The Stormcock Community

I've been talking recently on facebook and twitter about my attempts at all-grain beer brewing. For a while now I've been doing kit brews, which are very easy - simply a matter of emptying one or two tins into a sterilised bucket, adding lots of water, pitching in yeast, and waiting. All the hard work of processing the malt into fermentable sugars, and boiling up with the hops, has already been done and presented in a water-reduced syrup in the tin.

All grain brewing on the other hand is taking the raw ingredients - malted grain, hops, water and yeast - and starting from scratch. So here's a pictorial description of my second ever all-grain brew.

Starting off, this is my setup. At the top is a hot water boiler, in the middle is the mash tun, and at the bottom is the fermenting bin. Yes, the mash tun really is based on a picnic coolbox. These are ideal since once the water and hops are in there, you want it to maintain a temperature for 90 minutes.

This is also part of the equipment. It's a coiled copper pipe with hoses. When you need to cool the "wort" (the liquid you get from the mash, i.e. the extracted goodness from the malt) you immerse this into the liquid and run cold water through it. It's important to cool the wort quickly after the process is finished as this encourages proteins in the wort to solidify and settle, making it more likely that you'll get a clear rather than cloudy pint.

This is the inside of the mash tun. Note that a tap has been fitted to the outside, and inside there is this little copper pipe construction. This helps drain the liquid out of the mash tun without having the grains come as well, after the mash is done.

The main ingredient. This is part of the original 25KG sack of pale malt. This cost around 30 quid and should last for about 5 brews of 40 pints.

At this point I have started heating water for the mash. It needs to be around 80C, then get transferred to the mash tun and settle to about 72C, then once the malt is added you want it to be about 66C which is an ideal mash temperature. It's not an exact science though, you can adjust the temperature with hot or cold water once in the tun.

Pouring the hot water into the mash tun. This is about 20 Litres at the start. I use an online "batch sparge" calculator to tell me the various water volumes - I'll explain more about sparging in a moment.

I'm measuring out the malt here. For this recipe I need 4250 grams of pale malt and 30 grams of black malt. The latter is to add some colour, mainly.

This is the last bit of malt, showing the black malt as well. I tend to measure out in 1kg portions and this is the final one.

This is an important part. Once the malt has been added it has to be mixed up into a porridge-like consistency and you have to make sure there aren't any pockets of dry malt left. You also, though, have to be careful not to overstir otherwise it gets waterlogged and will sink to the bottom in a sludge.

The temperature was just a tad low (65C) so I put the lid on the mash tun, and leave it for 90 minutes. The kitchen starts to smell interesting.

After 90 minutes, I have heated up more water (10 litres this time) to 85C and I add this to the mash. This is the start of "sparging" which is basically flushing more, hotter, water through the grains to drain off as much of the fermentable sugars (these are generated by enzymes in the malt while the 90 minutes of mash takes place) as possible. Once this sparge water is added, I stir up the mash again and leave for a time (15-20 minutes in this case).

Now, I start draining off the wort. The first few jugs are very cloudy with floating particles from the mash, so I return those to the top of the mash tun. Eventually the malt settles down and I can drain off the wort without too many floating bits in it.

This is one of the cloudier jugs of wort.

... and a clearer one, though the picture doesn't do it justice.

Here I'm draining the wort off into the fermenting bin.

And here is the mash tun in mid-drain. You can see the liquid level has lowered a lot and the grains are starting to show through it.

After a second sparge of 15 litres, I repeat the process. This time round I'm draining the wort straight into the boiler. I'll then add the contents of the fermenter back to the boiler, then lift the whole lot back to the top work surface. This is the only dangerous part of the process, as the liquid is hot and heavy. Protective clothing, particularly thick shoes, is advisable just in case of spills.

The mash tun almost at the end of the run-off.

Here are the hops! For this recipe I need 30G of Goldings and 30G of Styrian Goldings at the start of the 90 minute boil. This adds the bitter flavour to the beer.

In the meantime I've been heating up the wort. I don't have a very fast boiler, so it takes a while. But the surface of the wort looks great!

Adding the hops. Note that the liquid level is dangerously high. I added extra water during the initial mash to get the temperature right and forgot to subtract this later on. I ended up draining off a couple of litres of the wort, and re-added it later once some of the wort had boiled off. You typically expect to loose 15% of the wort during a 90 minute boil. This helps to remove nasties from the liquid (treatment odours and the like) and make it a bit stronger.

Now the "rolling boil" is under way and I start the 90 minute timer.

I measure out 20G of Styrian Golding hops for addition 10 minutes from the end. These are the "aroma" hops, that will add a hoppy smell to the beer rather than bitterness. The characteristic of hops changes according to whether it's been boiled and how long, as essential oils in the hops react with the boiling wort.

These tables get added just before the end to encourage solids from the wort to settle prior to draining into the fermenting bin.

20 minutes before the end I also lower the copper cooler into the boil to sterilise it. Once the boil is complete, everything that comes into contact with the wort must be scrupulously clean.

The boil, shortly before the end.

This is the yeast I use. I pitch this into the wort directly once it's cool enough (preferably 25C or less). Some people recommend you rehydrate the yeast first by leaving it in cooled boiled water for a while before adding to the wort but I have not bothered with this as yet.

Now the cool is under way, thanks to the hose from the garden. I have a feline helper.

I use the hot water from the cooler to clean the fermenting bin with some sterilising solution, ready for the brew.

And here we start running the wort into the fermenter. I do this from a great height to introduce air into the liquid, which helps the yeast in its early stages.

Look at the amount of gunge at the bottom of the boiler! This is mainly hops but also some proteins that have settled out during the "cold break" (the rapid cooling process).

Here's a sample hydrometer reading. You can't see it very well but it was just around 1039. The recipe suggests 1042 as a typical reading; because my wort is still quite warm the reading is a little low so I'm pretty much on target; maybe a tad low because I made a little too much wort.

The wort now in the fermenting bin.

All done. I need to wait for that foam to subside before moving the bucket.

The remains of the boil.

This is the hop strainer. It was attached to the tap at the bottom of the boiler and its purpose is to keep the hops in the boiler and not transfer them into the fermenting vessel.

That's it for pictures. I moved the wort to another room and pitched the yeast onto it after checking that it wasn't too hot. I will post another picture or two of the fermenting process, the barelling process, and the drinking process, in due course.