Getting excited about first AG on Monday

So I am making the plunge into AG on Monday with a modified version of the bass ale that I did as an extract and I am not all that worried about it being an exact clone but it is what I am going for.

10lbs MO
1lb crystal 40L (or 60L, I can't remember)
1 oz target 45 min
1 ox challenger at ~5min.
Irish moss

Now beersmith is telling that 13.75 qts of 164.8 is gonna get me @153 F strike temp. Is 153 going to give me a good blanace bewteen fermentable and body? What I don't want is a watery beer.

As I am typing this out it seems like 13.75 is an aweful lot of water which doesn't leave me with much sparge water if I want a boil volume of 6.5 gal. Can Anyone offer some advice please?

Should I mash with less water to have a bigger sparge? MLT is a 28qt cooler with a cpvc manifold.

1.25qt/lbs is a good ratio, and 153F will give you a nice mouthfeel for a pale ale. I usually do 154F for my pale ales but 1 degree isn't worth worrying about really.

If you don't have enough room in your cooler for a single batch sparge just do it in 2 rounds. You don't want to skimp on your mash volume to make up your sparge, it's always the other way around. Get your mash volume correct, you can always sparge extra with more water later. The important thing is to get the conversion environment you are shooting for.

Just be right on your mash temp and longer is better (I mash 75 minutes). Be sanitary after the boil and ferment at the correct temp for your yeast. You will have made excellent beer.

Don't forget you are not going to get all of your mash water out.
The grain absorbs a lot.

I forgot about that Orfy. boy would that have had me puzzled.

ive noticed that around 3 gallons of water durning the mash in process usually ends up in 1 to 1 1/4 gallons of wort

It's one of the things you work out on your first rune. It's a guess but I think you can loose up to a qt a lb.

I loose nearly 50% of my mash water on a normal batch.

with that grain bill I'd say you'd lose a good 1.25 gallons to grain absorption...plus deadspace in the mash tun...yeah you'll probably get 1.5 gallons of first runnings is all.
so plan on 5 or so gallons of sparge water.

good luck!

so there were a few new things that I was trying today. AG, full boil, and using a turkey fryer. Lets begin with the fryer.

mashing: well I think I had the right volume but I neglected to check the thermometer before brew day. I misread the thing thinking the marks were every 5 degrees, they were 10. So my 163 strike water was actually more like 175. But it actually gets far worse on the temp things. More in a bit. I check the temps of the mash and it is off the chart. Quickly got some cold water and stirred as best I could. I figured it was all over but I figured if that was the case I would at lease go through the sparge motions to do it and just dump it if it tasted really bad.

When I came time to sparge I decided that something was off with the thermometer so I heated the water to 150 and got the first runnings going after an hour of mashing. I tasted the first runnings and it was very sweet and no harshness so I figured that whatever I did during the mash didn’t kill it, so I push on. Spagred with the “150” degree water and I thought that I get 6.5 gals into the pot and got it on the burner to boil.

I almost had a boil over and after a few times of having the burner too low to the point it was going out to prevent a boil over I get things boiling and really the rest went ok procedure wise hops went in the wort chiller sprung a leak that I could fix by tightening the hose clamp.

While the wort was boiling I checked the thermometer that was clamped to the side of the pot and it read 190 while the wort was boiling. (I would assume @ 212) so I have a thermometer that is 22 degrees off. So my 150 degree water was really 172 and my strike water was like in the 180s…

I am not sure how this beer is going to turn out It might not be company worthy, but hopefully it is drinkable by me. The fermenter hydro sample wasn’t so good but I think it had a lot of trub. I check again after fermentation starts.
OG into the pot. 1.030 OG into fermenter 1.045. brewhouse eff: 55.6% and a long day.

A reliable thermometer is probably the best instrument a AG brewer should have.
A tip for your next brew.

Add water to your tun higher than your strike temperture and let it cool to your strike temperture before adding your grain. I find this to be more accurate than preheating the tun and then adding my strike water.

It takes a little while to stop enzyme activity with high water temps, so you were probably OK with your quick cooling effort.

im sure your beer will come out fine, i was reading up on my brewing book today and it said "brewing is not like working on a watch, if you mess one thing up the whole thing doesnt fall apart, there is some leeway while brewing ALOT of leeway actually"

you can calibrate your themometer by heating up a glass of water and checking it with a digital themometer seeing what the temp is then checking it with your brew themometer and then just adjust the differnce while brewing.

well I hope its my yeast starter anyway. fermentation activity after about 3 hours. so time will tell on it.

it still needs to drop some on the hydro...

taste: no too bad for warm flat beer. had a bit of an earthy aftertataste but smelled alright and looked alright. I tried to do a taste test with the extract batch of the same beer but couldn't really judge since the extract was cold and carbed.

I can't really taste any tannins like I thought I would, but my face didn't pucker up so I guess I didn't extract too much.

So far so good I suppose...