Porter brew

Thats all you'll need. Just steep grains at 155. Use your usual boil procedure. Chill to 65. Pitch and let it set, probably 3 weeks because of the gravity.

 

I agree with everything that has been written above, mostly because everyone is smarter and more experienced than I am, but I'll add comments in BOLD to some of the items in your instruction list for clarification because kit instructions are typically very vague or downright wrong.

Steep grains at 155 for 60 minutes. - I've never seen a steeping time of 60 minutes. Most of mine are 20 or 30 minutes. The 60 minutes may be a reflection of the wrong use of the 'mash' word in the next step because mashing typically lasts that long. If you have the time, go with the 60, but 30 minutes should be okay.
•Mash out at 170 degrees for 15 minutes. - I suspect what they were trying to say here is just wash your grains to get that last little bit of flavor. To answer one of your questions above, I steep in my boil pot and remove the bag and rinse it when the time is done. I always have my water that I add for the boil at a pre-heated temp of 150-170, and I simply dunk the grain bag a few times to wash the grains. Then add the water to the boil kettle.
•Pull grain, pour wort in to pot and bring to boil for 15 minutes.
•Remove from heat and add Briess CBW Porter and Amber DME. - watch out for a boil-over right after you get back to a boil here.
•After boil resumes add 1 oz of Perle and hold for 45 minutes. - strange wording... I don't know why they say to 'hold' for 15 minutes. Just time the boil for 15 minutes before the next addition (which is probably what they are trying to say).
•Add 1 oz of Fuggle and ¼ tsp of Irish Moss and hold for 15 minutes. - again, just time the boil until the next addition.
•Remove pot from heat and add small jar of honey. - stir to mix this honey because it's sitting on the bottom and could scorch when you start the heat again.
•To cool wort add 3 gallons of ice water (just starting to freeze) to carboy.
•Add hot wort to carboy through a strainer. - I hope the wort is below 100 degrees by then or you stand a chance of cracking your carboy if it is glass. Use a funnel and strainer for this transfer so that the wort will get better aerated. Your yeast will like you for that, especially because this is a high gravity beer.
•Add 1 more gallon of cold water to carboy to make 5 gallons total.
•Temp of wort should be ~75 degrees. - temp should be 65-68 when adding the yeast and where your fermenter will be sitting, and your hydrometer reading in the next step will be more accurate when the temp is closer to 60.
•Take original specific gravity reading - be sure to take notes throughout the brewing process, including writing this reading down.
•Pour Burton Ale yeast in to wort
•Place stopper and air lock on to fermenter. - since this is a high gravity beer, I'd attach a blow-off tube rather than just a simple airlock.
•After ~5days or initial fermentation has subsided rack to secondary. - skip the secondary. Just let it ferment completely in the primary until it's done. Racking to a secondary is just adding the needless possibility of adding oxygen to your new beer.
•After 7-10 days in secondary take final gravity reading and - take two readings over several days after you think fermentation is done. If these readings match each other, and if the readings are close to what your recipe specifies, go ahead and bottle or keg the beer. A few extra days to allow the yeast to clean up behind themselves is always a good think to do, so you are probably around two weeks (or longer since the beer is high gravity) since brew day by the time you package the beer.
•Rack to bottling carboy if ready. - The preceding comment defines the 'if ready' part.

Enjoy your brewing session!

 

You may want to keep that on the down low unless you want to suffer the wrath of MillerCoors!?!

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/306/87749/

Cheers!

 

Oh no! Hopefully you didn't loose too much. Blow off tube next time. Or a larger fermenter.

 

Well the concern whether you should have made a starter is now a non-question. You probably still want to add a blow-off tube to protect against this happening again once you put that lid back on the bucket. If you haven't used a blow-off tube before you can google it and see what works best with your set-up. YouTube also has some videos.

 

That sounds like Burton Ale yeast! Luckily my porter was contained in a Cool Brewing cooler bag when the bucket lid blew off a few years ago. I use a blowoff tube for all primary fermentations now.

 

I ferment in 7.9 gallon plastic buckets. Lots of 'extra' headroom in that bucket to greatly mitigate the chance of a blow-off conditions.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/7-9-gal-fermenting-bucket

Cheers!

 

I ferment in the 6.5 gallon ale pale. If I were looking to buy again, I would go with the 7.9 gallon fermenting bucket @JackHorzempa references above since I have had blowouts in the past. I have a 6 gallon glass carboy that I use for wine and pretty much never use for beer. Glass has it's lovers on this site, but to me the negatives far outweigh the positives when compared to plastic buckets.

 

A potential consequence of a glass carboy breaking:

 

Harder to clean, heavier, slick when wet, potential physical harm if it breaks

 

Never bear hug a glass fermenter. Ever. Unless you want to risk death.

If you choose glass, aerate with pure O2 and a 5 micron stone.

Buckets make good beer.

 

North of Dayton. Historical no-man's land for good beer, hence the homebrew hobby