Helpful brewer's needed

Im doing my first all grain brew on Saturday:rockin: , im doing Ed Wort's haus pale, and was hoping someone would check my brew sheet to see if it looks good. Also my first attempt with beersmith. The ibu's are a little different (Ed's are 35) I could only get 5.5% cascade, and a bag of 6.9% which I was going to use @60min. Also, do you stir the mash after dough in? I've read some do and some don't. Enough for now, thanks for the help.

Check Time Step
2/8/2008 Clean and prepare equipment.
-- Measure ingredients, crush grains.
-- Prepare 8.34 gal water for brewing
-- Prepare Ingredients for Mash
Amount Item Type
8.33 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain
2.08 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain
0.52 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain
2 min Mash Ingredients
Mash In: Add 13.66 qt of water at 168.6 F
60 min - Hold mash at 154.0 F for 60 min
-- Drain Mash Tun
-- Batch Sparge Round 1: Sparge with 2.46 gal of 168.0 F water.
-- Batch Sparge Round 2: Sparge with 2.46 gal of 168.0 F water.
-- Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.78 gal
-- Estimated Pre-boil Gravity is: 1.046 SG with all grains/extracts added
Boil for 60 min Boil Ingredients
Boil Amount Item Type
60 min 1.20 oz Cascade [6.90 %] (60 min) Hops
30 min 0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (30 min) Hops
15 min 0.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops
10 min 1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
5 min 0.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (5 min) Hops
-- Cool wort to fermentation temperature
-- Add water (as needed) to achieve volume of 5.25 gal
-- Siphon wort to primary fermenter and aerate wort.
-- Add Ingredients to Fermenter
Amount Item Type
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale
2/8/2008 Measure Original Gravity: ________ (Estimate: 1.054 SG)
2/8/2008 Measure Batch Volume: ________ (Estimate: 5.25 gal)
4 days Ferment in primary for 4 days at 68.0 F
2/12/2008 Transfer to Secondary Fermenter
7 days Ferment in secondary for 7 days at 68.0 F
2/19/2008 Measure Final Gravity: ________ (Estimate: 1.013 SG)
-- Bottle beer at 60.0 F with 4.0 oz of corn sugar.
4.0 Weeks Age for 4.0 Weeks at 52.0 F
3/18/2008 Sample and enjoy!

At a quick glance, everything looks good.

Yes, stir VERY WELL when you dough in. This will ensure that all of your grain is completely saturated and is necessary to have consistent and stable temps throughout the mash.

I would suggest heating up your strike water to a little higher than your target. Add that to your mash tun and allow the temps to stabilize and drop to your target temp before you dough in. If you don't do this, your MLT may absorbe more heat than you anticipate and you'll be short on your mash temps.
Good luck!

Lil' Sparky said:

At a quick glance, everything looks good.

Yes, stir VERY WELL when you dough in.

Click to expand...

I meant during the 60 min. Thanks.

You can add a few more hops to get the IBU's up to the recipe specs and not just go by weight.

I would also add, when you drain your mash tun, then add the sparge the water stir it alot, then repeat the process with the second sparge. Your efficiency will improve vs not stirring at all.
Took me 3 batches before I learned that one.

Another tip is to have a couple cups of boiling water on hand when you dough in. If you're a little low on your temp and don't want to thin out your mash with a large amount of strike water necessary to get there, a smaller amount of boiling water stirred in will raise your mash temp without thinning very much.

I'll use this as another opportunity to pimp my long-winded all grain videos. In between the banter and useless musical interludes are some decent tips to running a batch sparge operation.

[YOUTUBE]7jfrBUDpsmg[/YOUTUBE]


Note, in this second part I talk about adding hot water to "mash out", but I no longer recommend it. I go with 180F sparge water instead.
[YOUTUBE]iGVvqmP0oTM[/YOUTUBE]

Are you using a cooler MLT? If so, pre heat your MLT cooler with 2-3 gallons of 200*F water 15 minutes before you dough in. Let it sit in there until your ready to start. It will make hitting your mash temp a lot easier. Also, listen to the guys' advice above. They've been at this longer than I have.

Bobby_M said:

Note, in this second part I talk about adding hot water to "mash out", but I no longer recommend it. I go with 180F sparge water instead.

Click to expand...

I've watched them a couple of times, good stuff. Im not going to do a mashout, why does beersmith give a seemingly low sparge temp (168f)?? Should I use 180f? Btw thanks for everyone's help, looks like im in for a long but fun day. And yes im using a square 52qt. cooler and I will pre-heat.

Just my opinion, but you might want to try the mash tun pre-heat with hot tapwater rather than near boiling water. You can hit the temps pretty close that way. Adding really hot water to the coolers causes some interesting snap, crackle pops. Probably the inner plastic liner separating from the foam insulation in the wall. Not a big deal unless you crack the inner liner. I use ProMash now but have Beersmith as well. I can't recall for sure, but I believe Beersmith also allows you to set grain starting temps and mashtun thermal mass as well to help you hit the mash temp you want. It will take you a few brews to tweak all of your settings, so the advice on keeping some boiling water handy is right on. I would also add that you should have some chilled water or ice, in case you need to go cooler.

With Beersmith and a 5gal Gott cooler I have no problems hitting my mash temps without preheating, as long as I enter the correct grain and mashtun temps. If you are using a MLT not already in Beersmith's list then a preheated MLT would eliminate that issue.
Beersmith always seems to use 168F sparge water no matter your last mash temp. If you mash out 168F is the correct temp. If you don't your first sparge should ideally bring the temp of your mash up to 168F, which means you need hotter sparge water. However if you use hotter sparge water (175-180F) for the first sparge then your second sparge should still use 168F water. Otherwise you will be too hot. I accidentally did this with one batch where I did not account for the hotter MLT after the first sparge. Now I usually heat my sparge water to about 175F for the first sparge then allow it to cool down some before the second sparge.
Craig

Don't you rack that thang on day 4 unless you just got to prove some things to yourself.

I did rack mine after seven days the first time. The second time I left it on the yeast for three weeks like the recipe calls for and I haven't racked anything off the yeast in under 14 days (usually 21 days) since. It does matter.

Thanks for the tips. Im gonna have to write all this stuff down. Poindexter, I don't know what that 4 day's in the primary is all about, but im not doing it.

I just got my crushed grains from northern I need to measure the correct amount out, should I pour 1 bag into a bowl and mix it up first, then weigh it or just pour it out of the bag onto the scale? The reason I ask is there is a fair amount of flour at the bottom of the bags, does this need to be mixed in?