new to forum and all grain

[log]

Hi, I am progressing slowly here. I have been brewing for 1 year. Extract, then with grains, now baib and looking to get 1-10 gallon Igloo and stainless braid. All I read about HERMS and RIMS is leaving me feel a little...behind the learning curve. Can I make good/great beer with a simple system composed of 2 pots(1-5 gal. and 1 8.5 gal), 1 burner and 1 mlt. Do I need to have a hlt and if I do how would I incorperate this into my set-up? Thanks for any advice.

[HighCountry]

HERMS and RIMS are great additions to any brewhouse. But essential to making good beer? Personally, I'm not convinced. Please don't let this be the thing to hold you back from going all grain. Many award-winning beers have been made in Igloo coolers without any sort of recirculation. Remember - it's a robust process that will forgive your mistakes. If you get a big enough Igloo cooler you could batch sparge and use only 1 kettle. No need for an HLT. Start there and upgrade as you go. Batch sparging is more than satisfactory for many of us on the AG side. If the lack of reciruculation results in a little haze, that's nothing that cold crashing can't fix.

Myself, I perform a vorlauf at the beginning of a modified batch sparge. I implemented that years ago and it does wonders for the clarity of my wort. Batch sparging with no HLT and I've had nothing but good results.

Remember that this hobby divides people in two, generally: scientists and artists. There are gearheads and engineers who make terrible beer, and artists who make masterpieces. And the opposite is equally true. The longer I've been around this, the more I learn that it's about how you learn your system and adapt it to your needs.

But I fall into the artist side of things. My friends the engineers may feel differently.

(Full disclosure: I'm working on my RIMS system now. So I'm obviously not above gear upgrades.)

[Sent From My iPhone]

I started off fly sparging and switched to Batch sparging about 2 years ago. I'm happy I did. Here's a link to a great homebrewer and batch sparger, Denny Conn. He outlines how to do it with minimal equipment.

Denny Conn

[BigNastyBrew]

Dude, I have a 7 gallon cooler, 2 pots, and a ghetto gravity system (folding table, folding chair, and the garage floor). While I'm no award winning brewer, I think my beers taste damn fine.

[Dubba_Brew]

I'm with most of these guys... I just switched to All Grain recently and I don't have any kind of crazy setup (not that I wouldn't love to have one - but it's not necessary to make great beer). I've got the Igloo cooler, an 8.5 gal kettle my old 4 gal kettle from extract brewing that I use to help with additional hot water for my mash or sparge water, I batch sparge (follow Sheen's link to the Denny Conn article... that's a great place to start, it's what I follow) and I do this all in my kitchen. Oh yeah... so equipment will come as the want arises (or as SWMBO starts to give you crap about having all this equipment in the kitchen for 6 hours... but I digest).

Like HighCountry mentioned about art and engineering.... you'll find your balance between the two.

[log]

Thats all good news. I'll check out Denny's technique. I appreciate any help I can get.

[mookie1010]

For those with gravity fed set ups, do you just open the valve on your HLT and take 5-10 minutes for all of your initial strike water to fill the MLT?

[BigNastyBrew]

For those with gravity fed set ups, do you just open the valve on your HLT and take 5-10 minutes for all of your initial strike water to fill the MLT?

For MY gravity set-up, it takes about 3 seconds to dump my pot of hot water in.