Is this sensible

[confused]

OK, forget sensible, is this viable as my first AG brew, and can someone fill in the gaps / answer the questions.

My recipe for a Traditional Old English Strong Ale. I'm looking for a mild hoppiness, slightly sweet finish, a good "nut brown" colour, decent body (aren't we all!) and a good lasting head. Alcohol at about 6.5% give or take 0.5

5kg Maris Otter
1kg Wheat Malt
100g Chocolate malt

Mash at 66c for 90 minutes ** IN WHAT VOLUME OF WATER? **

Sparge at 75c ** AGAIN WHAT VOLUME OF WATER, or do I keep going till required volume reached or gravity drops below 1006


Volume to start the boil I estimate at 25l, I want to ferment with 20l. Boil for 90 mins with 40g Challenger added after 15 mins and 15g goldings 15 mins before the end.

Cool, I shall be using a counterflow cooler - what finishing temp should I be looking for. Am i trying to cool right down to pitching temp. I can adjust my cooler's flow rate to provide as much cooling as I want, but the more cooling I go for the slower the flow and longer the process takes.

Pitch yeast (pre started) at about 28c, Safale 04 of course!

I estimate SG at about 1066, FG at about 1017 so ABV about 6.3 as long as i use the correct amounts of water in mash etc, which hopefully an expert can asnwer for me.

I have to order all of these ingredients so feel free to suggest any changes, correct any glaring cock ups i may have built in. (eg is 1kg Wheat to much against 5.1k barley?)

A shame that the brew calculators can't actually tell you if it'll taset any good when you've brewed it!

Thanks folks

a very Confused Paul

[PieOPah]

You want to mash with approx 2.5 litres per Kg of grain.

When you sparge as you said you either sparge until you have a desired amount of wort or you reach a gravity of 1.006 (although I have also read that 1.010 is the idea gravity)

Edit: DaaB got there before me and with a much more detailed answer

[tubby_shaw]

Recipe seems fine for the style that you are after.
Some of the wheat flavour will probably come through at that ratio but it will certainly give you good body and head retention
I would dough in using 15 litres of water which should give you a mash that is fairly easy to stir but still give you latitude to make additions without getting too thin. I would aim for a strike temp of 76 C
If you are aiming for 20L of beer you will need to prepare around 25 L of sparge liquor to be on the safe side. Keep sparging until you collect 25 to 30 L of wort or until the gravity of the runnings drops to 1.006.
If you collect too much wort throw it away, better to have too much than not enough
Cool 23 C this should give adequate cold break and still be warm enough for the yeast to be pitched into

[PieOPah]

If you collect too much wort throw it away, better to have too much than not enough

Sacrilege

[Frothy]

or freeze the spare wort for starters (although you'll need to reduce it or add some more glucose/ malt extract to get it to ~1.040)

Frothy

[tubby_shaw]

If you collect too much wort throw it away, better to have too much than not enough

Sacrilege

What do you do with any low SG runnings that you have left over POP ?
I collect down to 1.006 and top up into the copper as required, if I have any left over it gets thrown away
As a good Yorkshireman I hate waste so what can be done with it, apart from Frothy's suggestion of boil it down to SG 1.040 for starters ?

[PieOPah]

Currently I batch sparge so I very rarely have too much wort.

My next brew I will be fly sparging so it is likely that I will end up with 'too much wort'. Since I have a 30 litre FV then this means that if I boil down to whatever my boiler can cope with, then I can top up to the required gravity and nothing will go to waste unless topping up means I go above 30 litres - which I very much doubt

In short my advise would be to get a FV that is bigger than the batch you intend on brewing. This way if you have more wort than you need then your FV can cope with it.

Also carry a few spare bottles so that if your keg can't cope with the extra volume you have somewhere to put the rest (a few 2 litre coke bottles will do the trick!)

[Andy]

I'd ditch anything below 1006, wouldn't even use it for making a starter as it may contain undesirable tannins.