There should be a warning to all would-be all grain brewers: don’t order your first ingredients while drunk! :o
So I was, a few weeks ago, when I ordered morebeer’s Rogue I2PA clone kit.
And here I am, 2 days before my first all-grain brew day, wondering what have I got myself into!
It really wouldn’t be a problem except that I only have a 5 gallon cooler for a mash tun. 17 pounds of grain is about 5 pounds more than it can handle. So, maybe I’ll improvise and put 10 lbs in the cooler and 7 lbs in my boil kettle (or bottling bucket?). I could just cut back on the grains and make up for the lost gravity with DME.
I’m really not stressing over it…this will be fun and I love learning new stuff.
Just make sure it’s blue. Blue is very important, probably more important than your ingredients, yeast or fermentation temps. Blue makes it all better.
And there’s nothing wrong with doing things (except driving) when you’re drunk. Many of my best decisions have been made with beer involved.
That would definitely work - not make two batches, but mash half and collect the runnings, dump the grain and do the next mash. While the second half of the grains is mashing I would heat the first batch of wort to 180 or so and hold it there until the second half is done.
Or do two mashes side by side, collect from the first then dump the grains, dump the second half into the lauter tun and collect again.
I think this is a sign you need a bigger mash tun. $30 bucks and you càn have one big enough for twice that size mash. And you will only run into this problem again, soon.
the smaller false bottom I used worked in a ten gallon because it was domed, but it wasn’t ideal. fortunately it was my buddy that bought that, I learned from his mistake and bought the larger one, fits nice and snug in my ten gallon igloo.
Or consider using your 5 gallon cooler and making two entirely separate half-batches. That way, when things go wrong with the first one, you can try and fix it on the second one.
FYI to compensate for the lack of a blue cooler I’m wearing a Pike Brewing Company shirt and listening to old episodes of Brew Strong.
[Edit]
So, lessons learned:
-I ended up with 8 gallons of wort…1.5 gallons more than I wanted. I took what beersmith gave me for mash and sparge values and halved them but ended up with at least .5 gallons more per batch than I needed.
-I confused pre-boil gravity with original gravity. So when the measured pre-boil gravity was way lower than I thought it should be, I added some DME to bring it up. The end result wasn’t bad. I would have needed to add DME anyway.
-First all-grain brews should NOT be imperial IPA’s! LOL! ;D
Go big or go home. The first brew has to be something you want to drink or you won’t be as tempted to stick with it. Give it its due time to condition, though, especially since it’s high gravity.
