Special Issue: Guide to All-Grain Brewing Archives

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All-Grain Troubleshooting

General all-grain Going All-Grain I have read that certain grains can only be mashed while others can be both mashed and steeped. I have found various charts of grain and adjuncts, but

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Because our batch sizes are typically small compared to commercial brews, one problem many all-grain homebrewers have is maintaining their mash temperature. Ideally, mash temperature should remain relatively constant throughout each rest.

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Sour Mashing

Soured beers are gaining popularity among beer lovers and brewers alike. There are several methods you can employ to create a soured beer. Simple techniques include adding lactic acid to your brewing

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Cereal Mashing

Mention the word “cereal,” and most folks think of ready-to-eat breakfast food. To a brewer, cereal is the grain produced by any number of grass crops from Avena sativa (oat) to Zea

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Decoction Mashing

Almost all modern malts are well modified and respond well to a single infusion mash when an all-malt beer is being brewed. But sometimes you will come across a malt or recipe

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Step Mashing

Step mashing is a mash program in which the mash temperature is progressively increased through a series of rests. The ubiquity of well-modified malts has virtually eliminated the need to perform a

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Lautering Efficiency

All-grain brewers are always talking about brewing efficiency — how much wort they yield from their mash into the boil kettle. There are two components to brewing efficiency: mashing efficiency and lautering

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No-Sparge Brewing

A quest of mine to brew a flavorful but quaffable session ale was coming up short. I was getting wonderfully high extract efficiencies, near 90%, but my ordinary bitters, milds and Scottish

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Batch Sparging

For homebrewers first getting into all-grain brewing, the terminology, technology and wide variety of methods can be confusing. Simplifying the process, especially for the first few all-grain batches, is important. All of

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Troubleshooting a Stuck Sparge

Tactics for helping your wort go with the flow.

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A Guide to Lautering

Considering how important it is to the brewing process, lautering (also known as sparging) doesn’t get much respect. Many brewers see it as simply the process of rinsing grains. They give it

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Water Treatments

Water is the main ingredient of beer. The many different styles of beer we have today evolved for many different reasons, not the least of which is the chemistry of the local

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Understanding pH

The level of pH in your mash, wort, and beer affects processes from enzyme function to hop extraction to yeast vitality. Understanding pH helps you manipulate pH levels for great-tasting beer. But

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