[alcaponejunior]

OK.  I just got beersmith II and I've been playing around with it for the last few days.  I'm about to go all grain and plan to brew 3-3.5 gallon batches.  I have a five gallon mash tun made from a cooler.

Now I'm probably going to make a few very simple beers first, smash, IPA, pale ale, American amber etc to get my process with mashing down.  I'm confident on yeast and bottling, and with extract batches. 

I would like to make an American stout, and am loosely using this recipe as a baseline:

http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/FostagStoutAmericanStout

Here is what I currently have put into beersmith...

maris otter, 6 lbs
120L caramel, 10 oz
chocolate malt, 10oz
flaked oats, 10oz
roasted barley, 10oz

0.75oz columbus at 60 minutes
1 oz cascade at 10 minutes
0.5 oz cascade at 5 minutes*
 
might use wyeast, WLP or dry yeast, suggestions?

beersmith settings:

pot and cooler, 5 gallon / 19L
style American stout
fermentation ale single stage
batch size 3.5 gallons
measured batch size 3.5 gallons (why is measured different, and why doesn't it auto-update?)

indices:
OG 1.063
FG 1.012
SRM 39.3
SBV 6.6%
IBU 65.1

There is sooooo much other info in beersmith it's a bit overwhelming.  Comments, suggestions, and ideas to tweak the recipe welcome!

*on the recipe wiki the judge's comment was "could use more hop flavor" so I tossed in some extra late cascade

[thebigbaker]

Recipe looks good.  I personally use dry yeast for most of my brews unless it's a brew that really gets its flavor from the yeast (Hefes and Belgians for example) and for an American Stout, I would suggets US-05. 

The key to starting out is take good notes as this will help you dial in your system.  Since you are just starting all grain, I would suggest batch sparging.  Check here for some great info: 

http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/

Let us know how it turns out!

[alcaponejunior]

Ah yes, forgot to mention single infusion, light body, batch sparge.

My first few all grain recipes I was going to use dry yeast (05, 04, nottingham etc) mostly because they're just plain cheaper and easier to deal with. 

And yes, I'm familiar with that link, plan to use it to write out my procedure in advance (which I always do for every batch on my blog).

With total grain 8.5 lbs will I have enough room in the mash tun?  That's one thing I'm not quite sure of yet, but the mash tab looks like I will need about 7 gallons of water total (3.32 mash volume, 3.57 for sparge).

Another issue I wasn't really planning on tackling immediately, but I would welcome comments on, is water.  I've been using bottled spring water for partial mash and extract and it works great.  I don't know the water profile though.  I do know that our tap water here isn't good and I would rather buy spring water than mess with trying to figure that out now.  Should I get the 5.2 stuff to start?  pH paper?  I would rather take baby steps and not try to delve completely into every aspect on the first batches... 

[thebigbaker]

I started brewing last Oct and went all grain last Dec.  Every brewer that I know told me to not worry too much about your water in the beginning.  That being said, you could use 5.2 pH stabilizer as insurance.  Not sure about your cooler, but that sounds like it will be close. 

[alcaponejunior]

  Not sure about your cooler, but that sounds like it will be close. 

Yes I see on beersmith now it's got 0.25 gallons deadspace in the mash tun on this recipe, so I assume it will be just about completely full.