Ebay Grain Kit?

[wildburkey]

I have doubled the recipe, tweaked the 1min and 60min cascade hop additions, and lowered the ferment volume down to 34.5L (75% of the recipe instructions/ I have lowered all of the sparge water volumes by 25%) to give a OG of 1.048. I'm not too sure if I have entered the right type crystal malt or not. I'm not too clear on what the starting mash thickness (L/Kg) is referring to; I'd assume it is the absorption of water into the grain which I have already put as a default 1 in my equipment profile (I put a 1 in on the brewers friend mash guidelines recipe edit anyway). Also in the mash guidelines I got no Idea what the Desc field is so have left that blank. Here is the link to what I have come up with - http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/281685/american-pale-ale-first-ag-experiment.
Another thing of concern to me is the boil volume is lower than the ferment target volume. Can anyone point out any problems I am going to encounter, cheers all.

 

[Dae Tripper]

Mash thickness is the ammount of water vs kg of grain you will be starting your mash at. Eg 10kg of grain with a msah thickness of 3 is 30L of water.

 

[wildburkey]

Cheers m8, I just done a bit of a google bout it and must have something wrong here - 37.5L/5.525Kg=6.8, that's well above what it should be right?
EDIT: I think I get it now, I'm only going to be mashing with 15L at a time so 15/5.525=2.7 sounds more like it.
Another thing I'm not too sure about is in the recipe instructions I have it tells me to adjust the water temp down from 78c down to 65c for the first 60min mashing then has no mention weather I should do this for the second 20min sparge/ mash. Do I just leave it at 78c the second batch sparge?

 

[Diesel80]

How did you go with this?
I can't advise re: mashing as I am BIAB (full vol mash).

Hope it worked out for you, at the very least hope you get beer for your troubles

Cheers,
D80

 

[Dae Tripper]

You will need to find your strike temp via a calculator. Strike temp is water temp before you put the grain in, temp then comes down to your mash temp. Once you make the changes in your software it should start making sense.

 

[wildburkey]

Thanks again Dae Tripper, I should hopefully get this done this afternoon; I'm still a bit anxious to proceed without full knowledge of what I'm doing. I'll keep you all updated how things go.

 

[wildburkey]

I started out a bit late in the day and just doing my 20min mash/ sparge out now. I can't get my mash temp to stay above 63c in the esky MT but the iodine test seemed ok. I set up outside cause I'm still waiting for a mate to weld up a table for my MT to sit up on, it seems to be working. Here's a few pics I took along the way, cheers!

 

[wildburkey]

Dunno what I done but I ended up with 24L of wort with an OG of 1.070, going to boil and chill some water and adjust to 1.040 and see what happens :-( I wasn't expecting things to go perfect first time but didn't think I'd screw up that bad, lol.
Edit - I think I have figured this out, I used the water amounts according to the recipe supplied with the kit. I just realised the Brewers friend has a quick water requirements button and it would have been about spot on if I had of used the amount of sparge water recommended. I have adjusted down to 1.048 and got 36L so pretty happy with that.

 

[wildburkey]

I'm quite happy with the results of this recipe; especially considering it was my first AG and quite a balls up. Is there anyone in NW Tas who does AG brewing that want's a sample to provide feedback?