electrotype said:
Well, the only change I'll make with this one is to not use a secondary fermenter. Anyway, I only have one carboy so I do not have any choice...
But I realize that my mash temperature was probably off in the first batch! As I said, I didn't have a themometer so I went to 160F hoping it would be ok with the cold grain. But now I do have a termometer, and I had to add extra hot water in the mash to bring it to 153F.
But I'm not 100% sure how much hot water I added to the mash now (I guess I should have mesured it)! Should I add less sparge water then? Or Isn't it very important?
That's fine. A secondary has no value on a beer like this. At best, it does nothing. At worst it slows down the yeasts ability to clean up some of its intermediate byproducts (diacetyl, etc), or introduces an infection (wild yeast or bacteria) which then produces an off flavor after several weeks or months.
Yes, its all important.
Mash water to grain ratio matters (a little)
Mash temperature matters (lots).
Mash water to Sparge water ratio matters (some)
Sparge temperature matters (a little).
Sparge METHOD matters (lots)
Extract efficiency matters (lots...but not in the way many people think)
etc....
Then there is the boil....the chill....the ferment (which is where real beer flavors are made)....
That is really my point. When you can manage to control all of the things that matter and make the same beer twice...then you will have DONE something.
To answer your question more specifically: you need to use an equipment profile setup for your equipment, and a mash profile setup for your recipe. You need to select a sparging method: batch or fly. Then BS2.2 will give you a set of instructions that will include water volumes and temperatures. Your job is to do it EXACTLY as BS2.2 tells you to. You need to record everything that you do, including all ACTUAL measurements that BS2.2 tells you. Sometimes its not the same.
You need to record your results: gravities, volumes, temperatures. At every step (mash, sparge, pre-boil, post-boil). Always record the temperature of the sample as it is ACTUALLY measured. Apply the correction factor later. If you batch sparge, record everything for the runnings from every batch.
When you try and repeat you are going to find that these numbers vary wildly from one brew session to the next. Then you will have to figure out why.