Graham Goes All Grain

I finally got around to brewing again and took the all grain plunge with Northern Brewer's Chinook IPA (extract version). It was also the first time I'd tried a full-volume boil. It was a bit of a shitshow there for a little bit, but things seemed to work out ok in the end. Took me a while to mop the floors and wipe down the wall, though.

I followed the simple mash instructions on NB's site. In the first encouraging development of the day, my mash temperature was right on. It stayed between 158 and 153 for the full, hour-long mash. I had a hard time getting the grain bed up to the mash-out temp because I ran out of space in the tun (thus the need to mop), and I'm not at all convinced that I sparged very well (NB calls for a more complex technique called fly sparging; I went with the quick and easy batch sparge). I was expecting to be way low on my OG. Surprisingly, I ended up with 1.052, which is right where I was supposed to be. I think I'm a little shy of 5 gallons, but if the gravity's on, I'm not too worried about it. It's fermenting like crazy right now.

We'll see how the beer turns out, but all in all, I think things went well. I don't think I will convert completely to all grain any time soon. My makeshift set-up worked ok, but I can see where it would be waaay easier with more specialized equipment. It also took about twice as long to brew, which was fine for yesterday, but I don't have that kind of time all that often. I can say I've done it now, and hopefully soon I can say I've done it sucessfully.

I had a bunch of pictures, but something happened with my camera and now they're gone. All I have left is this one pic of the bubbling fermentor. I've got some dry-hopping to do, so it won't be drinkable for several more weeks. Still haven't gotten my CO2 tank filled, so I wouldn't be able to keg yet anyway.