Commence All Grain!

Yesterday I did my first all grain brew! This has been the reason for my lack of brewing recently. I have been saving money to make the switch to all grain. This couldn't have come at a better time because I have nearly drained the keezer dry (something I thought wouldn't happen once it was full). For my first all grain brew I decided to get a recipe kit and eliminate one possible source of error with me getting the wrong grains or some other nonsense. The kit I chose was Dawson's Multigrain Red from Northern Brewer. This should be a nice beer for the summer and be a quick addition to the keezer.

The brew day did not start off well. I could not find one of the pieces of the copper manifold I made for my mash tun. After an hour of searching I found the tube and the brewday officially started. I preheated the mash tun with some hot water out of the tap and drained it into my sanitizer bucket to have sanitizer for my fermenter. While the mash tun was preheating, I brought some water up to mash temperature on the stove with a little help from a heatstick. Beersmith proved invaluable to helping me figure out temperatures.

When I had my mash water at the right temperature, I poured it into the mash tun. I then added all of the grain for the recipe and gave it a little stir to make sure I didn't have any dough balls. I checked the temperature of the mash and I hit my mash temp on the first try! I was thrilled and amazed. I put the lid on the cooler and set the timer for 60 minutes. After the timer went off I opened up the mash tun to a wonderful aroma. I stuck my thermometer in the mash and I had only lost 1 degree over the mash.

The mash

I drained the mash tun and did a batch sparge with some water I was heating up during the mash. Once I had collected all the wort I needed (according to Beersmith) I started to bring it to a boil. With the heatstick and the stove I was able to bring almost 7 gallons of wort to a boil. The stove was then able to maintain the boil after I pulled the heatstick out. The boil went smoothly and I transferred into the fermenter with no issues.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience. It was probably my smoothest brew day to date. I was not expecting that to be the case considering I was adding a whole new component to my brew day. I didn't take a pre-boil gravity reading so I am not sure what my efficiency is, but I nailed my original gravity so I am guessing it is near the 75% that Beersmith used to calculate everything.