All grain brewing

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Permalink Reply by cerevisia on September 14, 2011 at 7:35am

They both made 23 litres btw. 

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Permalink Reply by Christian on September 14, 2011 at 7:43am

It really depends on the style, your efficiency and intended OG / FG etc. Use recipe software to calculate all this. Here's a free online one to get you started:

 

http://beercalculus.hopville.com/

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Permalink Reply by mattd2 on September 14, 2011 at 12:48pm

Effeciency (how much sugar you are actually extracting from the wort - as a % of total "sugar" in the grain) is the biggest factor I think (apart from accuarately measuring volumes, etc.).

A quick hand calc you would be at 63% brewhouse efficiency - (33 points x 6 gallons) / (8.8 pounds x 36 points per pound).

Not to bad, key thing is to get your efficiency sorted and then you can estimate the amount of grain need to get "x" amount of "1.0xx" wort

For a comparison, I just did a Irish red and got 20 litres of 1.049 wort from 4.84 kg of grain

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Murrell on September 15, 2011 at 10:21am

I did my first AG about 6 weeks ago and used a recipe from one of the guys Adrian Tayler on here and plugged it into Brewmate software which I personally found easier to use than the others. Adrian suggested leaving the estimated efficiency at 60% since it was my first brew, so I used about 6kg grain for a 23L brew.

 

Everything went smoothly and I my efficiency was greater than I thought, so was able to dilute my wort and ended up with about 25L in the fermenter.

 

From what I know now and backing up lots of others comments....it's about learning how your rig works i.e. your efficiency, evaporation in the boil and a few other factors. So hopefully next time I can get away with using less grain.

 

I managed to tweak a few figures in Brewmate for my next one to suit my higher evaporation, so looking forward to number 2. Now just to find a good recipe.....

 

(Oh...and thanks to Adrian for all the help! The guys here are great with help, tips and advice)

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