First Brown/Porter? and mash

Ok , i wanted to do a brown ale ,with the help of John Palmer i based some of his ingredients to make this: Maple brown- 1.7gal
gambrinus pale malt 7 0z
Vienna malt 3 oz
crystal 20 3 oz
black malt 1.2 oz
light dme 16.4 oz
maple sugar 6.5 oz
willamette @ 60 min .3 oz
amarillo @30&5min .2 oz ea
vanilla extract @ 5min 3/4 tsp
Its not the same as his recipes but im hoping this is a good idea.I havent found too many brown ales i like very much besides Bells porter(not their best brown) and was inspired to try a maple because of Sranacs Maple Brown which i liked-(dindt like too much else of theirs).
This was also my first mash i guess because im tring to use less dme as i go and have more grains than dme,now.Also i didnt have a pale dry extract malt and wanted to know if this was a good idea or not.
I was wondering if its ok to mash your steeping grains for an hour with the pale barley malt grains. Also was wondering if its preferrable to leave the trub instead of filtering to a primary.
I definatley ended up with a target gravityand IBu's.Do brown ales usually have a higher finished gravity?

if you mash those steeping grains with the pale malt, you will get conversion of them, meaning you will get some fermentable sugars from those malts as well. if you're doing a partial mash you will want to mash all the grains together.

as for the trub, don't worry about it. i usually end up with a decent amount of trub in my fermenter and it hasn't produced any ill effects on the finished beer.

because of the crystal/black malts, it will tend to finish higher in gravity, but you also have some sugar in there which tends to ferment out completely, so i wouldn't guess this beer will end up too high. if you want a higher finishing gravity, try to mash those grains around 154-156. sounds interesting, let us know how it turns out. if you

ohyeah. I did mash those eyeballing it for 70 min.Maintaing those temps meant for me to pull and turn up down temp to maintain it it sucked.I actually did a ten min soak in my sparge water for 10 as suggested in the partial mash link. Glad i did but 4 hrs start to finish was longer than i planned i really hope it turns out good with the attention i gave it.
I couldnt leave my boil either because had it an inch from the rim and i got one splash to the burner, but had to have 3 eyes on that boil, Bigger pan next time and maybe ill try covering the pot with blankets to keep a constant temp.I would have liked to have eaten with my family without babysitting temps.Gotta start somewhere i guess.
Since i do 2 gal batches, i usually split yeast and i pitched at 64, normally i do 70+ but have learned not to pitch that high,but was worried about nothing going on but today was a happy day. A nice frothy bubbly foam was waiting for me when i got home. Ive been 1/3 ing my yeast,sticking it in the fridge and not using a starter and has worked well 4 times so far.People star sanning their yeast packs made me nervous,because i was just pitching partial yeast and rolling it up banding and sticking in a baggie in my fridge.So far so good.
Had a question about my fermenter.Its a two gallon glass jar wide mouth with a wooden lid.It has a flat rubber seal which is not any way airtight.i could not find a 13 inch,1/4 inch thickrubber gasket anyware so i used plastic wrap around the outside of the seal then taped the lid so it wont push up .Have drilled a hole on top for a stopper and a bubbler.But is this plastic wrap a bad idea?will it mold or cause problems?Should i just take it off? I doubt the bubbler will start anyway.

well i had one of my fermenters bubbeling i sirrand wrapped it taped then put a weight on it pitched this at 70,also. I used dme, mashed 2 row pale,vienna,biscuit, honeymalt, and carapils the dme is a light amber.and used whitbread goldings hops.
Anybody know what style of beer this is?,i couldnt figure it out, but it smells good nicen malty and bubbeling away.Life is good,have more to look forward to in the future,ha. I love this discovery!