All grain and i brought the heat to 168 because the brew shop guy said to get it ten to twelve degrees hotter then recipe called for . I was use 13 lbs of grain
Okay, this is making a lot more sense now. You were mashing, and that was your strike water temp. As somone else mentioned, there is a great BIAB (Brew In A Bag) Sticky at the top of the All Grain forum page. It has photos and step by step explanations.
In a nutshell, you want to:
Heat strike water to approx. 10* above mash temp, to account for the heat the grain will absorb. (you will have to figure out the exact amount to overshoot based on your specific setup, things like kettle material/size can cause this to be different for people).
After you add the grain and stir it altogether, you want to hold it as close as possible to your target mash temp. A mid range is usually 152*, but they can vary depending on beer style from about 148* (which will yield a drier beer with more ABV) to 158* (Which will yield a sweeter beer with less ABV). Hold it within 1* of this temp for 60 minutes. This typically requires wrapping your kettle in some blankets/sleeping bags unless you have a nice recirculation system in place.
BIAB will have the grain inside a bag in the kettle, but as you noted with your friend, with large amounts of grain sometimes the limits of the bag and kettle will be pushed. I prefer to do full volume mashing, with no sparging and no adding water after the mash. I start with 7.5g of water in my 10g kettle, and heat it to about 8* above my target mash temp before adding grain, stirring, covering, and waiting 60 minutes. Most of the time I use 2 5g paint bags from lowes, and split the grain between them, as I don't like it when the grain gets packed too tightly in the bag, and with 2 bags it remains pretty loose in the water.
After your 60 minutes is up, you want to take off the blankets, check your temp, and crank the heat on to try and raise the temperature to 170* over a 10 minute period. When it hits 170*, pull the bag/bags out of the kettle (I squeeze my bags to get more liquid for my boil) and let the burner keep going until it boils, at that point follow your hop schedule.
If this is all super confusing, I recommend looking through some of the BIAB threads, many of which have photos. I will try and remember to check back and post a link when I am at home.
