I’ll start out with this:
Know your equipment, use the recipe as ‘guidelines’.
- Your mash efficiency will vary widely based on several factors. If you’re using an all in one system, I’d suggest doing brew in a bag or BIAB. Your crushed grains stay in the bad during the mash, mash out, vourlauf, and sparge if you go that far. You can find guidelines on how much strike water to use. This will be an experiment the first time or 3.
Know your boil off rate ahead of time. I have 2 kettles, one of them 110v and the other 220v. The former boils off just a tick over .5 gallons per hour, the 220v boils off 1.7 gallons in an hour. Have a little extra base malt if possible and keep some dried malt extract (DME) on hand to account for unexpected lower extraction from the mash.
- For all in ones, and particularly brew in a bag, you will need grain crushed more finely than a normal, ‘old school’ method. If you are buying grains already crushed, mention this to the shop/seller and ask that they’re double crushed or crushed more finely for BIAB.
- use rice hulls. They are cheap, contribute nothing to taste, gravity etc. and help your grains drain better during mashing, sparging etc. I use about 1 scoop for every 3 scoops of grain on a smaller beer. 1 scoop every 2 scoops of grain on bigger beers, and slightly more if using rye, or wheat.
- recirculate early and often. I start recirculation right after mash in, stopping only to stir the grains. The temperature in the middle of the ‘malt pipe’ or grains is going to be lower and recirculation will help keep the grains at a more consistent temperature.
- if you don’t have recirculation, stir more often.
- monitor your mash extraction throughout the mash. Use a refractometer for this.
- mash to your numbers, not to the recipe “60 minutes”. I almost never hit my numbers in 60 minutes and have been brewing since 1996. Instead, use the refractometer. Move on from the mash once you either hit your numbers, OR, you get the same gravity reading a few times in a row on the refractometer over several minutes.
- Mash out ! raise the mash temp to ~169-170F and hold for at least 10 minutes. I do this and a vourlauf
Flicking Soccer ; where I raise the grain basket out of the wort, and recirculate through the grains back into the kettle. I do this at least 10 minutes as well.
- sparge. This is optional but does help. Once you’ve got some wort and are done mashing, you’ll need to add to your wort to get to your boil volume unless you calculated for this with the mash up front. If you sparge, you’ll ‘wash’ the grains and the water will extract a very weak wort, and this will not dilute the wort as much as straight water.
Brewers Friend tells you what gravity you need to see at the boil to make your recipe numbers. If you’re close, you’re good. If you’re way low going into the boil, you can add some DME in small amounts to help, or if it’s not a really big beer, you could even add grains to the mash and extend the mash. If your pre-boil gravity is significantly higher than expected, hold your temperature and cut it with water in small amounts, stir and take your gravity readings until you’re on your numbers.
