Ahhh brewing. I remember those days.

You could even go all out and use 100% vienna. Or maybe a touch of munich for a bit of colour/ complexity.

I don't want to go overboard with the Vienna, and the recipe I pulled off Google said "50/50". I want to keep it still light-ish, and yeah the CaraMunich II is the medium one, for some colour. It apparently imparts a nutty flavour, which will also be welcome. I'm hopeful for this one, but I'm stuck with smaller batches for now, so if it's good who knows if I'll get it perfect again (my biggest gripe with brewing). I'm OK with it as well, just FYI :P

Welcome back to brewing. Hopefully your kid is doing good. I agree on the Vienna. I would just add some crystal malt for even better head retention. Considering the amount of brews under your belt. ( similar to mine) I don't think you should stuff around with yeasts pic a s04 or 5 and get it done

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This is what i get in Beersmith ....
Screenshot_39.jpg
IBU = ±27 ?? ... that's going with 11.8%AA currently at Beerlab

but as Langchop said, I would also do 100% Vienna up to as much as ±2.5Kg ....
Screenshot_40.jpg

Kid's doing good, yeah thanks for asking man! I'll mull the grain idea in my head, for sure. As for the yeast, I have SafLager S-23 I'm going to use. It is a true lager strain, but can be fermented up to 22°C. I'll obviously do my best to keep it as low as possible, but still. It should be fine

See this is why you ask advice. For some reason I had the Southern Promise at 6% AA. I see it's supposed to be around 11%-12%. I'll halve that amount then - 8g of Southern Promise then, same boil. Same comment on the grain - I'll think it over. I kinda already placed the order for the above...

OK so I got the ingredients. I'm planning a 12l batch, for now, but I'll water it down a bit if the gravity is too high for me. Let's see how it'll go...

Also, I got some glass jars, sterilized, into which I will be harvesting my yeast when done. I plan on doing at least one more Vienna lager, so saving the yeast is a good idea. Winter is the perfect time to brew a lager at my place, since it gets lekker cold in some rooms, so here's to getting it right!

I'll be mashing slightly higher to get a slightly sweeter finish, so strike temp will be at 69ºC, to mash at 67ºC. I'm aiming for a 12l batch with 15l strike water, but I have a cooler box to play with so I'll see how the day plays out.

On to the next question - I know BIAB is where you mash with the grains in a bag and and and, but I have another question here. Why can I just mash straight in the cooler box, with no bag and everything, which will allow the grains to really spread in the water, easy to mix, and then when I get the wort into a pot, I simply pour it through the grain bag? Grain bag fits over the edge of the pot, and it's a small batch, so pouring the wort with the grains into the pot should be pretty easy, no?

You will get better efficiency if you decide to leave the bag out of it. As you said, it's a small batch so you should be able to pour the wort through your grain bag without too much effort.

Exactly my thoughts, yeah. I want to heat up the cooler box (which is huge), get the strike water to temp, pour in the grains and then mix it well every 5 minutes or so, to get all the sugars out properly. I can then use the bag as a "filter", of sorts, as I pour the wort into the boil pot. Or pots. I'll see how it goes

I'm sure it can work, but there is no need to stir it every 5min tho

A stir at 30min into mash should be enough.

How are you handling a mash-out? or are you just gonna add some boiled water at the end just before transferring to the pot?

That's the idea, yes. Just add some boiling boiling water to the mash, mix it up to loosen the grain bed and then pour out. I'll have to pre-calculate to make sure I don't overfill the brew/boiling pot though, so we'll see how that goes.

Are you using a grain bag in a cooler box, and then transferring to a boil kettle?

Yip, you'll have to do some calcs, as I assume the pot can't handle all the liquid and the grains ... I would therefor also suggest you scoop out most of the grain from the cooler with a strainer of some sort before transferring the rest to the pot.
If you know the boil-off of that pot and know more or less how much water the grain will absorb, you should be able to get to your correct numbers

Are you doing this because you don't have a bag big enough for the cooler box? Otherwise I think the bag will just get weighed down if you try and pour it all through into the pot. But then you might as well just line the bag into the pot first. But like was mentioned, if pot size is too small for grain + wort it will be more worth your while to just have a bag in the cooler box anyway?

OK I think everyone is misunderstanding me. My plan is as follows:

Hot water into cooler box, get it to strike temp.
Grain into cooler box, into the hot water. No grain bag. Use the volume and the space in the cooler box to get a good mash efficiency.
Mash.
Mash out.
Line 18l boil pot with grain bag. I checked, it fits perfectly and snugly over the edges of the boil pot.
Pour wort from cooler box into the grain bag in the boil pot, grains and all.
Lift the grain bag out of the pot, taking the grain (and some moisture) with. This should reduce the level of water to the acceptable boil volume.

I just looked into the numbers, and it looks like grains absorb a little over it's own weight in water volume. So 2.3kg grain bill like I have will absorb about 2.5l of water. That means if I will have to reduce the strike water volume. I had it at around 6l per kg, but it seems from quick research that it should be around 3l per kg. As such, I'll just use 8l of strike water, and then add another 8l of hotter water at the mashout. That'll give me 16l - 2.5l = 13.5l boil, which is pretty much spot on where I want to be.

It's a big pot, wider than it's deep, so boil off will happen quickly. I'm going to have to boil only 30 mins for the hops, and then I'll check gravity. If need be, I'll water the wort down a bit to reach my target OG (around 1.04).

As a funny PS: I got a larger grain bag than I ordered. I think I ordered a Medium, but they gave me a Large. Super glad they did, as the Med would not have fitted the pot as well.