Brewing method advice sought!

[vanderkidd]

This weekend i'm planning my 3rd and 4th brews, this time with a mix of DME and LME. I'll list my ingredients and what i was thinking of doing, my query relates to when should I add ideally add the DME because I am limited to a 5 litre pot size!

For both recipes:
1.5kg Amber LME
500g to 1kg of Amber DME (not decided on how much to use yet in each brew but i will have 2kg to use in total)
500g of Dextrose & 500g of Light DME (already mixed in a muntons brew enhancer pack)
250g of Crystal Malt specialty grain (although I just read up that the Amber LME & DME probably already have Crystal in there)
Brew 1: 100g of Columbus & WLP001, Brew 2: 100g of Citra & Safale US-05. Using these brews so I can get a feel for single hops and different yeast options.

My method:
Use 2 litres of water @ 65-67C to steep the Crystal for 30mins. (might need to adjust amount of water?)
Remove and strain via sieve, then sparge with 1 litre water at 80C (I read that's the right temp?)
Make sure the heat is off and add the Amber LME
***Should I aim add any of the DME here? if so which ones?***
Bring to boil, add hops as required, protofloc etc, strain it all into the fermenter.
***add remaining sugars***
Top up with water to 21 litres and pitch at 20C.

Being limited to the 5 litres for boiling is a right pain but my space saving ceramic hob would possibly struggle to heat anything bigger up to a rolling boil.

So, should I put any DME in pre-boil? or just wait and stick them all in post boil and before topping up to 21 litres? Any benefits to the result from either?

And could I use less water for the steep?

 

[bomberns127]

why not turn an old fermenter into a boiler? this will give you maybe close to 20 litres of wort to boil, i would only use 1 element though, i had an old fv with a big element in and after mashing i sometime got too close to the top and ended up with a sticky garage floor and it boiled over the top, be conservative and stick to between 15 -20 litres, safer!

 

[vanderkidd]

Cheers, but I really wouldn't have the time between now and Saturday to put something like that together.

Any other suggestions?

I think I'm going to go for 500g amber DME in the boil and add the muntons enhancer to the fv.

 

[pittsy]

if your short on space then you could steep grains as you've mentioned , add lme boil with hops then add dried extract and others at end or empty most of wort out of pot after doing hops and boil dme for 10 mins , sorted . Then main thing you need to do is boil your wort (from grains) boil your fresh water with dme for at least 10 mins and boil as much of your volume as poss with hops ( min 60 mins) so if you haven't enough space in pot do as much as poss without dme then do dme with whatever amount of water still needed for that 10 plus mins .

 

[vanderkidd]

Cheers pittsy, this is more like what i was after!

If i boil the hops in only 5l of wort will i lose some hop flavour when i then add the rest of the water up to 21l?

And if i don't boil the dme for at least ten mins what sort of problems would that cause me?

 

[pittsy]

you only lose a little with hops so maybe 10% more at most and boiling is just so sterile for dme really .