Went, um... ok?!.
Some Dumb Darts hit me.
Like, I messed up the calc for volume of grain and water to mash with in my 52qt Xtreme cooler mash tun. With 32lbs of grain, I'm only going to get at most 9 gallons in there with it. Lost a couple cups liquids and grains to overflow. And even though I had pre-heated with 1 gallon hot h2o, I lost too much heat while mixing in grains and preventing spillage. So, twice I drained off around 2-3 gallons and heated to ~180 and put back into mash. Finally got it to 155F.
Another dumb dart for not completely planning out sparge process. New kettle heated 11 gallons mash water. Fine there. Using 30qt stockpot for 7 gallons of sparge and freebie brand new electric turkey fryer for another 3 gallons. Electric is really freaking slow raising 50F tap water to boil. Had to boil and clean aluminum pan, then heat sparge water. Using different method next time. Sparge ended up going in spurts.
Yet again, dumb dart hit me in the a$$. I made a curved copper tube to attach to inside of bulkhead on boil kettle. 3/8 in. copper curved to bottom of the pot and against the side wall. Hopefully to keep some of the trub out of the fermenters. Anyway, I left the bazooka screen type mesh that came with the kettle on the diverter tube. Damned thing clogged when I was transfering wort to fermenters!!!!!
So, I scrubbed my arm down in the PBW bath, rinsed and soaked in starsan. Reached into my cooled wort and removed the screen. Pissed me right off that one did.
So, I made beer. It will taste Awesome, because I made it!
I also learned a few lessons and will be applying them to future brews and the design of brew stand. Also going to start converting to polysufone QD's and eventually a March pump. Need a really compact storable stand setup because there just isn't much space to store things right now.
Happily, I looked in ferm champer last night. US-05 bucket bubbling like a college freshman sucking on his first hooka. WLP-001 in Coopers fermenter had a monster krausen going.
In spite of the mishaps, I still want to brew again next weekend. I love this sick affliction