First AG Brew Today

First, thanks to all of you who have posted information and tips on how to brew, especially BierMuncher and Bobby_M. My two brewing friends and I brewed our first AG beer today. I think it is going to come out between an amber and a pale (8lbs pale and 2 lbs crystal 60L, 3 oz cascade).

Overall, I think everything turned out really well. I think we came out at about 75%-80% effeciency. Obviously, we leared some things that will come in really handy for our next batch.

The biggest problem that we ran into was controlling the rate at which you drain the MLT to the brew pot. We ended up draining it too fast: 6.5gal in 40 minutes. Oh well. Live and learn.

One question that I have is when you are taking your gravity measurements, do you wait for the sample to cool, or do you use an offset to determine the gravity?

We also learned that we need to have better markings on the inside of the brewpot to make sure we know how much wort is actually in the pot. Hence the reason we do not have a very accurate effeciency calculation.

At any rate, things went well, and I think we are on our way to AG brewing from now on. Thanks again for all the help. -John

you're well on your way! congrats!

regarding hydrometer readings - the closer you can get your sample to 60*F, the better; but there are conversion tables (Palmer's book has one) that go up to ~120* or so (can't remember off the top of my head).