Today was a good day!

Today i did my second AG batch. everything almost went perfectly, minus stupid little issues.

I brewed the dogfish head 60 minute clone, very similar to Yoopers recipe, with a couple minor changes (to add more IBU's)

What i did was for a 5.5 Gallon batch, i figure i would do that so at the end i could have alittle left to test or play with ext after i keg 5 gallons. but anyways

my grain bill
- 13.5lb US 2-row
- .875 lb fawcett halcoyon pale

Hop schedule
- .25 oz warrior (FWH) ~ pellet
- .75 oz warrior Continuously added for first 15 min of boil ~ pellet
- . 5 oz Amadillo continuously added for last 45 min of boil ~ leaf
- . 5 oz Simcoe continuously added for last 45 min of boil ~ Pellet

- 1 oz Amadillo dry hop 7 days ~ leaf
- .5 oz Simcoe dry hop 7 days ~ leaf

Yeast
made a 2L yeast starter 2 days prior and chilled to make yeast cake using Wyeast 1056 American Ale decant before pitching

But here is my story. i heated up my mash-tun, and and was shooting for 154 F for the infusion step at 1.25 qt/lb ratio. I hit that exactly on point. later i heated up the mash to 168 to end conversion. (missed that by a couple degrees. low) but after sparging it hit that temperature. problem 1 one started when sparging (i made a fly sparger but it failed to work correctly but improvised, im a cheap mo-fo so i will find anyway to build something before buying it, or its just the engineer in me).

After sparging i did a preboil gravity. what i calculated was spose to be 1.061, i hit 1.060, so i thought i was doing really well. Following my boil everything when well until i tried my chiller, stupid thing had a leak (had to fix that in about a 5 minute deal before it had to go into the boil). but after the chiller started i got the temperature down to 80 F in just about 15-20 minutes, when i put it into the fermenter (had lots of cold break, which i assume is really good?, due to chilling it super fast?)

i took my initial gravity and it came out to be 1.068 (missing beersmiths by .003 at 1.071) for my second brew i think is really well, as well i calculated my brew house eff. which ended up being between 72- 73% depending on which program you use, and with some tinkering to my system, i think i can get a greater value)

But overall i hope this was a good success, and i thought i would share this with you wonderful people here on HBF BTW, this site due to you people help me navigate through tons of information to help me with all this

Always good to hear about a well-run brew day. Tends to balance out the horror stories that you tend to hear.

so update: it is fermenting like crazy!, i have never had a fermentation that strong. it is foaming up to the air lock, and inside you can see all the protein and yeast cells floating around like a carnival ride