It has been awhile since I have updated as I have been a little busy. I am now newly and happily married. I now have a pretty good brew partner, my wife.
So having a bunch of extract brews under my belt and my natural desire to do everything myself, I decided to take the leap into all-grain brewing. What is all-grain brewing, you ask? Instead of buying pre-made malt extract, one takes the necessary grains needed for the beer and essentially makes his/her own malt extract just like the big boys in commercial brewing today. The advantage to doing all-grain is you control the amount fermentable sugars and the taste of your malt. The disadvantage is the there is additional time, space and equipment needed to brew because "mashing" which is mixing hot water with the grain to get the fermentable sugars and proteins for the wort. Controlling the temperature is a big part in this process. What takes the most time is holding the temperature for 60 minutes or longer.
The additional equipment needed area a mash ton (basically a large cooler with a stainer to hold the hot water and grains), a larger brew pot (I bought 7.5 gallon), and a more efficient burner to bring 5-7 gallons of water up to a boil. After a trip to home depot and the homebrew store I was ready to begin.
