It went really well overall, but it was also a learning experience to say the least! Haha. I brewed a Sierra Nevada Celebration clone. It was the first brew with my new brew kettle also, a 15.5 gallon converted keg. The boil off rate was 2 gallons per hour! I did not plan for that! That is almost twice as much as my old kettle, and I ended up with only 4.5 gallons of actual beer instead of 5.5. I'm going to try not to boil it quite as vigorously next time and add a gallon to my sparge water and see what happens.
Beersmith said that my efficiency was only 55%. Not sure why this was so low. I bought the grain from my LHBS and had them crush it. I was told that maybe they didn't crush it fine enough. Not sure. The batch I'm brewing this weekend, I purchased the grains crushed from Northern Brewer several months ago. I'll see if that makes a difference.
The other thing I need to correct is my mash temp. I missed it by 2 degrees. I was shooting for 154 and I ended up at 152. The cool part is that my cooler only lost 1 degree in 1 hour, and that was without putting any blankets on top. And I can live with that.
The other thing is that I missed my gravity by a little bit. It was supposed to be 1.068 and it ended up being 1.062. Not too bad, but if I hadn't boiled the wort all the way down to 4.5 gallons it would have been WAY lower than it should be. Had I stopped boiling at 5.5 gallons, the gravity would have been around 1.050 which would not have been acceptable!
Overall, it was a success though. I just need to learn this new system and keep taking notes. It will just take time. I just started brewing last October and have learned a lot so far. I brewed about 6 extract batches, and then switched to partial mashes. All Grain was a little intimidating in the beginning. But after I did my first partial mash, I knew I was going to convert to All Grain soon. Either way the whole experience has been a ton of fun!