First 10 gallon batch...

Well, I ventured into my first 10 gallon brew day. Now I really see why they call it a brew DAY. It was a Biermuncher Cream of Three Crops that I sub'd Liberty for Crystal because I didn't have any. My efficiency was way higher than expected too. I planned on 70% and hit 78%, ended up with about 3 gallons over that I did a separate boil on. My 11.5 gallon main boil landed right on 1042 like I was aiming for. Overall, I was really happy with mostly the whole day except the chilling. I must be doing something wrong in my technique with the wort chiller. I'm using a KegCowboy 40 plate chiller and it took WAAAY longer than I expected to cool down 11.5 gallons of wort. Starting at 208F it took about 40 minutes to hit 68F running 58F water.

Other than that, all that's left is to let the yeasties do their job.

Wow, I seem to kill my own threads. :|

I thought someone would at least respond to the part about how I'm doing something wrong with the plate chiller; to give me some pointers.

I'm guessing you recirculate your wort, If so do you whirlpool back into your BK?

You could try a prechiller and/or throttling down the speed at which you are circulating into your chiller.

I don't use a chiller anymore and never used a plate chiller, maybe someone else will have some advice.

I do recirculate and angle the flow to create a whirlpool. I've also varied the output and watched the thermometer to set my best temp. drop speed.

I've got 2 ideas to try next brew. I'm going to make up a splitter to run tap water first to drop the temp down as quickly as possible first, then when it looks like the temp isn't falling quite as fast, switch over to a 12V RV pump, pumping ice water from an 18 gallon tub through the plate chiller back to the tub. Hopefully by January when the tap water temp is in the 40's I can eliminate the ice bath cooling part.

I've got off the end of the week so I'll be brewing up a red ale and giving this a try.