Mike standing next to the tower of power! click for big pic

The "club" said the July beer to brew and have judged at the meeting on July 16th was wheat beer... After convincing Chris Wilson that I really wanted to watch or do an all-grain beer with him, as he made the belgian wit that I liked. I looked at several recipes, and made a recipe up called Yellowjeep Wheat, but we ended up going with a more standard recipe. We started with a recipe from The Great Brewholio American Wheat , here is the all-grain wheat beer recipe we ended up with.


Some of the things we (or just *I*) learned about all-grain brewing:

The satisfaction level is immensly greater than heating store bought malt extract to a boil...

You can never have enough boiling water! A full 15 gallon keg of boiling water will speed things up!

A boat paddle makes a great mash paddle

The mashing container needs to have 2 quarts of capacity for each pound of grain... 31 lbs is closer to 15 gallons than 10, DOH!

Hose clamp EVERYTHING, even if you are 100% sure it will not come off...

125 degree mash is extremely hot to stick your arm down all the way to reconnect a hose to the false bottom spigot in a 10 gallon cooler, I do not know what you would do with 156 degree mash!

While 90% of a boiling keg is never going to get over 212 degrees. BUT, the bottom ring of the keg will be substantially hotter on your gloved hand even after resting on the burner for several minutes... OUCH!

Being able to weld stainless tube to the bottom of the kegs for a spigot saved the day!

Phils sparging arm is real trick, just ask Chris

Phils Phalse bottom has too small of holes for 50% wheat mash, and it floats without setting some heavy stainless nic-nac's on it.

Hearts Super Chiller is the shizit! Especially when you have 15 gallons of boiling wort!