Just finished brewing my first all grain batch! After 2 years of extract Brewing stepped up and made the switch. Made a 5 gallon batch of a single hop IPA, came out at 1.058 OG! I have to think it was reading all the forum posts on here that made my first go so successful. Thanks to everyone who posts and answers all these questions! Happy 4th of July! 'Merica!!!
My System, its not fancy, but it worked!
11lbs grain… mash @152 with 13.75q for 60m
sparge @ 170 with 19.5q for 30m
OG 1.058
Awesome, Garret. Congrats! It’s a great feeling. Enjoy!
Your “brew sculpture” looks like it came from the same workshop as mine ;).
Welcome to the next level of the addiction. When you’re ready for the next experiment, you might consider a brew bag and batch sparging, not necessarily better, but different, and a lot less trouble from my experience. Pretty nice set-up for a 1st A.G. batch.
Congrats from me too. I brewed extract for a year and then made the switch to AG. You will notice a big step up in flavor and there’s lots more fun beer styles you can explore with AG. Cheers!
Congratulations! and remember that water plays a much bigger role now. I’m just starting to get into that myself.
Cheers!
So noble and majestic.
Welcome to AG.
I would like to reiterate the fact that water is key.
A simple grain bill, some good Hops, and the right water can make the most delicious beer.
Looks great to me. I use gravity as well: from MLT, to kettle, to fermenter, to keg. You can make some good beer this way.
Don’t underestimate the ability to make very good beer on a basic system.
Indeed…after 20 years and 519 batches, I’m still using the “Cheap’n’Easy”…www.dennybrew.com .
And your pico brew.[emoji41]
Yeah, both Zymatic and Pico. And a Grainfather Connect. But I use the cooler more than any of them. The point is that if I didn’t have any of the electric stuff, the cooler would still be a very viable way to brew.
The only way during the zombie apocalypse.
That’s obviously what I was thinking! 
Nothing wrong with that equipment at all. Just make sure it is stable and can handle the weight. You don’t want one of your stands to fail!