1st Brew this past Saturday

Mostly went well with only 1 minor/major(?) screw up. Oatmeal Stout and fly sparge.

The fly sparge was a bit quicker than anticipated. I barely had the valve open.

Mashed in 12.53 Qts of water and sparged with 5.35 Gal of water. The full amount went through in 45 minutes...leaving me with roughly 8 Gal for preboil. (I was shooting for 7 Gal over 1 hour)

These figures came from Beersmith and a "suggested" settings for equipement in the BS FAQ...I see these will need to be adjusted.

I just boiled until the calculated mark on the boil pot for 5.5 Gal...I was thinking 5.25 Gal to carboy. Well, after turning off the flame and cooling, I ended up with maybe 4.5 Gal. Checked OG (1.055). Tasted like Brownee with a late hint of coffee. (first time trying unfermented wort....good, bad, who knows?) Pitched with Nottingham at 70F. It began slight bubbling in 7-8 hours. Aggressive bubble after 24 Hrs. 1 bubble in about 5 minutes of looking at it at 48 hours. All in a basement that has been reading 60F. Brew at 69-70.

nice job! welcome to the addiction.

you're using Notty, that can kick some nasty $h*t when fermented warm, i'd recommend getting the temps into the mid or even low 60s. Notty's a nice clean yeast in the low 60s to high 50s.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

nice job! welcome to the addiction.

you're using Notty, that can kick some nasty $h*t when fermented warm, i'd recommend getting the temps into the mid or even low 60s. Notty's a nice clean yeast in the low 60s to high 50s.

Click to expand...

OK....Higher temps were yesterday at high activity. I just checked now and it is 66F...hopefully the day at 60-70 didn't make it guano

Won't be guano, unless of course that's what you were going for and added guano to the boil.
Good rule of thumb, pitch and ferment at the low end of the range temp wise. I do most ales at ~62. I pitched an English brown today that's at 59. Cooler temps limit yeast derived flavors.