This whole process is made a lot easier if you have some form of brewing software such as beersmith, promash, or beer tools pro. In this little segment I am going go with a 20 quart (5 gallon) pot which is usually the smallest pot size that is useful in extract brewing. If you use even smaller you may have to make other adjustments. Keep in mind that these measurements may vary from what you may need to use, but this will give you a good start on where you may need to be. The amount of water you need will depend on everything from you evaporation rate to your crush of the grains, but again this is a good start. Now the only addition you need is a mash tun of some sort. I have some directions on how to build a cheap and easy one at my website. Other than that you could use 2 old plastic food grade buckets nesting in each other, one with a ton of holes drilled in it like described in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, or check out Denny Conn's Website look down about 3/4 of the way down the page. With all that out of the way lets get cracking.

If you bottle and want to go all grain the first thing you can do is brew a smaller batch, roughly 3.8 gallons. An example I have would be to use a recipe like this.

American Amber Ale (Small Equipment Recipe)

8lbs Brewers Malt 2 Row 1.8L
2lbs Munich (breiss) 10L
1.5lbs Caramel Malt 40L
2 oz Chocolate Malt 350 L

1oz Glacier (60 Min)
1.5oz Glacier (15 min)
1oz Amarillo (3min)

WLP001 California Ale Yeast (or Wyeast 1056, or Fermentis US-05)

There you have your basic ingredients, I tried to use some hops that are currently available. Now it's just a matter of mashing and then the boil. Now the purpose of this article is to assume you have the minimum equipment so you will only need 1 pot. For the mash you can just bring 14 1/2 quarts (3.65 gallons) of water to a temperature of 167 degrees. Add your grains to your mash tun and slowly pour in your 167 degree water. Stir to ensure you have no dough balls then let the mash tun sit covered for an hour. If you have a digital thermometer, I like to stick it in the center of the mash to get an idea of the temperature. It should be stable between 153 and 155 for a medium body brew whish is what we are trying. If your reading is higher or lower, stir the mash again to make sure your probe is not in a hot or cold spot. If you don't have a digital thermometer, I would just let it sit and trust the temperature but having the digital thermometer would be the best option, and they are only about $12 at any store in the cooking section. While the mash is doing it's thing, prepare 2 gallons of water in your pot and bring it to near a boil (190 degrees give or take a few) then dump it into an empty brewing bucket. Try to time it so it will be done at about the time the mash will be complete so it doesn't have time to cool much. When the mash is compete, run the liquid out of your mash tun slowly while capturing the first 2 quarts in a pitcher then let the rest pour into your empty brew pot, then pour that 2 quarts back on top of the mash. This helps keep some of the proteins and husk chunks out of the boil preventing excessive haze and astringency problems. Continue to run the hot wort into the pot until the tun is empty then shut off the valve, and dump in your 2 gallons of hot water. Stir the mash real well then repeat the process of pouring into a pitcher then letting the rest go into the pot while dumping the 2 quarts back on top. Once that is complete your pot should have about 4 gallons in it or just over. The pre boil gravity should be in the area of 1.070, if it is a bit higher or lower don't worry about that at this point. Bring this to a boil as you would with an extract batch but be real careful of a boil over. 4 gallons is the extreme limit on how much to have in a 5 gallon pot. I have done it many times but you really have to be quick to keep the foam down. Add the hop additions at the times listed above then cool the best you can. It will probably be with an ice water bath if you don't have a chiller. Once the wort is cool, you can then transfer to a carboy then top up with an estimated 1.75 gallons of water. It may be more or less depending on how much has evaporated. Your gravity should be in the area of 1.055. Once everything is cooled and in the fermenter just proceed as you do with any other beer you made. I personally like to let my ales go 2-3 weeks in the primary at 62 degrees (the temperature in my basement) but you could go as high as the mid to upper 60's with this yeast and still have a clean flavor. I then transfer to a keg and let it carbonate from there. You could do a secondary if you wish, but I don't for ales.

If your gravity readings are off by even .010 that is OK, especially for your first run through all grain. If they are higher, then you just got a better grain extraction efficiency than I used in the program. Either way you will still be in the right ball park for an American Amber Ale. I figured the IBU's for this recipe to be in the area of 39, which is the upper limit of this style, but due to the high gravity of the wort during the boil I would suspect the bitterness would actually be a bit lower than that. The finishing gravity should be between 1.012 and 1.014.

That's it, you just did a simple all grain batch with only adding one piece of equipment to your extract equipment. It may sound more complicated than it really was, and once you do it you will see All Grain is not a big deal. However, there is a lot more detail that you can put into it than I did here. But if you want to try your hand at it to see what it's all about and if you want to make the switch, this would be the cheapest way to try it out. If you have any questions feel free to ask anytime.