All-Grain Brewing - An Overview

So, you may have a few extract batches under your belt and are ready to take the plunge into all-grain brewing, or you may be skipping the extract method all together. Either way, you're ready to brew some homebrew the traditional way that has been done for several hundreds of years. The equipment, while adapted to today's technology, is still very similar to the equipment used by colonial American brewers and even trappist monks in the 1600s.
The main difference in all-grain brewing from extract brewing is the additional equipment needed.
Items you will need:
Mash Tun (a converted cooler does well)
Minimum 8 gallon brew pot
Propane burner (with the ability to boil 7 gallons of liquid)
The rest of the items you will already have from your extract brewing.
Let's talk about the Mash Tun. This is the vessel you will use to extract your wort in all-grain brewing, the sweet liquid used to make beer, from your grains - then drain your wort into your brew kettle to boil. A Mash Tun can be assembled using a stainless steel braid, like the ones found on water supply lines to appliances such as toilets, a little bit of vinyl tubing and an insulated cooler. I use a rectangular 48 quart igloo cooler. Just make sure, when choosing your cooler, that it has a drain plug. I also use a copper fitting and some hose clamps to connect the stainless braid to the vinyl tubing. I'm not going to go too far into mash tun construction. You can do a simple internet search and come up with hundreds of different plans on how to make your mash tun. Steel braids, PVC, copper manifolds, ball valves, you name it. Find what works for you and improve on that. I say the simpler the better.
OK, you have your mash tun ready to go - and it's not leaking, right? Good. On your brew day, you will take your bag of crushed grains out of the refrigerator and let it warm up to room temp. This will help you hit your mash temperature. You are going to pour the grains into your converted cooler. On the propane burner, heat up your strike water to about 8-12 degrees warmer than your desired mash temp - your strike water is equal to 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain (i.e. for 16.5 lbs of grain, heat up 20.625 quarts - or 5.15 gal. of water). Mash temps will fall between 140 - 160F. The closer to 140F, the more fermentable sugars will be produced, meaning a dryer, thinner beer. Closer to 160F will produce a sweeter, less fermentable beer. So, if you are looking for a really malty ale or a sweeter belgian, mash closer to 160. A happy medium is 152F.
Make sure that when you add your strike water that you stir your grains well, to break up any clumps or dry spots. Close the lid on your cooler and start your timer for 90 minutes. Every 15 minutes or so, open the cooler and stir the grains, making sure not to harm the manifold at the bottom. Also, check your temperature to make sure that the cooler is keeping your temperature steady. You may need to add boiling water to get your temperature back up. If it's too ZD Valve hot, add some ice to cool it down to your desired mash temp. After your 90 minutes is up, it is time to collect the sweet wort. If you have kept your mash between 140 and 160, you should have converted your grains and have wort that will ferment into beer. Make sure that when you collect your "first runnings" that you add the very first few quarts of wort (that has loads of grain particles in it) back to your grain bed in your mash tun. You want it to start running clear (or almost clear) before you collect the wort you're going to use. This method of collecting and pouring back in the first few quarts of wort is called "vorlaufing."
But we're not done with those grains. We haven't collected enough wort to brew our batch yet and those grains still have plenty of sugars that we must harvest. So, we are going to "sparge." Sparging is a fancy way of saying that we are going to rinse the sugars off the grains. So, heat up your "sparge water" to 170F. You basically want to end up with about 7 gallons for your boil, so subtract the amount of wort you collected in your mash - and that's how much sparge water to use. So, add the sparge water to the mash tun and stir. Let it sit for 10 mins. or so and then drain the wort into your brew kettle along with the first-runnings. Don't forget to add the first few quarts back to the grain bed (vorlaufing - remember?).
After you have collected all your wort from sparging, you are ready to boil. At this point, it is very much the same as extract brewing, except that you are doing a full 5-7 gallon boil. Happy Brewing!
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