Brewing FIrst All-Grain, Amber Ale

In BeerSmith, you have the ability to set up your equipment profile to specify your boil-off losses. This will all play into the amount of wort BeerSmith will calculate for you. A boil off of 2 gallons per hour seems excessive. On the equipment profile page, uncheck the "use as hourly rate" and put in your known boil off loss for a known boil time. My own experience is something on the order of 1 gallon per hour. Set that up correctly and BeerSmith should give you some better numbers for boil volume. You may need to switch the profile in your recipe and then switch it back to see the effect.

Cheers!

 

Really, I would keep it simple until you get your feet wet.
Munich and Vienna are malts (both can be used as base malts) that I use often to give a little extra character to american 2-row varieties. I don't mix them often, but you might want to use one or the other for a while until you get to know them.
Biscuit malt is a take it or leave it malt, and there are people who simply don't like it. I would suggest venturing into it with a bit more caution, until you know how much you like it.
I would suggest dropping the crystal malts down a little bit as well, unless you plan to mash at a low temp. But, I would lower the crystal malt and aim for 152° (nice middle ground) since you don't know your system yet and nailing mash temps takes a few batches.

Really, for your first all grain, keep it simple. Here is my suggestion:
8# 2-row
2# vienna or munich
3/4# crystal 40
3/4# crystal 120
Mash at 152° and plan for about 65% efficiency.
Also, I like this hop schedule
1/2oz Centennial @ 60min
1/2oz Centennial @ 15min
1/2oz Cascade @ 15min
1/2oz Cascade @ 5min

Is this your first full boil? Or have you done full boils with extract?

 

Sure, my other thought was hop utilization but you probably are close on that measurement.

 

I recommend next time you measure your boil off. It will help you dial in your process better. Knowing your pre-boil gravity and volume will help you in the long run by giving you a handle on your efficiency.

 

That boil-off is too high. I get a good rolling boil and mine is more like 1-1.2 gallons/hour.

The loss to dead space, trub, loss to chiller etc, well that's kinda dependent on your system. I lose some to trub and hops, but currently I have almost no dead space at all. The loss to hops is the most significant loss to me, trub is not much and dead space none. Hops loss is pretty pronounced tho, especially as the hop levels go up and also more if you use leaf.

I like your new recipe. Remember you can only take so much advice before you just have to brew it. Worst case, you'll have made beer, and it won't be perfect, but you'll drink it all anyway. Take notes for next time and adjust accordingly. Best case, you'll have made something fantastic. Usually the true results are somewhere in between these extremes. But nobody ever came up with the next beer sensation by following someone else's recipe.

Your kettle ain't too small. I use a turkey fryer with an 8 gallon pot and it's plenty big enough. You're not going to boil off 2 gallons per hour.

 

Something like this. You can use beersmith's number, but you may have to adjust it in subsequent batches.

 

Please pardon the interuption...

Your first AG recipe should be one that's tried and true.
No free-styling just yet.
Just sayin'.

---
Also sayin' it's
Your beer do whatcha wanna
Do Homebrew Haiku

 

Beersmith says "Woo Hoo"
but when you are young and new,
homebrew tried and true

 

shortly yours will be tried and true.

yeah, boil with the lid off. you may live tho, don't panic yet.