First time home brewing from Intro thread..

You've got a trade-off here to be considered: bottle now to lessen the exposure to the air in the carboy vs. letting the beer stay in the carboy to become more clear. Oxygenation does not occur overnight from the exposure but could show up before you drink all of these beers. Clarity of a beer is less of a factor than experiencing the oxidized flavor of a beer, so I'd go ahead and bottle the beer this weekend if you have time.

It sounds like you have reached final gravity, but one more reading that is the same as your first reading will confirm that it is safe to bottle. During the time that it takes for carbonation to occur, additional clarifying is likely to occur in the bottle. Use care to prevent further exposure to air when racking the beer to your bottling bucket, i.e. prevent any bubbling, agitation of your beer.

You mentioned above that your beer is just short of the 5-gallon mark, so the water that you use to boil your priming sugar will make up that difference. Put your sugar solution in the bottom of the sanitized bottling bucket and allow the beer to flow over this liquid during racking. Then gently stir the beer to be certain that the solution is well incorporated throughout the beer. A few additional stirs during the bottling procedure will keep that heavy solution from settling to the bottom.

 

If your going to continue making brew, i suggest you spend like $120 for a used small chest freezer,temp controller, and some 1" wood & foam to make a keezer. Smart move putting the thermometer in water.

 

You're using the hydrometer incorrectly. The "ABV" scale is useless for beer.

ETA: I really shouldn't have said "useless." I'll go with "not as good as temperature corrected SG measurements, using a formula whose constants are appropriate for the SGs being measured."

 

Inkbird 308 + small ceramic heater will give you a fermentation chamber

 

I think he means to put in your fridge to bring the temp up to fermentation temps.

 

If you just bottled, you can't refrigerate them immediately. You need to give the yeast time to work on the priming sugar, so the bottles end up carbonated.

 

Did you pitch the yeast directly from the fridge to the 85 degree wort? Yeast would survive at this temp but a rapid change in temp might cause some damage. Let your yeast warm up to room temp before pitching.

Starting out brewing all grain is appealing. It feels more liking making something from scratch instead of slice and bake cookie. But I think a lot of new Brewers do not understand the greater importance of yeast health and handling. This means making a starter, rehydrating dry yeast, paying attention to amount of yeast, aerating the wort, pitching at the proper temp, avoiding rapid temp shifts, and fermenting at the proper temp. This plus sanitation can be a lot to grasp for a first batch. I know I didn't get it until several batches down the road, but you really need to think about these things to begin making good beer.

 

You can raise the level of the carboy above the level of the blowoff container to minimize the chances of suck back ending up in the carboy. That might be hard to do given what appears to be your fermentation chamber.