German Brewing

About 5 years ago I was in Asheville, NC. I had a blonde ale there that was absolutely delicious. I wish I could remember who made it but I was not as big of a craft beer drinker then and I had never considered home brewing at that point. It had that fresh grain taste that I have been looking for ever since. I still remember that taste and I'm hoping that this "it" factor from LODO brewing gives me a similar result. I have a stainless steel immersion chiller on the way along with ingredients needed for a blonde ale. I want to run through my process and have some questions along the way. My main questions are around the use of c02. I bottle condition my home brew so I'm hoping for a little guidance there since I don't see this process addressed. Or is bottle conditioning a deal killer?

I have a wooden 3 tiered build with a propane burner. My mash tun is a plastic cooler. Typically do 2.5-2.75 gallons in a 3 gallon carboy.

1. Water: Boil strike water for 5 minutes and quickly chill to strike temp. I brew with RO water and build up. Will stir in required amount of SMB with rest of my salts, rest 5 minutes and slowly drain to cooler.

2. Mash: Dough in gently. I have a 10 gallon cooler which is a lot of head space for 2.5 gallon batches. I don't have a co2 tank but I do have 16g co2 cartridges and a bike pump co2 dispenser. My thought here is to shoot co2 into cooler after doughing in and then floating a stainless steel pot cover on top of the mash. Since this is a plastic cooler, I will do one mash at 60 minutes. I typically batch sparge so my plan for this first one at least is to vorlauf?, drain into covered kettle, repeat above steps for sparge water and then drain into covered kettle.

3. Boil: Bring to boil in covered kettle. Boil gently for 60 minutes with partial cover on top. Chill quickly with immersion chiller.

4. Transfer/Pitch: Float on top of wort a sanitized, stainless pot cover. Auto siphon into 3 gallon carboy that is purged with co2. Pitch yeast, oxygenate with fish pump that has a filter on it, top with standard air lock.

5. Fermentation: My thought here is that I should try to bottle as soon as close to terminal gravity as possible. I'm not sure if I should just keep this closed and wait 10 days or take reading with a shot of co2 as soon as I open up the top of the carboy.

6. When ready to bottle, I typically transfer to a bottling bucket with an auto siphon and I do this on top of a corn sugar/water solution. My thought is maybe to purge bottling bucket with co2, cover with lid with just enough room to get the hose in.

Any thoughts on this? Am I a dead in the water without kegging?

Don't worry about the CO2 and the bike pump; just get the mash cap on quickly. Also, pitch your yeast as you start to transfer the wort to the carboy and don't worry about flushing it.

If you do a FFT and know the final gravity, then you can transfer and bottle with the appropriate % extract remaining. This will ensure there is some active yeast in suspension that absorbs oxygen as you transfer to your bottling bucket. Otherwise, let it finish out and add the appropriate amount of sugar at bottling. In this case, the best thing to do would be to put some active krausen in the bottom of the bottling bucket and then transfer the beer in. Again, active yeast is your best defense against oxygen. It will also ensure that bottle conditioning goes smoothly. Regarding the beer, bottle carbonating and conditioning is the same as spunding in a keg, you just have an extra step where you have to ensure you aren't picking up oxygen.

I think you have the right thought process. At each step, ask yourself if you are going to introduce oxygen, how it will happen and how can you mitigate or eliminate it. Following through is the hard part.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this. I appreciate it.