First all-grain brew-day in the bag!

Glad to hear your first AG day went well. I think a lot of us had threads that started, "Is my beer ruined???"

If you post a grain bill we can help you with efficiency. I think most brew in a bag is high 60s to low 70s if you don't sparge. I'd give you low 70s if I had to guess.

You have a cooler that will fit 1.25 qt water/lb grain and you don't have a mash tun yet?

 

My first all grain was pretty under-hopped too. It was a maris otter / willamette smash, and turned out to be a showcase for maris otter's flavor, with just enough hops bitterness to balance it out (but little actual hop flavor). No biggie, it was still a tasty beer and those that tried it liked it. That was more of my under-estimating both how much hops to use, and the strength of willamette hops. At the time I didn't check or even consider my efficiency at all (I had other more important things to worry about!).

Now that you have data points, you can more accurately set yourself up for next time by adjusting the numbers in beersmith. You have to keep making adjustments until you get your system dialed in. It shouldn't take too many brews untill you're hitting your numbers nearly perfectly or perfectly every time.

 

I've been getting mid 80s consistently from my no sparge BIABs, but I'm crushing pretty fine and recirculating via a pump (All beers under 1.075 to date). I think it really depends on the system, but a baseline of 65-70% seems like a good estimate.

Speaking of BIAB, for your selfish 3 brew day, doing one BIAB brew makes the day a lot easier. I've been doing 3-5 batch brew days for a while now, and can say from personal experience, doing one or more as BIAB beers makes it way faster, especially if knocking out some session beers (e.g. English Mild: 35 minute sacch rest, 60-90 min boil, 5 min to chill w/ plate chiller).

 

When you decide to buy the cooler, consider getting the bigger one (ten gallon size). I bought a five gallon cylindrical water cooler type, and it works fine, but there is a limit on how big of a beer I can mash and still have five gallons as the batch size. My 8% PtE type beer was theoretically needing more mash tun space than I had (it was close tho, and I just sparged a little extra). However, I couldn't brew five gallons of a big RIS or barleywine because I'd run out of room. I'd have to brew more like four gallons.

 

Danstar Nottingham will do you well. It flocculates so hard on the bottom of the fermenter that you have to practically scrape it out, and you rack off nice clean beer.

 

I have a 10 gallon Igloo with a hole for the spout at the bottom. All I needed to to was install a kettle valve through the hole, and it is completely reversible to use the cooler for ice water at other times. Many coolers will not require an irreversible modification to make a mash tun.

 

All that's really different is that you install a valve and a filter on a cooler. No reason you couldn't put ice and drinks in there when you're not using it as a mash tun. That's one more concern that need not be worried about.

 

If you're a DIY type of guy it's about time you drill a hole and get a spiggot. If not, it's probably worth about $50, (cooler and spiggot will run about this much), not to have to drill that hole and have a cooler as big as you want. I'm very happy with my 60 quart cooler and can mash about 30# of grain at 1.25 qt/lb comfy. That's an average 5 gal barleywine followed by a parti-gyle 5 gal of session ale. It just depends on how big you want to go. I know a lot of people who want to make 10 gal of barley wine. I can't and don't.

A yard sale would work too.

 

Craigslist was helpful to a new brewing buddy of mine over the past month. He scored a wort chiller, cooler mash tun, and some other stuff 2nd hand and reasonably priced.

There always seems to be somebody selling off for one reason or another.