Brewed yesterday afternoon and beer is bubbling away this morning, was a good experience with highs and lows.
Highs- GF performed better than expected:
1) Temps- I recorded temps at 5 min intervals, they were evenly distributed and I didn't recirc. :
57 @ 0min, 64 @ 5, 74 @ 10, then +9 every 5 min (perfectly evenly) until my strike temp of 164 was reached.
I was very pleased with these results! Messed around with non-brewing things and started to run out of time with milling grains and getting water adjustments together. Temps from end of sparge (152 to 184 in 25 min) then rose an even 6 degrees/5 min interval right up to boil. I covered the glass lid with towels to assist (rate did NOT slow down as it neared boil!)
2) Boil- Very pleased. Not the splashing roll I get with my jet of propane, but nice roll as has been posted by others here.
3) Cooling- Very efficient. I recirc for sanitizing and for hop whirlpool for 15 min. Turned on cold water about 3/4 way full and shut red valve on discharge pipe down to about 1/4 to 1/3 open. Instant cool by the time the wort running through met with the cold water. Water return was also surprisingly cool, not used to that with my IC. Next time I will run recirc at 1/2 to 3/4 open, no need to run that slow (~20-25min?) but down to 61.
4) Hit my OG spot on. I use Brewer's Friend and insert 70% brewhouse eff. Guess I got lucky with estimate. I didn't make all the other measurements, such as pre-boil gravity or volumes unfortunately. All in very pleased.
Lows- Too many pilot errors. I was on auto-pilot and made some stupid mistakes:
1) Forgot to insert grain basket! Realized this after pouring about 1/2 of grains in boiler. So 5.6g & 7lbs of grain in boiler at ~160. Uh oh. Bailed out GF with pitcher into a bucket. Removed hop filter and cleaned out GF.
2) Put grain basket in, poured back in grains & water from bucket. Ok. Mixed in rest of grains, feeling good...then oh ****, there's the filter on the counter.
Rinse and repeat. Pull grain basket, put in bucket (too tight of a fit, next time into kettle), bail out boiler again into another bucket. Install filter. Only spilled a cup or so, sticky and annoyed me, ha!, more to come...
3) Late on heating sparge water, gave in to putting kettle on propane. Damn.
4) Once at boil, I scraped the bottom as instructed and bumped the hop filter and sure enough the black end cap came up floating in my wort. Crap. No rinse and repeat this time, just move on, as I figure I'm using my new hop filter.
5) At first hop addition I threw in hops as usual. Oh crap. Forgot the hop basket. Shouldn't have been talking so much while brewing this first time!
6) During cooling captured a bucket of discharge water as usual, and attention diverted until I heard that unpleasant sound of water running all over the floor! Grabbed hose quickly, put into sink, started cleaning up water and then again heard water running on floor
How the heck did that hose come out of sink!! Put back in sink good this time.
So more lows listed than highs, but still overall after I get this worked out, I'm sure I will be very pleased. Wrapping the GF was a huge help for the temps I'm certain. I may return the hop basket, I needed to rig a counter weight (used a cup!) to keep it from tipping into the boil, and besides I'm not certain its value vs muslin bags.
