bye bye extract

For the past year I have been home brewing some nice ales using malt extract. The beers are coming out good and it has been a great learning experience. The malt extract simplifies the process by eliminating the need for a mash. The extract is ready to go, just stir into water and bring to a boil. The simplicity of this has been great, and produced some very good results. Now that I have the process down though, it's time to step up. Moving to all-grain brewing will give me much greater control over the final product. Making recipes and getting the exact flavors I want out of my beer is only going to be possible with all-grain. Malt extract is also fairly expensive, working with raw grain will be much cheaper in the long run after overcoming the initial cost of the mash tun.

The thought of switching over can be daunting for beginners. There is a much greater need for attention to detail. After doing a partial mash oatmeal stout I, like most other brewers starting out realized working with raw grain wasn't all that hard. The only thing I would need to do is build a mash tun. Over the next couple weeks I'll document the building of the mash tun and look back at some recent extract brews. For now a pic of me steeping some grain into my old, small brew kettle. I now have a much bigger pot to do full boils in.

And an obscene amount of hops used in the double IPA, more on that later......