Brewing

The process below is typical for me. Variations or changes in the process used for a particular beer I will note it on that beer's blog entry. Note that this page describes how the process would ideally go. In real life, since I'm not highly skilled and do not have high-grade equipment. I may miss some mash temperatures, mismeasure volumes, etc. I'll try to note my errors in the posts about each recipe or brewing session. 

Mash 

1. Heat the strike water to a few degrees above the temperature necessary to get the grains to the right temperature, and pour the water into the MLT, which will absorb a few degrees as it heats up.
• Before transferring to the MLT, stir the hot water in the brew pot a bit to make sure all of it is at the right temperature. Same when the water gets in the MLT. 
• For example, suppose the strike water needs to be 162F to get the mash to be 155F. I will heat the strike water to 164F or so, in order to heat up the mash tun.
2. When the strike water is at the correct temperature, dough-in by pouring the grains from their container into the MLT. Pour only 1/2 the grains, stir, then pour the rest.
• Gently stir at dough-in and every 20 minutes to ensure that the entire mash is at the correct temperature. Do not stir to much so as to avoid excessive heat loss or hot-side aeration. 
• Low-temperature mashes (145F - 150F) may need 90 minutes to convert, while higher temperature mashes may need shorter times, more around 60 minutes.
• Do a iodine test for starch conversion if unsure whether the mash has completely converted.
3. During the mash, heat the sparge water to 170F and the mash-out water to boiling (or other temp as calculated to raise the mash to 167F for mash-out.

Mash Out

1. Pour the boiling mash-out water into the mash to raise the temperature to 167F. This temperature makes the sugars more soluble to increase efficiency, but if you get the mash to more than 170F you will risk extracting tannins. Yikes! 
2. Stir gently and wait about 10 - 15 minutes for the sugars to go into solution. 
3. Recirculate. Collect about a quart of wort, and gently pour it back on the grain bed through holes punched in a sheet of aluminum foil. Do not disturb the grain bed since you want it to form a filter for the chunks of grain husk and starch chunks. Recirculate another quart or so until all the large chunks of grain husk and other haze materials have been filtered out.
4. Collect your first runnings by opening the ball-valve all the way.
• In batch sparging it is said that letting the wort drain as fast as possible gets the most efficiency. My efficiency seemed to increase when I drained the wort quickly. In fly sparging, however, the run-off should be collected slowly.
5. Note the volume of 1st runnings. My brew kettle does not have a sight glass, so I collect the runnings in my bottling bucket, but I really need to get a well calibrated measuring stick.
• The collected wort loses temperature here, so one can gently start heating the first wort and it collects in the kettle.

Sparge

1. Add the hot sparge water to the grain, stir to get good heat distribution, and wait about 10 minutes.
2. Recirculate as per above.
3. Collect the second runnings enough so that you get the desired pre-boil volume. 

• If you followed the calculated water volumes correctly the volume of the 2nd runnings should be very close to the volume of the 1st runnings. If not, make up for it so that you get the desired pre-boil volume, taking into account your boil-off rate, etc.

Boil

1. Heat the wort up to boiling. 
2. Watch for boil-overs. Reduce heat if boil-over seems eminent. I use a thermometer so when the beer is more that 200F I can stand by the stove to reduce heat if needed.
• As per Gordon Strong in Brewing Better Beer you can boil for about 15 minutes before adding the hops so that the foaming caused by the hot-break and the hops do not happen at the same time.
3. Boil. Apparently a vigorous boil is better to get the hops to isomerize. 
4. Recipes with Pilsner malt usually need to be boiled for 90 minutes to reduce DMS. 
5. Add the hops as per your recipe. 
6. Add Irish Moss when you have 15 minutes left in the boil.

Cool

1.  If you use an immersion chiller, put in into the boiling wort for the last 15 minutes of the boil to sanitize it.
2. Connect your chiller to the water source and turn it on! 
3. In my case I fill up a plastic bin with cool tap water mixed with ice, put the submersible pump in it, connect the output of the pump to the chiller, and the output of the chiller back into the tub of water. This recirculates the cooling water through the chiller.
4. Cool your wort until it reaches the desired pitching temperature. My first two uses of my chiller couldn't chill the wort without using like 15+ gallons of 68F water so I just cooled to 80F or sometimes higher, then place the kettle with sanitized lid in the basement and wait for it get to pitching temps, usually a few hours.

Pitch the Yeast

1. I transfer the wort to my fermenter using an autoshiphon.
2. When the wort is at the correct temperature and if using liquid yeast and / or a starter, oxygenate using an oxygenation system
3.  Pitch the yeast.