First Beer

[d510addict]

Well I have decided for simplicity and learning brewing technique and learning flavors of different malts that I will make my first beer a SMaSH.

I don't have the money to buy more equipment so I'm going to use what I have which forces me to make a 3 gallon batch. So using beer calculus I made a recipe that looks like this:

7.00lbs Vienna Malt
1.5 oz Cascade hops added in equal portions at 60 30 and 10 minutes

BC gives me a starting gravity reading of 1.056 and an FG of 1.014 with IBU's of 32. (according to the site this is basically an APA which I think would be good.

My question is will this ferment out to 1.014 or there abouts assuming I hit the 70% efficiency mark? Or will I have to cool crash it? I ask this because I will be bottling and want to use priming sugar to bottle carb and condition the beer and have no way to keg.

 

[d510addict]

Also how do I find out how much water to mash and sparge in?

 

[GroosBrewz]

No worries.. Your attenuation is not really related to your efficiency.. Your brew should attenuate just fine at 70% efficiency and relatively close to the 1.014.. As for sparging there are numerous calculators our there on the web to help with that.. here is just one

http://onebeer.net/batchspargecalc.shtml

hope this helps

 

[d510addict]

Whats the trick to calculating boil off rate, cause I want 3 gallons post boil so I assumed that there would be 1 gallon boil off in a 1 hour boil. Then I got lost with the 1st runnings and 2nd running numbers.

 

[d510addict]

I figured it out but, its saying I need a .77 gallon mash infusion. Can I just add that amount and have 2.87 gallons of mash water for my 7 lbs of grains, or do I need to stick to the 1.2 quarts of water to 1 lbs of grain ratio then add the mash infusion after my 60 min mash then collect my 1st runnings?

 

[Yooper]

You can go up to 2 quarts of water per pound of grain. A thinner mash will be fine, if you need the volume. I'm not sure what you're asking, though.

I'd do this:

Mash in with 10.5 quarts of water (that's 1.5 quarts/pound). You should get out a hair under 2 gallons of first runnings. Then sparge with 2.50 gallons (split into two additions), until you get about 4.5 gallons. That should give a finished batch of around 3 gallons, depending on how much you boil off.