Just wrapped up my brewday a little bit ago. If ya'll don't mind, I'd like to post a (hopefully brief) after-action report and see if you folks have some input on some of the things I experienced.
First and foremost - temperature control was a freakin'
nightmare. This may have been due to faulty thermometers, but I'm not entirely sure. I got my strike water to the appropriate temp (161F) and doughed in. My mash temp was supposed to be 156F, but it dropped way low so I added a bit of the half gallon of water I had reserved to sparge with later in an attempt to raise it. It took me a bit, but I got it to stabilize at 158F. I set it in a 170F oven, and within a few minutes the temp was 163F. Took it out of the oven, added some more of the set-aside sparge water (now quite a bit cooler) and set it on my counter, wrapped in an old winter coat. It held pretty well for the first half of the mash-in, but by the time 60 mins was up my temp had dropped to 147F.
I brought it back to the stove and tried to bring it to 165F to mashout, but the temp on the probe's readout just would. not. budge. Moved it to another spot in the kettle and it jumped to 178.
Pulled my grains, drained & squeezed 'em, and brought it to a boil.
The boil went perfectly - no boil over, all my additions were fine. The wort tasted pretty good - could definetly taste the tea I used, as well as an almost coffee-ish caramelized flavor. Some bitterness that may have been tannins as well, but nothing I'd call offensive flavorwise.
Cooling took a while. About 45 minutes into an ice bath in the sink the probe was still reading about 98F and wouldn't budge, so I tried another thermometer that I don't trust as much, but wanted to see what it said. According to that one, my wort was 77F. What the hell.
Busted out the floating analog thermometer I bought at the lhbs, and it gave me a temp of 72F. Deciding that one was probably the most accurate, I cooled it down to 63F and took a hydrometer reading. 1.036. Yikes. OG for the recipe I used is 1.053. Decided there wasn't much to be done about it, racked to my carboy, pitched the yeast, shook it all up and set it in a water bath with a blowoff tube to ferment.
I also ended up with probably about a half-gallon of wort in the kettle after filling my carboy. It pained me to dump it, but I had nowhere else to put it. I feel like that much excess wort is indicative of a failure somewhere along the line, but I have no idea.
And that's where I am now. Overall, I had a good time, and I know I'll have beer at the end so I'm not really sweating it, but what the hell? Is everyone's first brewday this far off the mark?
