]

Nah they're not wrong, I just guessed what temp you might want to mash at, 64 will be fine, basically you'll get a drier, lighter bodied beer with a lower final gravity by mashing lower, which should be fine. So if you want to hit a mash temp around 64, maybe try starting with strike water of 33L at 67 deg C. Don't worry if you end up with a mash temp a bit higher or lower than what you were aiming for, the mash is pretty forgiving :).