First homebrew.

I'm going to make my first attempt at brewing a beer next thursday and have been thinking about the gameplan. The beer is meant to be a top fermented ersatz-pilsner.

Malt
1.85 lbs Finnish pilsner malt
Hops
20 grams Hallertau Mittelfrüh at 3.6% AA at 60 minutes
5 grams Hallertau Mittelfrüh at 3.6% AA at 5 minutes
Target OG
12%
Strike water
3 quarts
Sparge water
2 quarts
Pre boil volume
5 quarts
Post boil volume (10% boil off?)
4.4 quarts
Yeast
2.8 grams of Safale US-05 dry yeast (at 70 grams per HL)

Does this all look half-way reasonable? I'm limited by the size of the brewpot which holds about 4.5 liters comfortably. The volume of strike water I've worked out from John Palmer's book How to brew (online version), 1.5 quarts per pound malt. This leaves me with less room to work with as far as sparge water goes however, he recommends 1.5-2 times as much sparge water as strike water, I'll be using less sparge water than strike water instead. Will this be a major problem I wonder? Another question I have is how much yeast to use, on their website they recommend 50-80 grams per HL, is it advisable to use the higher end of this range, 80, or even more, of a dry yeast such as this one?

Having read some other threads it seems like it is advised by some to leave the beer sitting in the fermenter for up to 3 weeks. I don't plan on using a secondary, would it be advisable to leave the beer sitting in the fermenter with the yeast for around 3 weeks or is it necessary to remove the beer from the yeast during this period? I'm planning on bottling the beers, and will let them sit in the fridge for some time after bottling, perhaps a couple of weeks to start with. In order to carbonate the beers it seems like a sugar addition will be required, should the beers be allowed to sit in room temperature (same temp as the fermenter) after bottling to allow a secondary fermentation to take place prior to putting them in the fridge?

Alot of my concerns regard the actual mashing, of being able to keep a steady temperature over the span of an hour. I've worked out that the strike water needs to be slightly higher temp than the desired mash temp, but I'm wondering how much of a problem it will be to maintain the temperature in a stainless steel pot of 4.5 liters. At 3 quarts strike water I'll be able to squeeze in some additions of hot water to raise the temp I guess. Using the oven to keep a steady temp is something I've seen mentioned and might try, I'll have to experiment with a water filled pot in the next few days and dial in the temperature setting for such a low heat without risking crossing into 75C territory. Perhaps a mix of both might work well.

I'm thinking that I might be overthinking some things, whilst not considering other things in enough detail, so I'm hoping that by posting my thoughts here others can chime in with their experience.

 

Thanks for the input. It sounds like using the oven is a good idea. From what I've gathered I'll be removing the pot from the oven and stirring it up once every 15-20 minutes or so, I suppose it's a good idea to stir the mash for some time each time it's taken out of the oven (5 minutes each time perhaps?), to give the malt the opportunity to be in suspension and more evenly distributed in the liquid inbetween being placed in the oven?

Another question that I have concerns the wort boil. Is it a good idea to start with the highest setting on the stove and let it come to a "cascading" boil more or less and then bring it down a notch for the remainder of the time? Or should one go for the full-whack cascading boil the full hour?

A second question concerns the cooling of the wort, I wont have a hop bag so the whole cone hops will be loose, is it a good idea to remove the hops prior to chilling the wort (limiting the late hop addition to those last 5 minutes of the boil), or is it fine to leave them in until the wort is transferred to the fermenter? I'm thinking that a post-boil soak might be good for the flavor contribution of the late hops, but it might be detrimental in the cooling process (from a sanitation standpoint for example)?

 

That's good to hear, so 3 weeks it is.

I see, that certainly changes the time schedule I had in mind, thanks for the heads up on that.

Thanks!

 

I was reading this page where Palmer writes that the mash should be stirred at those intervals to achieve an even temperature and conversion. I was thinking that by leaving the mash inside the oven for an hour the grain would settle to the bottom and reduce the amount of conversion taking place (as well as the extraction), and that by mixing it up occasionally the grain would have more even exposure to the liquid and aid in the conversion and extraction (although I was unsure as to how thorough the mixing would need to be if that was the case). That was my hypothesis at least.

That's good to know, and good to hear as it will make it easier to manage than at full-blast I imagine.

Sounds good.

 

It seems like rehydrating the yeast is a good idea, is it sufficient to boil up some water and let it cool, then stir in the yeast 15-30 minutes prior to pitching it? Or should I set aside some of the wort for this task at the wort cooling stage? Is either method perfectly fine?

 

I'm at the wort cooling stage atm and I noticed this white blob sitting in the pot, I'm guessing that this is cold break that should be carefully removed?

 

So the beer is fermenting away and I'll be looking to bottle the beer in a little less than 2 weeks, and I'm thinking about the sugar (priming) addition. I've gathered that I should boil up some water, dissolve the sugar in it and let it cool. The first question I have is how much water it needs to be mixed with, as per brewer's friend's calculator it seems like I'll be needing around 28 grams of table sugar to get to the carbonation level I had in mind (2.2 volumes at 5 liters beer). Another question is at what temperature the sugar solution should be at when adding the beer to the bottling bucket, should it be room temp (same temp as the room of the fermenter)? As I understand it I'll add the solution to the bucket, add the beer carefully to the bucket, stir carefully to mix the two and then bottle it.