First AG in need of advice

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Livaleos

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So Im prepping to set up my an AG rig of my own and jumping into the deep end.:D I would like to try and build as much of my rig as possible(on the cheap). I am sure there has been post about this in the past but when I search I only get small bits and peices. I already have this list of equiptment.

20 qt stock pot
34 qt stock pot
25' copper wort chiller
10 Gal. laurter tun w/ false bottom
plus essintial cleaners and mesuring devices from partial brewing

Will i require any more equptment than what I have? Also i would like some feedback on my recipe and steps as i have figured I will do on brew day.

5 gallon batch Bavarian Hefewiessen
4 lbs. 2 row Pilsner
8 lbs. red wheat
2 lbs. Munich
14 lbs. total grain bill
3.5 Gal. of mash water
plan on a 155 F mash for 1 hour
3.5 Gal. of sparge water @ 170 (will pre heat my strike water to 175 and pre heat my tun)
7 gal of total water
1.4 gal of absorption
6.6 gal total in boil
1 hour 36 min boil for 5 gal batch
Bitter hop 60 min left 1 oz. Hallertau
Aroma hop 5 min left 1 oz. Hallertau
Strain
Send through chiller to fermentation bucket pitch yeast at approx. 73 F. use liquid Wyeast 3333 German wheat yeast from LHBS.

As said, would love some tips, tricks, and general advice.
 
A spigot and thermometer on the kettle are nice. Not necessary, but nice. Are you batch sparging? You probably need around 5 gallons of sparge water. Your recipe says 7 gallons total with 1.4 gallons absorbed by the grains. That would only leave 5.6 in the kettle, not 6.6. How are you boiling? On the stove or a burner?
 
I am boiling on a stove. I have tested boiling with strait water and my stove does a decent job. (dont have a choice because I live in an appartment). Nice catch on the math will change to 5 gallons of sparge water. Also I will ad an extra hour to my boil time for the extra water.
 
I do five gallon batches on the stove too. I don't think you will need that much more time to boil. 90 minutes will probably do it. Put a gallon of water into your kettle at a time. Then take a piece of bamboo put it in the kettle and notch it at each gallon. Then you can just put it in the kettle and see where you are after 90 minutes. If you boil longer, your going to throw off the IBU's.
 
Even if i dont ad my hops until 60 out and 5 out? Also wouldnt not incressing my boil time keep excess wort due to the adition of more sparge water?
 
I'd say at most you would have 5.5 gallons at the end of 90 minutes. Sounds like a good thing to me. If you added at 60 and 5, no change in IBU's.
 
It is nice to have a grain mill if you can afford it. I got much better consistency when crushing on my own.

I will assume you are batch sparging. Here is how I would do calculations for this batch.

Strike water @ 1.25 qt/lb = 4.4 gal
Estimated grain absorb @ 0.13 gal/# = 1.8 gal
Estimated first runnings = 2.6 gal

Now I follow the philosophy of making the first runnings equal to the sparge runoff for maximum efficiency (for batch sparge). It sounds like you don't have a lot of boil losses. I typically target to have 5.5 gal at the end of the boil for hot break and trub loss. If you only expect to lose 0.6 gal during the boil I would shoot for a 6.1 gal boil volume. To get this I would do the following (I assume 0.25 gal loss to my mash/lauter tun).

Mashout with 0.75 gal boiling water. This will not get you to 168 F but will thin the first runnings a bit. Expected first runnings is now 3.1 gal (remember I am assuming about 0.25 gal extra holdup in the tun).

Sparge with 3 gal of water. This should give you about 6.1 gal preboil. If you have 5.5 gal postboil you should end up with 5 gal in the bottling bucket after hot break, hop and trub losses.

Note: all of these assumptions are what I get for my system. I probably don't take enough time during runoff and leave extra in my cooler. If you take more time and let everything runoff you can reduce the mashout volume to 0.5 gal or just stop collecting wort when you reach 6.1 gal.

Welcome to the fun of all grain. It is purely an art to learn what works for your system. BTW on my first AG batch I got super low efficiency and had to add all the DME I had in the house to salvage the batch. After the first or second time you will be an expert.
 
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