2nd All Grain batch, a few questions.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/brewcipher-6.629625/

Questions 1 thru 4 can be answered using a good recipe builder/calculator. BrewCipher is the one I use. Brewer's Friend is frequently mentioned here as well. If you start using one now, you’ll be familiar with it for future recipes that have ‘limited’ specifics, including recipes you build yourself. They can be used with extract recipes, too.

Hop sack or not is a personal preference. If you can get an effective whirlpool going when chilling the wort, just tossing them in commando is fine. I've settled on using a hopspider similar to this one and just lift it out after the whirlpool, or before whirlpool if not doing a hopstand.

ETA - Green Bay Rackers has a standalone calculator for strike water temperature, but mash thickness (determined by the amount of mashing grains and mash-in water volume) is one of the inputs.

 

Yep - what @riptorn said above. All recipes you see online or otherwise depend on your specific system. Everyone will have different volumes of strike water, ammounts of trub left over in kettles, different boil off rates, different heat absorption rates in mash tuns, and a whole slew of other factors. Once you have all this information about your system in a recipe builder, you tweak the numbers to line up with what is in the recipe - not the other way around.

So you try and match the percentages of grain rather than the specific amounts, and all the ammounts of water you use depend on your system, which all relates to the magic number called Brewhouse Efficiency which is your number about your system. You don't know that number until you brew a couple times, but once you get it ball park, you can start tweaking things to hit your numbers every time.

If you don't want to bother with that for this brew, here's what I'd say:

1. What Temp should my Strike Water be? Is there a "rule of thumb" like 10 degrees more than mash temp? Sure, go with ten, but this depends on the temp of your grain, the temp of your tun, and what your water to grain ratio is, but thats a decent ball park number
2. Mash in water volume? think more total water volume needed.
say you want to wind up with 5.5 gal in your kettle to account for 0.5 gal of trub left over that doesn't go in your fermenter, Id say start with 8 gal, wind up with 6.5 gal of wort after mash, boil off a gallon, boom. THAT IS TOTALLY AN ESTIMATE THO! with 8 gal total strike water, put a little more than half in with your mash, use the rest for sparging (if you are fly sparging it doesnt' hurt to heat up extra)
3. Sparge Water Temp?
Try 180 F
4. Volume of Sparge Water? (to make sure I have enough to get to 6.5 gallons pre-boil volume)
Enough that you can keep sparging until you hit your pre boil volume / gravity , so if use half of your water for your mash, use the other half to sparge. also totally ballpark!
5. Do you recommend using hop bags? Or just toss them in?
you can do either but I toss them in , assuming you chill your wort down to say 68 after boil, let it sit for ten minutes or so, then rack the clear wort off the hop junk at the bottom

Anything else you can think of that I need to keep in mind?

Just download Brewcipher and input what it tells you , you will have way more fun brewing

 

If you use a rule of thumb for this, prepare to be disappointed when individual mash temps turn out a few (or several) degrees higher or lower than expected. But like the guy who stood with one foot in a bucket of boiling water and another foot in a bucket of ice water, you might be happy "on average."

As, @riptorn mentioned, use software. There are so many free options that there's really no good reason not to.

 

I will jump in and say this... you can get all the numbers you need to start this process with a wet run. Use straight up water and a consistent measuring tool. Find out how many quarts your mashtun can hold. Drain it into a kettle to see how much is left in the dead space. Boil the water for 1 hour measuring the volume before and after the boil. Drain the water from the kettle to see how much is left in the dead space.

Using these numbers you can plug them into Brewcipher. Kettle dead space, mashtun dead space, boiloff rate. Also input the amount of wort you want in your fermenter.

Then you input the water to grain ratio. Most recommendations sit in the 1.5-2 qts of water to pounds of grain. Brewcipher will tell you exactly how much water at what temperature to strike with to achieve the desired mash temp. It will tell how much water to sparge with. It accounts for your dead spaces as well as the amount of liquid retained in the grain.

Most generic recipes tend to aim for around 68-75% efficiency. I would start with a 70% efficiency in Brewcipher, all of your parameters, brew the beer as it is in the recipe, no changes. Take your readings on brewday, put them into Brewcipher, and it will tell you what your actual efficiency was for that brew session.

 

And for myself in winter I’ll heat. Water for the tun to 175 F.
My grains are kept outside in a unseated barn, so, unless I’m brewing on a day with the temp at 0-5 F, 175 will do.

comando on hops,

I never use apps to calculate beer recipes. I like to brew on the run and learn along the way. Do which is best for you and have fun!!!

 

Read Section 3, detailed instructions with photos will help a lot:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3

A couple of things to ponder: An OG of 1074 to FG of 1014 requires 80% attenuation which 1056 will struggle with. Even with mashing at 150 I would expect less attenuation which will give you a higher FG (richer mouthfeel) and lower ABV. Personally I think 150 is on the low side of normal, consider boosting this a couple of degrees.

Ferming at 68 is on the high side for 1056, if you miss and it goes higher you might have a dominant alcohol presence. A few degrees cooler could help avoid this.

Starting with 6.5g in the kettle is probably on the low side...but you won't really know your boil-off rate until you've brewed a few batches.

My biggest advice: don't get too hung up on the details . . . with complete knowledge you'll still mess up some along the way. That's how we all started. Keep notes and make each brewday a little more precise than before. Oh yeah, big plus on using brewing software . . . there's a little bit of a learning curve but it puts you ahead of the TLAR method much quicker.

 

AFAIK - Bullion hop is no longer available.
Sub with Brewer's Gold | Galena | Chinook

 

I am sometimes amazed at the fountain of knowledge here, and the ability to recall it, that can come through in a small number of posts, as evidenced by the 4 that followed mine. For grasshoppers, there are a lot of tidbits in this short thread.

TLAR = Top Level Aircraft Requirements, right?
While I agree with, and am a proponent of, using software early in one’s foray into homebrewing, I see software as a step toward second-naturedly knowing in advance what ingredients/processes will result in the beer I want. I'm not there yet. It's kind of like knowing what a picture will look like before you take it (a throwback to the days of film cameras).

Pricey, but available
https://www.homebrewing.org/Bullion-Hop-Pellets-1-oz_p_111.html

 

Couple of small points. First, my advice on mash temperature is not to worry too much as long as you get within a few degrees of your target. In truth it is an imprecise measure, but luckily it is not a sensitive variable in terms of the final product. You would struggle to distinguish a beer mashed at 149 from one mashed at 152.

Second, I think if you are using pellet hops you can do whatever you want, but if you're using leaf hops I strongly recommend containing them somehow. I have a vivid memory of trying to siphon beer out of my kettle while constantly getting the autosiphon plugged with leaf hops - not fun.

 

https://www.homebrewing.org/Bullion-Hop-Pellets-1-oz_p_111.html

ETA: I see @riptorn beat me to it.