Check me please

I've brewed twice, the last was a mini mash AHS nut brown ale. I plan to try the AHS Belgian Pale Ale next. I've spent the past several weeks reading up and would like to try to use a 5 gal cooler I set up with braided hose and valve to do my mini mash in the cooler instead of seeping in the grain bag as the AHS instructions say. Here's my plan based on what I think I learned:
- mash the ~3 lbs grains from the AHS kit in 1 gal water in the cooler.
- run this off (after clearing) into 1\2 gal boiling water in my brew pot
- batch sparge twice with 1 gal each, again draining into the brew pot
- this should give me ~ 3 gal boiling volume ( I have a 20 qt pot)
- add about 1 lb DME with heat off
- return to boil, start 60 min
- add hops per instructions
- add balance of DME at 15 min
- cool and bring volume in fermenter up as per instructions

Does this seem reasonable?

When bringing the volume up in the fermenter, should I simply add water to a volume target? Wouldn't it be better to add water to try to hit the SG target?

Thanks,
Steve

Better to add water to get your SG if you can.

i don't understand why you would want to use a mash tun instead of a grain bag. mash tun will just require more work/equipment.

when i started doing all grain brew i got terrible efficiency when using a 10 gallon cooler and braided hose for 5 gallon batches with 10+ pounds of grain. i eventually realized it was because my grain bed in my tun was too spread out in the big 10 gallon cooler. i started getting better results when i changed to a 5 gallon round/tall cooler and a CPVC manifold instead of a braided hose.

I want to try using the 5 gal cooler to mash
a) because I want to see if I can do it
b) it get's me one step closer to all grain
c) it might make a better beer
d) why do we do any of this; because it might be fun

Dogphish said:

i don't understand why you would want to use a mash tun instead of a grain bag. mash tun will just require more work/equipment.

when i started doing all grain brew i got terrible efficiency when using a 10 gallon cooler and braided hose for 5 gallon batches with 10+ pounds of grain. i eventually realized it was because my grain bed in my tun was too spread out in the big 10 gallon cooler. i started getting better results when i changed to a 5 gallon round/tall cooler and a CPVC manifold instead of a braided hose.

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Using a grain bag leaves a lot of unconverted starch in your beer.

You can just add all of the DME at the end, no need to add any to the boil.