First AG in 5 years .. recipe opinions

[p4ck37p1mp]

So I got into brewing back in 2001 when my room mate got a B3 10 gallon sculpture and learned how to do AG with a homebrew buddy of his. I inherited that setup and continued brewing for a couple more years. I had to move short notice and couldn't bring the setup (*sulk*). I started brewing again a few years back, but haven't gotten a full AG setup together until now. I got my Igloo MLT yesterday, after a trip to Home Depot and a little work I intend to brew an AG. I'm pretty sure I remember the process and I've been reading, so I think I'm ready. The recipe is a hefe, made a mini mash variant of it thats almost ready to keg. This is a 20 gallon recipe.

25lb 2 row malt
25lb white wheat malt
2lb carapils
1oz Magnum 60 min
2oz Hallertaur 5 min
3oz sweet orange 5 min
2oz seeds of paradise 5 min
1oz coriander 5 min

I'm figuring 16.25 gallons of strike water at 170 (ala BeerSmith) for a mash temp of ~167 for 60 min and then fly sparge with 6.25 gallons at 180 for 45 min. Not sure I should up the sparge to 185 to try and get a little more out of the grain bed, didn't want to push it too much. I might have to use a little more sparge water or top off the boil, as my burner takes a good 40 minutes to get to a boil. Not really sure how much I lose but I can more or less eyeball it these days, I usually end up with just about 20 gallons. In a batch this size a gallon or two doesn't really do much from what I've seen in past brews.

 

[BierMuncher]

Welcome back to the fray.

I use 185-190 sparge temps all the time.

Enjoy your re-birth.

 

[Saccharomyces]

Holy mother of Moses, starting back with a 20 gal batch.

.. At least you'll have homebrew. And fast.

Happy brewin'!

 

[p4ck37p1mp]

Been doing 20 gallon extract and mini mash batches. Me, my dad, father in law, brother, brother in law, boss, coworkers, friends, neighbors, etc manage to kill 5 gallons in a week. I got tired of brewing 2-3 batches a week to keep up with demand. The nice things is they kick in on my ingredients, so it works out pretty good. Trying to get them into homebrewing, then they can brew their own. I don't think any of them have the patience for it unfortunately.

 

[Seawolfe]

How fun! I have a memory of seeing a real difference when we used a really good quality coriander and not the old stuff available at our LHBS. A good ethnic market or Penzeys.com would have high quality coriander. mmmmm flowers.