AG first bach on sunday

[feenaughty]

My wife is off to vermont this weekend and I have Sunday and Monday off.I am I crazy to try ag after my first bach of extract? I got a kit from midwest "liberty cream ale " primo dry yeast cuz I am cheep.I just tuned a igloo cube cooler to a mash turn tonight, with a carb in it and ball valve.only place I come up short is that I have only a 5 gal s/s pot and a 4 gal canner pot.plan to mash with 3gal and sparg with 3 gal.can I just use both pots to do my boil? And if I can not get my wort cool very fast how bad will it hurt my beer.wort chiller is on my next diy list but I live in southern tier ny.I have foot + of snow in my back yard soo going to stick my pot in a snow bank and stir it like crazy thank you tom feenaughty

 

[DirtyJersey]

I brewed extract brews for about a year before I did my first all grain about two weeks ago. I had similar issues... I had to do a split boil because my stove isn't capable of boiling 6.5 gallons of wort. If you're going to do a split boil, make sure you take into account that you will have double the amount of boil-off....you'll probably want to collect close to 7 gallons of wort, assuming this is a 5 gallon batch.
I don't have an immersion chiller (yet), so I stuck my pots in a large snowbank just as you plan to do. It took just about an hour to cool down to 70 degrees. My pots actually melted quite a bit of snow and I had to readjust a few times.

Overall, it will probably take you 6+ hours for your first all grain.

Good luck!

 

[Steven9026]

Good luck in your first all grain.. Just take your time and use a checklist, it will make it much easier. It will turn out great..

 

[TWS22]

I started straight into AG from the get go. It's doable. Still have a lot to learn, but don't be intimidated. It's completely do-able.

 

[pkeeler]

I would probably mash with 4 gal. and sparge with 2 gal.

You can boil in two pots. +1 to Dirty, as you will get more evaporation. You don't need to worry about perfectly splitting your hops either. In fact, unless you are making a very hoppy IIPA, you can put the hops in either kettle in any proportion.