Jay's Brewing

One of the base malts that is rarely used is, 6-Row brewers malt.  A lot of people blow off 6-row as a base malt and it is often overlooked.  While I personally don’t use it very much, I do find myself at times looking at 6-row as the only possible solution for what I am trying to achieve.  So this post is here to help bring better light to 6-row and how to use it in your beer. A lot of people ask,  ”What is the difference between 6-row malt and 2-row malt?”.  Most of the time, homebrewers will use 2-row for their base malt.  But, there are times when using 6-row is better served and 2-row just does not have the properties that are needed to accomplish certain flavors or conversions which 6-row can.

So what is 6-row malt?

6-row malt is base malt, it’s a type of barley.  One thing to note about this particular type of malt is, it has less potential as far as the OG is concerned.  Essentially what that means for you as a brewer is, if you use 10 lbs of 2-row pale in one batch, and 10 lbs of 6-row in another batch, you would end up with a higher OG for the 2- row when comparing it against the 6-row.  The grain it self contains more proteins and it is huskier.

6 – row alt has a higher amount of amylase in it as well.  Amylase helps convert starches into fermentable sugars.  That’s why you will see with pumpkin beers or even cream beers (because they use corn), 6-row is usually the preferred malt to use.  If you are looking to do any cereal mashes, 6-row is the ticket that you want.  Having 6-row as your base malt will help get the most out of these different adjuncts to aid with flavor as well as ABV.

Flavor Of 6-Row

The flavor of 6-Row is pretty unique to me.  The only way I can ever describe it is, it has a, “grainy” flavor.  The flavor it’s self doesn’t have a lot of depth like M.O but defiantly has more flavor the 2-row brewers malt.  It’s this very, “old school”, flavor profile.  If you have tried any beers that are pre-probation recipes you’ll get the same flavor.

When To Use This Base Malt

I like it for some of my American lagers, it has this, “old school”, flavor as well as look to it.  As stated before, any beer that has corn, flaked rice, or any vegetables it would be good with.  I’ve made some, “old school”, American IPA’s with this malt that turned out pretty well.  I did a SMaSH brew with this and cluster hops, and called it a “Cluster IPA”.   Doing something like that kinda gives a feeling that you made one of the, “Original” American IPA’s.

My Personal Preference With 6-Row

When I go all-grain, I tend to lean on M.O or just American Brewers malt.  Both of these seem to do pretty well.  When I’m making beers that don’t have a lot of specialty grains I really like to use M.O.  It brings out this nice biscuit flavor.  To me M.O is nice if you want a malt forward beer or if you are hopping the beer like crazy because it has this nice, “back bone” to it.  If you really are looking for specialty grains in your beer, then 2-row pale/2 row- brewers malt is what you might want.  The 2-row pale and 2-row brewers malt doesn’t bring a lot of flavor into the beer.

And that is where 6-row usually falls.  Not a lot of space for it. It fit’s into this box that is narrow but well defined.  Any old style American lager, or any starch like beer, American 6-row is going to find its place.  Also the one thing about 6-Row is, it is pretty husky.  That makes it great for if you are making a wheat.  It will help prevent any stuck sparges.

Conclusion

At the end, it is an underused base malt but it’s easy to see why. There are times when it does make sense to use it and I would not avoid using it in those circumstances.  If you are looking to bring out any really cool flavors I would play around with it and maybe even make a SMaSH just to see how the flavors work with it.

I do want to hear about if you use 6-Row at all and if you do, when and how you use it!   Leave your comments below!

Cheers,

I sometimes hear when people get into all-grain brewing that they are not getting close to their expected original gravity.  You know that you are doing the all-grain process correctly, you are hitting your temperature as well as going by the books, yet you still are coming up with a lower gravity.  I know it can get frustrating - but if you fall into this category, don’t get frustrated and in the words of Charlie Papazian, “Have a homebrew.”.

It use to happen to me when I first started getting into all-grain brewing and these were some small adjustments that I made that really made some huge changes in my results.   Anyone who brews all-grain can do these and they will help you out.

The 3 Ways To Improve Your Efficiency

90 min mash

If you are currently just doing a 60 min mash, stepping it up to 90 min mash might help out with getting a better conversion.  Just a quick change of 30 min you might start to see your gravity creep up closer to the expected gravity.  It just allows more time for you to get all the sugars converted.

3 Runnings instead of 2

Normally with all-grain brewing (specifically batch sparging) you end up taking your first running and then you’ll sparge once to get your second running.  If you are not getting close to your original gravity split your sparge water into half and make a third running.  By doing this sometimes you can rinse more sugars off of the grains.  I personally like this one a lot because it won’t take too much time to do it and the results are pretty immediate.

Use more grains

This is one where you might think it is just giving up, to me it’s understanding the limitations of your equipment or brewing knowledge.   While this really doesn’t help with your efficiency, it will however get you the numbers that you should be getting.  If you were going to go down this road, just add an additional 15%-20% of base malt and there you go.

Conclusion

Personally if you are constantly hitting low numbers for your original gravity, I would start off by doing all of the above.  See where you stand after that.  If you are still hitting low, then we got some issues.  Most likely you will be pretty close or even a bit high.  I would start eliminating them one by one and see where your results stand.

First eliminate the adding extra grains, because that one doesn’t really solve the root of the problem just solves the symptom.  Then I would see what happens when you go back to a 60 min mash not a 90 min because  lets face it, time is valuable.  You might end up just finding out that you need to do 3 runnings not just 2.   Hope it helps ya, and keep on brewing.

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In the world of all-grain when it comes to sparging there are two main ways to do it: 1) Fly sparge 2) Batch sparge.

Well there is a 3rd way to do it, it’s called no sparge.  The way that this is done is, you add all of the water you need to your mash tun while you mash in.  The benefits to this is really simplicity.

The beer itself will turn out richer and have  bigger malt flavor (because it is your first running).  You are also avoiding getting all of the tannins from the husk into your beer.   The pH will change less when compared to fly sparging or batch sparging as well.

This method is really unorthodox in today’s world of homebrewing because of the grain to water ratio that is implemented.  I’ve also heard that if you are going to do a no sparge technique, use about 20% more grains (particularly base malts)  when looking at the recipe you normally would make.  Adding more grains is to help insure you are getting the proper amount of fermentable sugars for the recipe.  The no sparge technique can be used with smaller grain bills (browns, milds).

Just another thing to consider when thinking about your next all grain batch.

Cheers,

Related Post

All-Grain Series

5 Base Malts

5 Brewing Personalites

7 Ways To Clear Your Beer

If you made it to this point in the series you have the knowledge to start brewing all-grain.

You need:

Recipe 

Mash Tun

Extra Cooler

Turkey Burner

Big Pot (7 gallons +)

I brewed this batch of beer with one of my buddies and took pictures of it so we’ll go with this recipe.  It kinda falls under a mixer of ingredients that we had lying around but it is what I would refer to as an easy drinking beer.  You could give this to about anyone and they would enjoy it.

8 lbs – 2-row

1 lb – biscuit malt

8 oz – crystal 20l 

1 oz  Fuggle (60min)

1 oz Fuggle (15min)

So you need to either mill up those grains  or when you go to you order the grains ask for them to be milled.

AND NOW WE ARE READY!

You’ll see that in the pictures I was using one of the mash tuns that is a pot, but it’s the same process if you made your own.

You want to go to this link and type in the amount of grains you have, what temp they are at, and what temp you are going to be mashing at.   When it comes to the part that says “Constants” just leave them unless you know what you’re talking about.

What I put in was

Grains: 9.5 lbs

Grain Temp: 68 F

Target Mash: 152 F

What I got Was

Total Water Needed: 8.6 gallons (we’ll just use 9 gallons)

Mash Water Needed: 3.16 gallons (I will use 3.5 gallons)

Sparge Water Needed: 5.44 gallon (I will use 5.5 gallons)

Strike Water Temp: 164.63 F ( I am doing 165F)

And that should get you about 6.37 gallons of pre boil…

I start off by heating up the sparge water. This is the water that is going to be used to rinse the grains.  I put this in an extra cooler.  The sparge water I heat up to 175F, and it is 5.5 gallons that I need.  After I put that in the extra cooler, I close the top and forget about it for a bit.

After that, I end up heating up the mash water which is 3.5 gallons to 165F.  Put that in your mash tun, then add your grains.

Once you have added your grains stir them around and make sure that it doesn’t have any clumps in them.  Check the temp.

For your first batch I wouldn’t worry too much about hitting 152 exactly.  You should be in the ballpark though, 149-154.

If you are low, take some water (1 qt)  throw that on your stove bring that up to a near boil and slowly add that to your mash.  Stop when you get in the ballpark of 149-154.

If you are high on temp, start stirring and that usually cools it off.  If you are really high add some cool water (1 qt) and stir.

What’s nice about these pots which are mash tuns are, if you are low in the temp you just turn on the heat, and the solution is solved.

Considering that you haven’t blown a socket yet and you’re still in the game, we let the mash sit for 1 hour.  At this point I would play your favorite pump up mix because it’s going to be a little bit.

An hour has passed and it’s time for the next step, VORLAUFING.  Take a pitcher of some sort, put it under your spigot and open it very slowly.  Collect it  and pour it back on top of your mash.  When you pour it back over your mash do it slowly over a spoon.

The idea behind this is that you are essentially creating a filter with your grain bed.  Each time you do this you will see less, “floaties” in the mixture.  The objective is to have the clarity similar to that of freshly pressed apple cider.   It normally takes about 12 times of doing it with taking about a liter or two of the mash each time.

Once the clarity is that which you want, open the spigot slowly and start collecting the wort in your brewing pot.  This is referred to as your first running.

Once there is a trickle of water coming out the spigot on to the next step.  Now remember that water we set aside in the beginning?  Close your spigot and then pour that water on top of the grain bed.  Stir around breaking up the clumps and let it sit for about 10 min.

Do the VORLAUFING process once again and then collect it in your pot.
What you collected is your second running.  You should have about 6.5 gallons of wort now in your pot.  At this point, you are at the same point that you would have been at if you just added malt extract.

So bring the pot to a boil, and just add the hops when needed.

Pretty easy right?

The grains which you have you can just throw those away or I’ve heard of people making dog biscuits out of them if you didn’t want to throw them away.  I would not put them in the garden however.  I heard this couple doing that up in Alexandria, next morning they had 15 rats the size of cats eating away at the grains, so I would not advise.

But that really is all-grain brewing.  Not to hard.  I hope that this series added some clarification to it.   Another piece of advice, start off with forgiving recipes not delicate ones.  Milds, browns, darker pale ales – those  are pretty forgiving.

Good luck!

The biggest thing that separates extract with specialty grain brewers to all-grain brewers is that with all-grain brewers you need a vessel called a, “Mash-Tun”.  You can buy these online but honestly I don’t see the point.  You can make them for a fraction of the cost and you don’t need any special tools.

But before I dive into how to build, I need to point out a few key points. When you are buying a cooler, I would get 2 of them.  One is going to turn into your mash tun and the other is going to be where you hold hot water.  So if you are going to go cheap, don’t go cheap on the mash tun but the one to hold the hot water.  You want something that also can hold about 10 gallons of water.

When you build your own mash tun there are two different approaches that are pretty popular.  One you put a stainless tube in a cooler and that is the easiest way.  I really don’t prefer this one based off my own experience.  What would happen  is that the tube would collapse on itself and end up making a stuck sparge.  So even though it was easy to put together, it turned into a big pain every time.

The other way to do it is a bit more time consuming but well worth it.  By the way I’ll put up pictures of one I just built with a friend of mine, but it took us 30 minutes.  The other way is that you make a manifold with CPVC piping on the bottom of the cooler.  So below are the directions on how to do the different steps.

I could not do a better job then some other blogs out on the internet so I copied what they had and the link is found by them as well.

How to make a Coffin Mash Tun

A local homebrewer has long had a large cooler he mashes in that has been dubbed the coffin. For NHD 2006 we decided to make a coffin for club use (CARBOY) and to do a 20+ gallon batch of 1.090 beer. The large cooler was a donation to the club by a member so all that was needed was the parts to assemble the system and the time to drill the tubing. The cooler that was donated was about 140 qt. Having made a 100qt cooler conversion for another brewer out of CPVC, I knew that it could easily be accomplished out of a few parts from the local home improvement store and local homebrewing shop. It uses a bottling spigot much like my other two rectangular mash tuns but then instead of a coil and copper, it is laterals of CPVC. If we were batch sparging we could have used a single outlet point and a braid or a SS scrubbie on the back of the bottling spigot, but due to the need to maximize grain in the batch, not enough room remained for the sparge water additions, so we elected to make a fly sparge system. The key is to keep the laterals off the walls to avoid channeling through the grain. Here is the parts list and the prices paid (including tax):

Parts for the manifold (note that three Tees are not pictured)

The layout is pretty simple. The bottling spigot will be put into the cooler through an enlarged drain hole after the old drain is removed. The 3/4″ Threaded Female connector will then be used on the backside of the bottling spigot and additional gaskets as needed. The bushing will reduce the size from 3/4″ to the 1/2″ CPVC.

From there the 45º Elbows can be used to get the pipe system to lay flat on the bottom of the cooler. The 90º Elbows are for the corners and the Tees are for the middle laterals and connecting to the 45º Elbow section. Of course your cooler configuration may differ, some coolers have the drain lower and some higher, your parts list would need to be adjusted for your configuration and cooler. In looking at the bottom inside of the tun (be sure to measure the bottom, not the top, most coolers taper), it became apparent that there was only enough room for 3 laterals if space was to be left at the sides to avoid channeling. I like to drill everything in the field, lats and connecting pieces, but I don’t drill any fittings. Let’s run through the tun fabrication from start to finish. First up, remove the existing cooler drain.

The cooler drain is generally threaded with a coupler tightened on the inside and a few gaskets. Once this is removed the hole may need to be enlarged. If so mark the cooler using a gasket from the bottling spigot as the guide and then remove the marked area.

For enlarging the drain hole I use a spiral saw, and mine just happens to be coordless. I have used other methods in the past from utility knives to saws and most are too violent for the operation and can end up damaging the cooler.

Once the hole is enlarged, insert the Bottling spigot with a gasket on the outside and at least one on the inside. Then tighten down the 3/4″ Threaded female. On this cooler it took two inside gaskets to make that connection.

After the spigot is installed the next piece is the bushing and then later you must figure a method to either move upward to the manifold or downward. If upward you may be able to use a single 45º Elbow, on ours to move downward it took two 45º Elbows and some transition pipe. This is probably the most difficult part to create so save it for last. Move on to the manifold. Try to stay 2″ off the walls at all times. That should allow you to cut the laterals, three in this cooler. Measure the inside length and cut the lats 5-6″ shorter. 2″ for each end and ~1″ for the elbow. You can always recut them even shorter, but to add back will take a coupler. The nice thing is that the pipe is extremely inexpensive if more is required. Once those are cut, trial fit them with the elbows in the bottom to see how you did. In my case the middle lateral had to be moved down in order to accomodate the transition piece for the manifold to lay flat. If this is the same in your case, just cut a short 1-2″ piece of pipe for the bushing, put on the 45º Elbow and then take the other elbow and a short straight edge and find the point where you can get them lined up and one is on the bottom of the cooler at a 90º angle to any lateral. In this cooler it took a cross piece and a few extra Tees to make the connection work out.

Once the lats and the connection to the back of the valve is decided, drill the bottom side of every pipe piece that lays flat to the bottom and that is 2″ away from the walls with a 5/64″ bit. I used a two speed cordless drill and found that the low speed setting was best. Put the holes fairly close together, no more than 1/2″ apart.

After drilling, reinstall the mainfold and see if any joints need gluing. Most of the time, none will. In this cooler only one required glue. Use cleaner and glue designed for CPVC.

Now you’ll have a coffin mash tun all ready for those team brews!

This tun was used for our2006 NHD brew and achieved 78% efficiency on a 70 lb grist and a 23 gallon finished batch size.

NOTE: Use CPVC for the mash tun manifold, not PVC. CPVC is made for the temperature ranges of mashing, PVC is not.

http://www.ipass.net/mpdixon/Homebrew/CoffinMash.htm

The Other Method

Cheap and Easy Mash Tun Rubbermaid cooler 48 quart from Menards.  Cost was $13.99.  (now it is on sale for $10.67!)  I knew this would work because a guy named Kevin used this same one (except mine has much fancier and deluxe tropical designs…) and so did Denny.  Both of their web pages helped me get ideas.

Braided Stainless Steel toilet supply line tube (Menards):  $3.19

4 clamps at $.58 each:   $2.32

Plastic valve 3/8″:  $1.50

5 feet hi-temp 3/8″ tubing 1.60/foot: $8.00

48 quart cooler:   $13.99

Total cost =    $29.00

Considering a cooler conversion kit can cost $30 itself, this appears to be a cheap and easy way to get into all-grain brewing.  I thought I would start cheap and easy, and if I ever want to upgrade, I can.  

OK here comes my tubing sob story.  I figured I needed hi-temp tubing so I bought the 3/8″ stuff (the wider of the two  typical sizes, the other being 1/4″).  Now I know I don’t.  I could have saved a few $ and made it even cheaper if I had not bought it, but I’m sure it’ll work fine.  Where I ran into trouble was in trying to get the hi-temp tubing through the spigot.  I WAS able to get the non hi-temp 3/8″ tubing through because its walls are a little thinner.  But the walls of the hi-temp tubing make it just too big to pull through no matter how tapered I made the tubing (see above).  That is when I found out that I can get away with using the non-hi-temp (and slightly smaller) 3/8″ tubing for the inner part of the mash tun.  I did use the hi-temp stuff I bought on the other side of the valve.  Bored yet?!

This was the open end of the braided tube.  I sawed off the ends seconds with a hack saw.  Then I pulled the rubber tube out with a pliers.  I decided to fold over the end, bend it onto itself with a pliers, and tighten a clamp as far as it can go.  All I really have to do is keep grain material from getting into the end and that should work.  

Here is the braided tube before I put it over the plastic tubing.  You can see how tight the tubing is in the spigot as it is slightly collapsed where it goes through.  After it was done I filled it with some water and it did not leak.  The water ran pretty quickly out of it through the tubing too, so I think I will get a good rate of collecting wort.

At left is the non hi-temp tubing.  At right is the hi-temp.  The inner diameter is the same (3/8″) but the outer diameter varies, with the hi temp being thicker.

Here’s the Midway Mash Tun ready for action.  It’s no different than a lot of guys have made but I thought I’d post how I did it.

http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/mashtun.htm

Now What?!

Now all you need is a few more things and you can start your brewing.

1. A burner – check out amazon or you local homebrew shop.  You want a turkey burner essentially.
2. Large pot – Get a large stainless steel pot 7.5 gallons at the minimum.  You’re going to be boiling 6.5 gallons of water so keep that in mind.
3. A pump up song – choose a song that you will play when you are going to put in the mash.  It’s a big moment – the song will add to the drama that will unfold.

That’s it!  The next post for this series we’re making the brew so get pumped! I still remember my first all-grain batch like it was yesterday, I was blasted, “Framed” by Chris Knight.  

Do you remember your first batch of brew or all-grain batch? Leave it in the comments below if you got a story .

FINAL STEP CLICK HERE

Example With Pilsner Malt

Example With Amber Malt

but you still need to include the ratio listed above that is 95% is 2 row and 5% is crystal malt.

The next part of the all-grain series is a basic overview of some main terms that are used to describe aspects of all-grain brewing.  While right now it may seem as you are looking at random puzzle pieces, trust me the picture will start to become more clear as we work through everything and get up to your first batch.  Soon enough everything will be more connected.

Mashing

Mashing is a term for when grains are steeped in hot water, much like steeping for extract with specialty grains. The difference is that when all-grain brewers mash we are actually creating the malt extract that extract with specialty grain brewers are using.  This is actually the only difference in the whole process, this one step.

During mashing you are breaking down starches and enzymes.  This is where your level of control comes into play.  Depending on what you are trying to accomplish you can work your mash at different temps.  While we could really get into the different levels control at the different temps, you really won’t need to know a lot of the enzymes broken down at different temps.  Just go by a rule of thumb with this.  You will want to mash your brew most likely between 149-156.  When looking at this range, know that the lower the temp range (149) will get you a thinner beer with more fermentable sugars (higher alcohol).  On the upper range (156) it will give you a sweeter beer with less fermentable sugars (lower alcohol).

Mash Tun/Lautering Tun

This is the vessel which the grains and strike water go into.

Strike Water

This is the water that is added in with the grains to make the mash.  This water is crucial to get at least close to what you are looking for when looking at the mash temp.  If your feeling like SWAGing  (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) it for what temp you need to heat your water up to feel free, but there are free calculators out there to help you out as well.  What you end up doing is heating the water up to the designated temp, and then adding it in with your grains.  You should be pretty close to the mash temp that you want.  There are ways to adjust if your not.

Too Hot – Stir like crazy until it drops in temp

Too Cold – Add hot water

Single Temp Infusion

This is the type of brewing that we are going to be doing for the first batch.  This type of mashing is by far the simplest and should give you the results that you are looking for most beer styles.  Usually the way it works is that you will mash in at about 155 for an hour.  The way to maintain temp for an hour is a cooler which will be converted into a mash tun.  We’ll show you how to build that in a future post.  Some where on the internet I read that about 90% of the beers today are brewed this way.  I’m not exactly sure about that, I can just tell you that it wouldn’t surprise me.

Multiple Temp Rest Mashing

This gets a bit complicated and we won’t be doing it for the first batch.  But I still it’s worth knowing about at least a basic level of understanding.   Pretty much in a nutshell you end up starting at a lower temperature and you will add heat to the mash and letting it sit at different temps for a period of time.  If you know what your doing, you can build the sugar profiles to exactly what you’re looking for.  If you’re working out of a picnic cooler for this technique it’s a bit of pain.  The ideal set up is something like a pot, with a false bottom where you can add heat via propane rather then by water.  So at the end of this, don’t worry you won’t be doing it for your first batch.

This procedure really works well for doing some pretty cool lagers, but like I said, you can brew just about everything with the single infusion method.

Setting The Mill For The Right Gap

The thing with all-grain is that the better the crush of the grains the better your mash is going to be.  You need it so the husk are broken off but intact, not to turn it into flour.  If you are not looking at buying your own grain mill then your homebrew shop should be able to crush grains for you.  Just assume that they are going to be crushing at the correct level.

If you are looking at getting your own set up, I love barley crushers.  To me these really set the standard.  You can adjust the distance but I believe they come ready to go.  There are fancier ones out there but they cost more.  We have one at the shop, and it’s crushed thousands of pounds of grains; not a peep of discomfort out of that thing yet.  If you wanted to adjust the distance between the rollers you want to go somewhere between .035-.042 inch.  The way to measure the distance you need a feeler gauge.  They’re cheap don’t worry ($5).  Oh by the way, if you get your own mill, just hook a drill up to it.  Makes life better then cracking 15lbs of grains by hand.

Grain Bed

This is where the grains will settle out in your mash tun.  Don’t disturb the bed.

Vorlaufing

This is a technique to get the beer cleared up.  What you end up doing is recirculating the beer until it looks like unfiltered apple juice.

Conclusion:

While all of these terms may mean nothing to you at the moment, they are part of the vocabulary for all-grain.  In extract with specialty grains you learned “steeping”, with all-grain brewing there is a bit more of a vocabulary.  You end up using these words when going through the process.  It will all start to make sense in a little.  All that’s left is learning how to convert your recipes from extract into all-grain and also how to build the equipment.  After that we’re good to go for the first all-grain experience.  It may seem like a lot at the moment but at the end you’re going to breeze through your first all-grain batch and also be able to share this knowledge with others.

NEXT STEP CLICK HERE

If your thinking about diving into all-grain brewing and have been reading different articles online about how to do it, you have come across the last one that you will need to read.  All-grain brewing is really not that hard, in fact it’s easy.

To make the switch to all-grain brewing we’ll go through a comprehensive step by step series answering the questions of, “Why, What & How?”  The first real question that needs to be answered though is, “Why?”.  After we get that addressed, we can move on.  Our goal with this step-by-step guide is to be able to make your switch into all-grain as easy as possible.  You will be confident enough with the idea of all-grain brewing your first will not only a sucess but, you will have the knowledge to teach your friends and family how to all-grain.

Exctract brewers will normally ask a few questions when getting intrested in the world of all-grain. I have a feeling that these questions are based off of assumptions of some loose, “facts” that are on the internet that should be cleared up before we dive in any further.  Time to tackle these one by one so we can get clarification and move on to the next step.  Just a quick note: I do both extract with specialty grains and all-grain.  It just depends on what mood I’m in, I’ll switch between the two.  Both are fun to me and also I really don’t care which one I do.  To me one isn’t better then the other, it’s all around fun.  So I really have no bias, just telling you how I see it.

Is all grain brewing cheaper?

Sometimes it can be.  A lot of people think that all-grain brewing is cheaper then extract brewing.  It is, in a sense that grains such as base malts are less expensive then malt extracts but in all actuality the difference is not a ton cheaper if you are just buying recipe to recipe (10lbs-15lbs of base malt at a time).  You save money doing all-grain brewing when you buy your base malts by bulk.

To show this, here is the following example from my own personal experience.

A 50 lbs bag of 2-row cost ruffly $45.  When I all-grain brew I usually use on average 10 lbs of base malts.  So one bag can get me 5 recipes out of it.  So we start with now $9 dollars a recipe.  Then you can assume using a few specialty grains, we’ll call it $5 worth of specialty grains just to make it easy – so we’re up to $14.  Throw in a few hops $5 dollars worth, up to $19.  And that’s where it stops for me because I culture my own yeast, but if you didn’t put on another $7-8 for good liquid yeast.  At the end of it your spending $26 per recipe.  So it’s $13 per case of brew.  Now that’s what I call saving money.  If you can culture your own yeast (which we have a post about it) you can make brew for about $9.50 per case.  But if you’re brewing per recipe figure that 10 lbs of 2 row might cost about $15-$20, so per recipe with that in mind you would be spending about $37 per recipe ($18.50 per case).  See, not a huge savings compared to when buying by bulk.

Going back to it, do you save money?  If you buy bulk you will.  In the beginning for your first few all-grain brews, just buy for the recipe and find out what base malts you like. Once you know what you like and have tried a bunch out, that’s when I would get a big bag.  My guess is it’s going to be 2-row or M.O.  But that’s up to you and what recipes you tend to make.

Does it really taste better?

I personally love this one.  If your an all-grain brewer (including myself don’t forget) you are going to have to answer, “Yes it taste better”, you just have to! If you didn’t why are you spending twice as long brewing if your really not saving that much money batch to batch?  So the answer is yes… kinda…

Honestly, I make some really good extract with specialty grain brews.  Some which most people wouldn’t know if its all-grain or extract brews.  At the end though people say that extract brewing has a tang to it.  I’m not really sure what this, “tang” is.  Never tasted it honestly.  But trust me, I believe you if you are reading this, and you happen to be the person telling me about this so called, “tang” in the beer.  I can tell you I haven’t had a, “tang” like flavor all-grain brewing.

Figure this though, (and I guess this is a legitimate argument) the brews that you buy from the store are made with an all-grain method, not extract.  So there has to be some truth in it tasting a certain way, “better” might not be the word I’m looking for, but who knows.

To get back to the answer.  Couldn’t really tell you if it taste better.  All-grain brewers have an unspoken rule, it’s to say there beer taste better when it’s all-grain verses extract.

Do you have more control?

If you know what your doing, yes.  If you don’t know what your doing you can screw up your all-grain by accident because of the level of control you do have.

The best way to think of this is driving a stick versus an automatic.  If you know how to drive stick it can be pretty fun.  You can really do exactly what you want to do, you can shift up and down making the car operate to the level that you want, maybe even show off.  Until you figure it out though, normally it can be discouraging and or annoying making you scream, “WHY CAN’T I JUST DRIVE?!”.

So  just know that you will have more control.  What is that particular control and how to use it will be another post.

Is all-grain brewing harder?

Simple answer is, nope.  A lot of people especially home brew shop owners and for the love of G-d I don’t know why, make all-grain brewing out to be some algorithm that makes you believe you have to be, “The chosen one” to understand it and have the ability to figure it out.   Truthfully that is the biggest fib I’ve ever heard.  Just remember, people were brewing all-grain beer by candel light.  With the technology and advancements we have today, easy as pie.

I just have to put this out there once and for all (not that it really will change anything anyone else will say), all-grain brewing is not any harder, of course like anything in life you can make it harder, hell you can make it near impossible but if you are just trying to brew a batch of beer with only grains; not hard.

That’s not to say it doesn’t take longer.  It takes about twice as long.  For your first all-grain batch, we’ll walk you threw it all step-by-step when we get to that point.  But if you didn’t want to do our recipe expect it take 6 hours (doing our recipe plan for about 4 hours start to finish, but we’ll see what we end up doing).  No joke.  After that you can usually expect 4 hours once you figure out how to multitask through the whole process.  For your first batch if your riding solo with no help you will be figuring out how to do everything and when to heat water when to do this and that, so it takes longer.  So here’s a quick piece of advice, start it in the morning for your first batch if possible.

Is it expensive to get the hardware for all-grain brewing?

You don’t need complicated stuff to get started.  Everything that you need you can either build it yourself, or get at a homebrew shop.  You don’t need a complicated brewing sculpture that cost $6000 to get started, even though they are pretty sweet.

Another post is going to be about building the stuff you need on a budget.  We’ll have step by step instructions on how to do it as well.

So at the end of it why do I personally do it..?

For me brewing is fun, I don’t take it too serious, it’s a hobby that I honestly just enjoy.  It’s not about the money that you save or the control I just think that all- grain brewing is just a lot of fun for a couple reasons.

I enjoy making beer from scratch.  I’m part of the whole process from start to finish.  Pretty cool.  Ya it takes 4 hours instead of 2 but, the fact of the matter is if I got time to kill or I know some buds want to smoke a cigar and drink some brews doesn’t really matter to me.   Another reason I enjoy it is you can make some recipes that are near impossible to make if your just an extract with specialty grains brewer.  Some all-grain recipes have you using base malts  like, munich, vienna, rye.  Any of those don’t have an equivilant or an easy one for extract brewing.

Like I said, I do both extract and all-grain brewing.  I wish someone would have told me when getting started into the hobby of brewing my own beer  just to buy all the stuff that I needed to get for all-grain.  All-grain equipment can be used for extract with specialty grain brewing but not the other way around.   When I got started brewing I heard the same stuff that most everyone else heard, “You should do X amount of recipes  before doing an all-grain recipe.”  Except, I have given the complete opposite advice to some customers.  If they tell me they are thinking about doing all-grain, I tell them, “Do it.”  If all else fails you will have the stuff for extract brewing if you don’t like all-grain brewing.

Conclusion:

Now that you know some main over points with all-grain brewing, and if your still thinking about it’s time to make the next step.  We’ll discuss that as a part of our series of extract to all-grain.  

If you live in an apartment where you can’t use a burner, it does make a bit more tricky.  So I’m thinking about putting a special bonus together for those that can’t have use much equipment for all- grain brewing.   Should be fun, and pretty old school also.

So that really is it as an overview of the all-grain brewing madness, now the journey continues.

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