All Grain The Easy Way....No Sparge - just make some beer!

So we here at Counterbrew are kinda known for complicated mash schedules,  advanced decoction, water adjustments, absolute hop monsters, and mixed fermentations.  But we started this blog as a way to get people brewing better beer with easy methods.  To encourage new and intermediate brewers to try some all grain brewing, and to make it easy and fun for them.  So this week,  we'll be returning to our roots.   There will be no advanced mash schedule, no cold steep of roasted malts.  There will be no dry hopping,  no hop stands, and no decoction.  I know, it's shocking.

This week we make it easy. We make a recipe that will be ready quickly.  No Sparge and Grain to glass in a month (less time if you keg).   We are making water additions as easy as possible.  We are making the mash as easy as possible.   We are using a durable yeast that can ferment at basement temperatures.   Presenting the counterbrew, Easy Blonde.  This will be the beginning of a new series on Counterbrew, where we show you some extremely easy beers to brew.

Now, we did not develop the Centennial Blonde recipe,  credit for that must go to a gentleman who goes by Biermuncher on Home Brew Talk.   He has lots of great recipes, and finished with 2 of the top 3 recipes last year in the HBT top 100.   But this recipe is damn near the ultimate house ale.   Flavorful enough for craft beer fans, but easy drinking enough for beer muggles.  We will probably make 10 or 15 gallons of this, because it really is that good.   But we will present a recipe for 5.5 gallons.  If you have never tried the Centennial Blonde,  I truly encourage you to give it a try, it is a fantastic, almost magical blend of 2 hops.   We've changed the grains in the recipe over the years to meet our tastes, but we leave the hop bill alone.

Easy Blonde - Inspired by biermuncher's Centennial Blonde.
O.G, 1.042
F.G.  1.008
SRM - 4
IBUs - 22
ABV - 4.5%

6 # of Pale Ale (or pale two row)
2 # of Vienna
.5 # of C 20
.3 Centennial at 60 minutes
.3 Centennial at 35 minutes
.3 Cascade at 10 minutes
.3 Cascade at 0
US05 1 package - do not rehydrate.
1 whirflock 15
1 tsp yeast nutrient at 15
1 tsp gelatin fining

• Mash grains at 150 F, for 60 minutes in 7.61 Gallons of water.  
• After 60 minutes drain wort and begin the boil
• Make hop additions at scheduled times. 
• Chill - We'll be using our jaded hydra -  the best chiller you can buy.
• Aerate - you can shake, use pure o2 (30 seconds), or use an aquarium pump
• Pitch the yeast - pitch dry, sprinkle over the top.  
• Ferment cool,  you can ferment this one in your basement, US05 is fine up to 72 F Ideal would be 64-66 F.
• This will be done fermenting in about 5 to 7 days, but let it go for 2 extra days.  
• Fine with gelatin and cold crash for 2 days. 
• Keg or bottle. If you keg you can be ready to drink this beer in 14 days.  If you bottle you can be ready to drink in 21 days.  

You're going to love this beer.  I suspect it will become you go to house ale.   It is so critical to adjust your hops based on the alpha acids from year to year.   Sometimes we're at .6 per addition, sometimes were at .3, it just depends upon the alpha acids from year to year.  But keep them balanced, and don't change them.   It is the combination of centennial and cascade that make this beer fantastic.   Enjoy.  We'll post a brew day, next week.   We'll make sure to add videos, cause we know you guys like the videos.    But no sparge is really as easy as brewing gets.    Soon we're going to do a video of our super easy triple decoction in a bag bohemian lager... ok, well not super easy, but as easy as triple decoction can be.   In the near future, the gang will continue to make great beers, that any one can make,  but the small batch stuff will be highly focused on sour beers, and very high gravity beers.  In small batch we'll be exploring turbid mash, and reiterated mashing.

Update:  We brewed this beer, but It turned into a partial mash.  We were asked to test a new mash water calculator, and we did.  And It sucked.  I should have just used beer smith, or Brewtoad.   But fortunately the wort tasted amazing, so we were able to get to gravity with a DME addition late in the boil.  

10 Gallon No Sparge

Why do you sparge?  Seriously, why?  Of course you sparge to rinse sugars off the grains, and to improve efficiency, and because that is what every book says to do, so that is what you do.  But other than that, why?   And why is improving efficiency a good thing?   Have you ever thought about that? I routinely get into the high 80s and low 90s with brew in a bag step mash with a sparge.  But why is that good?  Other than the fact that is means you did a great job extracting sugars, is there any benefit to supremely high efficiency?  

The answer may surprise you.  The answer is unequivocally, no.  In fact I think you could argue quite compellingly that super high efficiency actually reduces many of the malty flavor compounds (flavinoids, melanoids like dimethyl pyrazines) that give beer balance and it's delicious grainy, bready, taste. That's right sparging may be lessening the overall taste of your beer.  And further, sparging isn't necessary.  

If BIAB has taught us anything, it has taught us that there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.   One of the most common methods of BIAB uses a no sparge.  All of the water, all of the grains. Perhaps a squeeze, but other than that no other method for pulling sugars out of grains.  

Built in bulk head
makes connecting a
valve really easy!

We have been looking for a better faster brewing method for some time.  A method that would allow us to do 10 gallon batches.  But we didn't want to spend a fortune.   Many of the 10 gallon systems are price prohibitive.  So we put on our thinking caps.  Here is what we came up with.

Stirring and Checking Mash
Temperatures.

We mash (no sparge) in a 100 quart (25 gallon, 95 liter) Coleman Extreme Cooler.   The cooler has a built in hose bulkhead, and a trap door in the lid.  Both of which come in very handy.

25 Gallons of mash is actually enough for quite a bit more than 10 gallons.  I am confident we could make a 15 gallon high gravity beer, or a 20 gallon medium gravity beer in the cooler with out sparging.   In the photo on the right you can see Jake and Mark have the door open and they are able to stir the mash.  The door is crazy helpful for infusions too, we do lots of step mashing.  And it sure is nice to be able to add the boiling water with out opening the entire cooler.

We still use a bag as our filter medium. The benefits of the bag are well established.  We get about 77% efficiency on these large no sparge batches.  We're good with that.  Although we are going to try an even finer crush and see what that gets us.

But as you can see in the photo at the left, the crush is already pretty good.  By the way, John isn't talking to the mash, he's telling me the temperature.  He's not encouraging them "come on little grains, you can do it"  As you can see, that is a whole lot of grains for a 10 gallon batch. (6.5 Gallon plastic bucket. )  the temperature is important.

All grain brewer's need to take this part of mashing in more seriously.  I can't tell you how many times people send a question about missing strike temps, or post the same on a forum.   I ask them..."what was the temperature of your grains?"  And I get back, "I don't know... room temperature I guess"  "Where were the grains stored?"  "In the basement...    Uh, yeah... no wonder that your temps were low.  Your grains were probably 60 F.  (15.5 C)

We generally do step mashes with infusion.   I have mentioned infusion step mashing before on the blog.  But I've never really gotten into detail.  Basically, you add a certain amount of boiling water to the mash to raise the temperature to the next rest.  It is similar to decoction mashing in that a certain amount of boiling water can be added to the mash to heat it to a certain temperature.   "Won't the boiling water denature the enzymes?"... yes... and no.   A very small amount of the enzymes in the mash will denature when you pour in boiling water. But not enough to cause any problems with conversion.

So we start with a protein rest, we dough in around 140 F (60 C) , the grains drop us to 129-132 F (54.4 C).  We let it sit for 10-15 minutes then up to 146 F (63.3 C) for 35 minutes,  Then up to 156 F (68.8 C) for 30 Minutes, then up to 168 F (75.5 C) for 10 Minutes.   Yes, our mash takes longer.  yes we generally have a little bit of water left over, no problem.  We add it to the keggle  as we start the transfer.    Our mash takes longer, but we didn't sparge.   Even a batch sparge takes 30 minutes by the time you heat the water, carry the kettle, pour the water, stir and transfer.   And fly sparging adds an hour minimum to your brew day.   We skip all of that, and just transfer and boil.  

We use a 7.5 gallon kettle and jet burner to get our infusions ready.  We use the keggle to keep the water damned warm during brew day, and then to boil the wort.

That isn't protein break, it is
bitter orange peel, ginger, and
black pepper.
Although, protein break is crazy
with step mashing and the
jaded hydra.

And boy oh boy can we boil.   We boil 10 gallon batches in a 15.1 gallon keggle.  It was legally sourced from a local distributor.  I don't know why guys steal kegs.  It is a crappy thing to do to a brewery. If you ask they will probably let you have one that can't be repaired.  At a minimum, they will probably sell you one.   So just do the right thing, buy an old keg.  

We use an old Bayou Classic KAB6.  It puts out an insane amount of heat.  Something like 185,000 - 200,000 BTUs.   We can bring 13.5 gallons to a boil in about 13 Minutes.  6.75 gallons comes to a boil in just minutes.   As you can see in the photo above,  it is up on a stand which means it is high enough for transfer into fermenters after chilling.   We chill with the Jaded hydra chiller.  It is plainly put, insane.  It chilled this 10 gallon batch from 210 F (100 C)  to 72 F (22 C) in 13 minutes.  Last week Jake and I chilled a 5 gallon IPA from boiling to 65 F (18.33 C) in 5 minutes.  

We ferment in glass, if we have it available.  But in plastic if we don't have glass available.   To be honest, I don't notice much of a difference.  The plastic v. glass debate is really just another silly home brew debate.   You're not more of a brewer if you ferment in glass.  You're not less if you ferment in plastic.  Enough already.
We both have fermentation chambers.   I also have a hot box for lactic fermentation and for saisons.

The ghetto brew 1280! Our no sparge HERM System
We are going cheap on the pump, our pump is
a food grade pump for a sous vide system.  It was $30.00

We are making some improvements to the no sparge system.   We are going to add a herms coil and a pump.  Herms = Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System. This will allow us to stabilize water temperatures more, and to do a gradual rise to mash out temperatures.    Or to do much more precise step mashes, with far greater accuracy.   That is where we are heading.

It has taken me a long time to buy into the whole recirculating mash thing.  But the fact of the mater is that it keeps temperatures better and it makes cleaner wort.  So, after considerable deliberation, I'm in.

The brew day you are seeing photo's of is a 10 gallon batch of Saison, loosely inspired by Hennepin by Ommegang.  But we do make a change.  We add crushed black pepper corns to the boil for the last 10 minutes.   How many?  Well... that depends on how it smells.  Believe me when I say, quit trying to get exact recipes.   Learn to brew, learn to taste, learn to evaluate while you are brewing.   It will change everything for you.     We split off 5 gallons of this for sour beer.   The normal saison is fermenting with Belle Saison yeast.  The sour is fermenting with Imperial Chimera yeast blend.  Which is a low attenuating belgian ale, lacto, bret l, and bret c.  If those terms mean nothing to you, that's OK.  Sours are pretty advanced stuff.  We are learning about them in the sour series.

Updates and Evaluation;

C4 Hop Explostion pale ale -  Flavor is fantastic.  Could use a little more bitterness, not much just a tiny bit, and a little more dark crystal grain.   So next time, we'll make those changes.  But it is really excellent.

La Fin du Monde clone -   I would tell you this is the best tripel I have ever tasted.   John would not agree.  He still thinks the original is better.   But we're splitting frogs hairs here people.  It is world class.  

Allegement a la Framboise -  probably the best fruit beer I have ever tried.   A belgian blond and raspberries are a perfect combination.

Tank 7 Clone -  Can't capture tank 7 exactly, Boulevard uses a proprietary yeast.  But it is an excellent saison.   It will be loved all summer long.   The color and aroma are spot on.  

Kolsch - Clean easy drinking German Kolsch.

Cream Ale - Wonderful as always. Still a touch sweet, should clear up in the bottle.