Sorry for the late reply, busy week.
I was going to use another smaller pot (6L), but now I'm realising that may not be big enough to do a sparge. So now I'm thinking maybe I can just use it to heat the water and then sparge in a plastic fermentor vessel. I assume the sparge is just a matter of giving the grains a second soak with hot water. What temp and volume of water for sparge, is it same temp as for the mash? What about time, I'm guessing just a few mins?
For sparge volume, you're eventually trying to get to your pre-boil volume (maybe 6-6.5 gallons?) so technically you have several gallons to work with, but I'd just sparge in whatever your largest "second" vessel is and then top off with good clean water (use a campden tablet if your water is really chlorinated). As long as you can get your grains submerged, you'll be okay. There is a GREAT sticky around here on that topic - search for "BIAB with pictures" or something, you'll find it. I sparge with 185F water, by the time it gets through the grain bed it's around 170F which is optimal for batching, in my opinion. It helps to loosen up and wash out the sugars. You're not really running much risk of extracting any tannins if you're just sparging for a few minutes, vs. fly sparging where you are running that risk if you get the grain bed above 170F.
In the calculator (BrewMate), overall IBUs come to 44. I started with 20g but IBUs were too high according to the style guideline indicator so I dropped to 10g. Simcoe is fairly high alpha hop.
When you did the brew with only hops at 15min and FO, does that mean you just did a 15min boil? (sounds like a great way to speed up the process if you can get good hops profile out of it!)
I've heard of first wort hopping but didn't realise it could be applied to a stove-top partial. How is it done in a partial such as this?
I do full 60 minute boils, but on the last batch I just didn't add any hops until the last 15 mins. I guess I didn't have to boil that long, now that I think about it. Oh well, I enjoy my brew days too much to cut corners.
If you want to FWH, just drop the hops into the kettle after you pull out the grains, then add the sparge water to it to get up to your full kettle volume. The idea is that you start the acid extraction before you get to a boil, so it kind of eases the hops into the bath. I think, I'm honestly just guessing at this point.
Ok, I'll try to get hold of one or the other of those. Are they pretty interchangable or is one preferable to the other in a partial such as this? When do you put it in?
Whatever is cheaper. I've never used a floc tab, but Irish moss was very cheap so I went with it. Toss it in for the last 15 minutes of the boil.
Just looked at the Green Bay Rackers calc for first time. I've gathered from posts such as
this that 65C (150F) is about what I'm shooting for with mash temp and I'll need about 7.5 L water for mashing 2.5kg grain. I assume ambient temp should be used for grain temp, let's say about 22C, so that puts my strike temp at 72C.
Sounds right. My strike water is always right around there, my grain temp I just call room temp (20C or so, depending on your home). Adjust as much as you can to get right around 65C-67C. That's the best mash temp, unless you're doing something special and want either lower or higher temps for a specific reason. If not, you're in flavor country.
Oi, I'm a science guy and all, but all this jumping back and forth from US to SI measurements is making my brain hurt.
I prefer metric, but it's all gallons and Fahrenheit 'round these parts, so when in Rome. . . .
