First All Grain Homebrew Session

This past Saturday I ventured into the world of all grain homebrewing. I have been homebrewing for over a year now, but this was the first time that I collected 100% of my fermentable sugars from grains.

Nice simple recipe to work out the new system:

Details:
Name: Pale Ale
Brewer: Joshua
Size: 5.0 gallons US
Style: American APA
OG: 1.062, FG:1.016, Alc:6.1, IBU:48.3
(Alc method: by Volume; IBU method: Tinseth)

Yeast: S05

Fermentables:
American Crystal 60L 0.25 lb
American Two-Row 10.50 lb
Cara-Pils Dextrine 0.50 lb

Hops:
Simcoe 0.75 oz 60 min
Centennial 1.00 oz 10 min
Amarillo 1.00 oz 5 min
Cascade 1.00 oz dry hop

Mash:
158° for 60 min with double sparge at 170°

To document the day I took some pictures along the way

Here is a view of the driveway and the main setup:


This is the Immersion Chiller that I created by bending 50ft of copper around a tube form:


This is the mill I used to crush the grains. The grains need to be crushed so that the hot water can extract starches and convert them into sugars:


This is the mash tun. The 168° water is placed in here with the grains and let sit for an hour to do the starch conversion:


My 9 gallons stainless steel boil pot heating up some mash water:


Now that all of the sugars have been extracted from the grains that liquid is drained into the boil pot to start the brewing process. Here I'm waiting for the boil to start:


The liquid finally starts to boil. If you look close you can see the first hop addition:


During the last 15 minutes of the boil the immersion chiller is added to the pot to sanitize it:


The immersion chiller is attached to the garden hose and cold water is run through it. This cools the boiling wort down to 70° so I can dump the liquid into my fermenter and add the yeast. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any pictures during this stage of the process.

In about three weeks I'll transfer the newly created beer (the yeast eats the sugars and produces alcohol and co2) into bottles. And three weeks after that I'll be able to taste the fruits of my labor.

Time to plan the next brew!