First All Grain Batches

The Friday before last I made my first all grain batch of beer - a porter recipe that I got off of the homebrewtalk forums (a great resource for homebrewing information, btw). While I definitely have areas that I can improve on in future batches, I felt that the brew day went well. I was surprised with the time commitment involved. Expecting a few extras hours were going to be required, I was happy to find that my brew time took at the most an hour longer than normal. That is probably more attributed to my terrible sense of organization and preparation than process, though.

Homemade mash tun

Here's the recipe I used. I got the original from here.

11# 2 Row
1# Chocolate Malt
1# Crystal 40
4 oz. Black Patent
1 oz. Roasted Barley
8 oz. Flaked Barley
8 oz. of Malto Dextrin to boil at 20 minutes

Mash at 150 degrees for 60 minutes

1 oz. Northern Brewer at 60 min.
0.5 oz Cascade at 60 min.

1.5 L starter of Wyeast 1056

I batch sparged with a false bottom, but intend on trying fly sparging as well, for kicks.

I then made my second all grain batch last Saturday, and ended up going with a Witbier. The last one I made (a Blue Moon clone) turned out pretty tasty, so I decided to try an AG version with a few modifications.

I started with this recipe, and made some modifications. Here's what I went with:

4.5# Pale malt

4.5# Flaked red wheat
1#German dark wheat
~ 1# rice hulls
 
mash at 154 degrees for 60 minutes

1 oz. East Kent Goldings at 60 min.
1.25 oz Orange zest at 2 min.
.75 oz Coriander at 2 min.

Package Wyeast Belgian Witbier

I hit right around %70 efficiency on the Wit. I didn't have a way of measuring my pre-boil volume for the porter, so who knows. I assume it wasn't that great.

Here's a shot of both brews fermenting (forgive me for the crappy phone shot...):

I'm excited to see how they both turn out! I'll take gravity readings for the porter in the next couple of days, and hopefully keg it within a week. I'll post an update when they are ready to drink. Cheers!