LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN ALL-GRAIN HOMEBREWS thethe bestbest ofof ® Guide to All-Grain Brewing Master the techniques, equipment, and tips to go from grain to glass brewing your own great beer Special Newsstand-Only Issue U.S. $10.00 • CAN $10.00 thethe bestbest ofof ® Guide to All-Grain Brewing The Basics 4 Your First All-Grain Beer 5 Safety 8 Base Malts 10 Extract to All-Grain 14 Milling 16 Milling your own Grains 17 Mashing 21 Mash Programs 22 Making the Most of Your Mashes 25 Control Mash Thickness 28 Brew in a Bag 30 Water Chemistry and pH 36 Understanding pH 37 Measuring pH 38 Water Treatments 41 Reading A Water Report 45 Lautering 46 A Guide to Lautering 47 Fly Sparging 48 Troubleshooting a Stuck Sparge 53 Batch Sparging 56 No-Sparge Brewing 60 Lautering Efficiency 63 Advanced All-Grain 67 Step Mashing 68 Decoction Mashing 73 Cereal Mashing 76 Sour Mashing 79 Turbid Mashing 81 RIMS and HERMS 82 Troubleshooting 86 thethe bestbest ofof ® Guide to All-Grain Brewing EDITOR Betsy Parks ART DIRECTOR Coleen Jewett Heingartner ASSISTANT EDITOR Dawson Raspuzzi TECHNICAL EDITOR Ashton Lewis EDITORIAL INTERN Lauren Keyes CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Chris Bible, Christian Lavender, Marc Martin, Terry Foster, Glenn BurnSilver, Kristin Grant, Forrest Whitesides, Jamil Zainasheff CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Shawn Turner, Jim Woodward, Chris Champine CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Charles A. Parker, Les Jörgensen PUBLISHER Brad Ring ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & ADVERTISING DIRECTOR BYO Kiev Rattee RECIPE ADVERTISING SALES COORDINATOR & RECIPE EDITOR STANDARDIZATION Dave Green Extract efficiency: 65% EVENTS & MARKETING COORDINATOR (i.e. — 1 pound of 2-row malt, which has a Jannell Kristiansen potential extract value of 1.037 in one gallon BOOKKEEPER of water, would yield a wort of 1.024.) Faith Alberti Extract values SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER for malt extract: Anita Draper liquid malt extract NEWSSTAND DIRECTOR (LME) = 1.033–1.037 Carl Kopf dried malt extract (DME) = 1.045 EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD Potential Tomme Arthur • Port Brewing/Lost Abbey Steve Bader • Bader Beer and Wine Supply extract for grains: David Berg • August Schell Brewing Co. John “JB” Brack • Craft Beer Seminars 2-row base malts = 1.037–1.038 Horst Dornbusch • Beer Author Greg Doss • Wyeast Laboratories wheat malt = 1.037 Chris Graham • MoreBeer! Bob Hansen • Briess Malt & Ingredients Co. 6-row base malts = 1.035 Anita Johnson • Great Fermentations (IN) John Maier • Rogue Ales Paul Manzo • Homebrew Consultant Munich malt = 1.035 Ralph Olson • Hopunion USA Inc. Mitch Steele • Stone Brewing Co. Vienna malt = 1.035 Mark & Tess Szamatulski • Maltose Express John Weerts • Homebrew Consultant crystal malts = 1.033–1.035 Chris White • White Labs Anne Whyte • Vermont Homebrew Supply David Wills • Freshops chocolate malts = 1.034 dark roasted grains = 1.024–1.026 SUBSCRIPTIONS ONLY EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OFFICE flaked maize and rice = 1.037–1.038 Brew Your Own P.O. Box 469121 • Escondido, CA 92046 Brew Your Own Hops: Tel: (800) 900-7594 • M-F 8:30-5:00 PST 5515 Main Street E-mail: [email protected] • Fax: (760) 738-4805 Manchester Center, VT 05255 We calculate IBUs based on 25% hop Special Subscription Offer Tel: (802) 362-3981 Fax: (802) 362-2377 utilization for a one-hour boil of hop pellets at 8 issues for $28.00 Email: [email protected] specific gravities less than 1.050. For post- boil hop stands, we calculate IBUs based on ADVERTISING CONTACT: Kiev Rattee ([email protected]) 10% hop utilization for 30-minute hop stands EDITORIAL CONTACT: Betsy Parks ([email protected]) at specific gravities less than 1.050. FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/BrewYourOwn TWITTER: @BrewYourOwn 2 Brew Your Own Guide To All-Grain Brewing THE HOW-TO HOMEBREW BEER MAGAZINE ® YOUR OWN GREAT Gifts For You Or Your Brewing Shirts, Sweats, Hats & Lots More! Buddies Go to www.cafepress.com/brewyourown and order your Brew Gear today! www.cafepress.com/brewyourown SHOW THE WORLD YOU’RE A HOMEBREWER! BYO.COM 3 Your First All-Grain Beer Pg. 5 Safety THE Pg. 8 Base Malts Pg. 10 Extract to All-Grain BASICS Pg. 14 While there is a sea of information about all-grain brewing, the core of what you need to know about brewing beer with malted grains is not complicated. The most important process to understand when stepping up to all-grain brewing is mashing, where malts are steeped in hot water to activate their enzymes and convert the starches into fermentable sugars. When this con- version is complete, the solution you are left with is the wort. If you have already brewed with extract, this step is done for you by the malt extract manufacturer. Malt extract is simply wort made from malted grains that have been mashed and the resulting liquid condensed into syrup or dried into a powder. If you’re ready to make your own all-grain wort, get the basics under your belt and you’ll be brewing in no time. Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus 4 Brew Your Own Guide To All-Grain Brewing Your First ALL-GRAIN BEER Brew a homebrew with malted grains from start to finish All-grain by Chris Colby “brewing differs There are a couple of different ways to approach your first all-grain brew day. There is a vast amount of information in the homebrew literature, in print and on from extract the Web, about all-grain brewing, and you could try to read most of it first and then proceed. Or, you could jump right in. brewing mainly Firstly, although there is a lot of interesting technical information out there, you really only need to grasp a few key ideas to get started. As you continue to “ brew, you can keep learning and fill in any gaps in your education. in the wort Secondly, learning to brew well at home requires some practical experience that you can only get by actually brewing . on your equipment, with your water, etc. Getting to know the mechanics of brewing — including the quirks of production your setup — is just as important, in terms of beer quality, as knowing many of the more advanced academic ideas. Acquiring knowledge along both these paths stage. at the same time will speed your journey from novice to experienced brewer. In this article, we’ll cover the bare minimum of technical information you need to get started and give a practical guide to successfully brewing your first all-grain beer. It is assumed that you are already familiar with brewing with malt extracts. Required Knowledge (The Minimum) All-grain brewing differs from extract brewing mainly in the wort production stage.T As an extract brewer, you made your wort by dissolving malt extract in water, and likely steeping some specialty grains to add some additional flavors. As an all-grain brewer, you will make your wort from malted grains and water. The basic idea behind all-grain wort production is this: You soak crushed, malted grains in hot water, then drain away the resulting liquid, which is your wort. That’s it. There are, of course, subtleties that you will learn about later — how finely do you crush the malt, how hot should the grain and water mixture be, how fast do you drain the wort, etc. — but that’s the basic idea. If you have been boiling a dense wort of dissolved malt extract and then dilut- ing it to working strength in your fermenter, you will now be boiling (and cooling) your full wort volume as well. Once your wort is in the fermenter, fermentation and conditioning is handled in the same way as in extract brewing. Equipment A typical all-grain homebrew set up includes three vessels. First, a vessel to heat Photos by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus all the water for your brewing session. As brewing water is sometimes called Your first all-grain beer can be as simple as brewing liquor, the name of this vessel is the hot liquor tank, or HLT. Second, a soaking crushed grains in hot water. BYO.COM 5 vessel to hold the grains for both mash- malt crushed at your homebrew shop. ing (soaking the crushed grains) and When it’s time to brew, take a handful lautering (separating the wort from of malt and look at it. With a good the spent grains). This is called a mash/ crush, you should see almost no whole lauter tun (in commercial brewing, kernels. Most kernels should be broken these are often separate vessels). This into two to four pieces. (We will dis- needs to have a false bottom or some cuss milling more in depth starting on sort of manifold installed to let the page 16 of this issue.) wort flow from the vessel while retain- If you’ve bought, or have access ing the spent grains. You will also need to, a grain mill, you will gain experience a large paddle to stir the mash. Lastly, over time adjusting it to get the best you need a vessel to boil the wort in, crush for you. For your first crush, called the kettle. however, see if the mill has a “default” A 5-gallon (19 L) homebrewery setting. This is usually 0.045 inches can consist of three 10-gallon/40-quart (0.11 cm). This should give you a good (38-L) vessels. Systems such as this crush and you can start fiddling with work well for most average to moder- adjusting the mill gap when you get ately-big brews. more experience. If you don’t already have a wort The goal of the crush is to break chiller, you will need one.