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All grain brewing is not hard - it has been going on for many thousands of years by societies much more "primitive" than the information-rich, Internet-accessible world that we now swim through. But for those that want to get into the magical world of all-grain brewing, know this: it involves larger, much more expensive equipment, it will take much longer to brew your beer (typically six to ten hours per batch), you will pay (comparably) the same price for the ingredients (i.e., you will probably not save any money) and it may not *necessarily* produce a higher-quality beer. As a judge, I often see extract brewers win over all-grain brewers in blind taste competitions.
So why all-grain? All-grain brewing is fun, there is a certain "purity" about seeing your pot full of grains and water turn into a sweet porridge of malty richness before your very eyes, and you will definitely have more control over the beer that you produce. Light-colored (yellow) beers, in particular, are easier to make from all-grain, as extracts tend to have a natural gold (or darker) coloration that will colorize even the lightest beers. You will also be able to use more varieties of grains, and you will get more flavor off of the grains that you use. It is for these reasons that you should choose to go all-grain, not for economics or a quality boost, although you MAY see both when you start to mash.
First, the equipment. To brew a five-gallon batch of beer, you will need an eight to ten-gallon stainless steel pot to boil your wort. You will also need a five-gallon pot (or insulated cooler) for your rinse (sparge) water, and another eight-gallon (or larger) pot or cooler for your mash-tun. A mash-tun is the container that your grains and water will sit in while they convert to sugar. Typically, mash-tuns have some kind of manifold/screen/drainage system on the bottom to extract the sweet wort from the husky grains after the starch has all been converted - more on this in the second half of this article.
You will also need a wort chiller. Since you will be boiling your entire volume of beer, you will not have the ability to add ice or cold water after the boil is done. You can build a copper immersion chiller (heat exchanger) pretty easily, or we have them for sale in the store. And you will definitely need a propane burner. Since you will be boiling eight gallons of liquid, a stovetop will not usually have the BTU power to properly heat that large volume, and the weight of the pot may crush your stove. Try to find a propane burner between 50,000 and 150,000 BTU's. Again, we sell them at the store, or you can try GI Joe's here in Portland - they often have pretty good deals.
You will also need tubing to connect everything, and a rinsing system to gently distribute the water from your sparge (hot water) tank into your mash-tun. We sell a great "rotating sparge arm" from Listermann Mfg. that will gently rain sparge water onto your grain bed without disturbing the grains. This is important, and I have not seen any tool that does it better. You can build a copper drip-manifold that does *sort of* the same thing, but Listermann's rotating arm works well and seems to be a good purchase.
Finally, it is not necessary, but it IS nice to have a tiered shelving system so that gravity can become your friend. The sparge water pot should be on the highest tier. It is nice (but not necessary) to have a burner underneath the sparge water to regulate the temperature. The sparge water should drain down through a sprinkler system into the top of the mash-tun, which should be on the middle tier. The hot sparge water will rinse the sugar down through the mash-tun into the manifold/screen on the bottom of the mash-tun. This will carry it out of the mash-tun into the eight-to-ten-gallon boiling pot, which is on the ground, or the bottom tier. That is a standard set-up. Some people buy pre-built tiered set-ups for thousands of dollars, other people build them out of 55-gallon drums, cinder blocks, and scrap metal. No matter what: BE SAFE. Five gallons of near-boiling water can be very dangerous perched up on a rickety overhang. Be sure that everything is solid, stable and cannot be easily knocked over. Keep kids and dogs away from flames and pots. Be safe.
OK, so you have your equipment and you are comfortable with the hardware. No comes the actual brewing process. Go to the Page of Mashing for detailed info on "how" to make magic......
