Got this brewed yesterday.
The mash was really easy, added .4 lbs of rice hulls and didn't have any issues with clumping or stuck mash. I used strike water at 172 degrees and the mash settled in at 154 degrees...by 30 minutes the mash was holding at 151. I used 60 minutes mash and then started my sparge. I should note that I forgot to use any water amendment, big mistake! Our water comes from one of the cleanest rivers in the nation, it has crystal clear water with almost no dissolved solids and only about 20ppm total hardness. It really helps in my area to add some chalk and gypsum to the strike water to help PH buffer. Oh well...life goes on.
The boil was uneventful. I stir. I wait. I stir. I wait. Upon conclusion of the boil I always kill the flame and then making sure to never splash into the beer I mist the outside of my keg to knock the boil out of the wort. With the boil gone but with a the temp maintained above 160 I steep my aroma hops for about 15 to 20 minutes and then start the chilling process.
The gravity @ 1.049 instead of 1.054, came out a little low. I attribute this to my system being scaled better for 10 gallon batch and to my lack or water amendments. In addition, I really didn't monitor my batch sparging. Any real schedule would have been better than just kinda winging it like I did, but I was playing it loose.
Looking to try fermenting this at a lower temp than I have tried before...essentially I would like to keep it around 61-62. I have been fighting some beers that fermented too high and some of the strange off flavors they were kicking have been hard to eliminate or hide. I was happy that even starting this beer at 60 degrees I saw strong fermentation at 8 hours. By 24 hours I had a huge pillow of head and a little bit of crap pushing out the blow-off tube. Apparently my yeast is healthy; Thanks Wyeast. Go Oregon.
I will post some pics after the beer is done.