You have a colander that will hold 8.5# of grain? That's a big colander! How did you support it in the bowl? And by the way that's a big bowl, too!
ah. yes. i was wondering if someone would notice that. No, my colander does not, in fact, hold all 8.5 pounds of grain. The most it can seem to muster is 5 pounds. So as the grain forms a huge pile, i scoop it off and add it to a second bowl, the add more "fresh" grain from the tun.
aaaand yes the bowl will only hold one gallon of wort. So what i did was use a long siphon tube to siphon the hot wort into the boiling bucket (which is 8 gallon capacity) so as to not HSA it. I kept doing this every time the little bucket filled up. Good catch. Worked out well though. Nice clarity in the end.
Yes, the calc was ppg. 50 points X 5 gallons / 8.5 pounds = 29.411. How did you get that into a percentage?
1.050 was not a bad based for a simple beer....oh, see, then i added 8 lbs LME and 1 lb DME to kick the OG to 1.110 (NIIICE). If all goes well, the abv of this Belgain Style Summer Ale should be 11.2%. That will relax you at the end of a hot summer day (might want to keep a glass of water handy as well).