All Grain Brewing Steps
- 1-2 days prior to brewing: Have 8-3/4 gallons of tap water sitting in open containers for at least 24 hours to dechlorinate. Filter water if possible. Water quality directly affects beer.
- 3-5 hours prior to pitching: Remove Smack the pack of liquid yeast from refrigerator and smack (or use yeast starter).
- process: Setup gas burner, propane tanks, work table, and brewing gear
- Gear list: Mash paddle, cylinder, hydrometer, digital thermometer, siphon, stopper, airlock, plastic wrap pieces, beer thief, tubing – 1 for wort runnings, 1 for airlock
- Make sure sanitizing bucket is ready with solution – make fresh batch
- Bring 8-3/4 gallons of strike water to 166 degrees in 10 gallon pot
- Add 1/2 tsp gypsum and stir in thoroughly
- Get grains ready to pour in and have stirring paddle ready
- Pour strike water into mash tun
- Check temperature again – should be 163-166 degrees before adding grain.
- Stir grain into strike water in mash tun
- Place thermometer probe into mash and close lid – temperature ideally should be 153-155 degrees
- Wait 60 minutes – check temp, if low, add more hot strike
- While mash is resting, bring remaining 5-1/4 gallons up to 170 degrees.
- Begin running wort into 5 gallon pot – 2 gallon pot ready
- Spray sparge with 170 degree water through strainer slowly – close lid after each sparge to conserve temperature
- Have smaller pot ready to use when 5 gallon pot near full – when pot full replace lid and use smaller pot
- Continue until all water has been used – switch to smaller pot when 5 gallon is near full
- Pour contents of both pots into 10 gallon pot and bring to boil
- Empty spent grains and clean mash tun
- Have sanitizing solution ready and place all utensils needing into it
- This includes airlock, tubing, hydrometer, and beer thief
- Make sure smack pack is dipped in sanitizer
- When rolling boil starts, turn heat down some and add bittering hops
- Bring back to rolling boil
- After 45 minutes, add flavoring hops and get hose ready for wort chiller
- 5 minutes before flame out, place wort chiller in for sterilization
- 3 minutes before flame out, add irish moss tablets
- 1 minute before flame out, add aroma hops
- At flame out, hook hose up to wort chiller and turn water on
- Sanitize carboy and siphon thoroughly
- Have piece of plastic wrap sanitized as well as airlock stopper
- Keep eye on temperature – lower to below 80 degrees
- Move wort pot to bench ready for siphoning
- At 75-80 degrees put wort sample into cylinder and take hydrometer reading
- Place a piece of sanitized plastic wrap over carboy opening and replace sanitized stopper
- Shake vigorously to aerate the wort – do this by rocking the carboy over your knees
- Pull stopper, take smack pack out of sanitizer and carefully pitch into carboy
- Have pitcher of water ready to airlock the fermenting wort
- Place airlock and stopper on carboy and move to fermenting area – place tubing into pitcher of water
- Cleanup
NOTE: These are steps that we use when brewing. There are “better” ways of doing it and there are more expensive, therefore somewhat easier ways of doing it. This is what I have used that has worked well and good beers came out of it as a result. My best advice is to watch plenty of YouTube videos and buy a few good books: