Extract to All-Grain Homebrewing

I did my first batch of beer at some undocumented time in early May 2011. The first documented batch of beer I have is from 5/21/2011 where I made a "California Honey Pale Ale" using extract ingredients, a bag of specialty grains and White Labs CA Ale yeast. The specialty grains used are listed as 1 lb honey malt (honey roasted pale malt) and 1 lb Carapils. I still use carapils in my all-grain batches today, it's great for head retention I am told (and I have seen first hand recently). However, since that faithful day a year ago, I have upgraded my system to support all-grain brewing. This takes longer, but gives the brewer complete control over the flavor and color of your beer. With all-grain, the brewer also has many more options in flavor and colors by combining malts.With extract (I used powder) there were only about 3 different base malts to use.

take pride in your notes

I did my first all-grain batch sometime in late August 2011. Within a month of that first batch, I also made two more and they were all served at my brother's wedding reception. They were an Extra Pale Ale: I didn't take a gravity reading before or after, but it was well received. The next documented all-grain batch was a smoked porter brewed on 9/2/2011 in which I managed to take the OG reading, but not a FG. The German Hefe was brewed within 2 weeks of the porter and I didn't even record the date for that one. I was more concered with getting the kegging system working at that time, that I didn't bother with actually making sure my beers were okay. But since those three beers turned out great, I knew all-grain was the way to go and I started taking a lot of notes

All-grain D.I.Y

gravity fed sparge setup

My home-brew setup’s capacity allows me to make five gallons per batch: I have a 5 gallon hot liquor tank (aluminum pot with weldless spigot I drilled and attached), CPVC sparge arm, 10 gallon Igloo cooler with a false bottom and a 15.5 gallon keg converted into a kettle. This is the all-grain setup I switched to about 15 batches ago, with the upgrade to the HLT and Sparge Arm earlier this month.

smaller sparge manifold, this is what I've found works best

Tried and true 10 gal igloo cooler now with steel false bottom

dis where it goes down