as far as original gravity and pre boil gravities go, can someone plz help me out. Just finished my first all grain brew today. Didn't run across a single problem (to my knowledge) with my newly built beer stand/ coolers/ pump/ etc. Bonus! Well, after mashing and fly sparging, the gravity in my brew kettle was 1.040 at approx 140 degrees. according to a piece of paper, it should be around 1.044-1.045 at 60 degrees where the hydrometer is calibrated too. Anyways, my post-boil gravity at 80 dgrees was 1.051, and being a total newbie to this, is that how its supposed to work?? It kind of makes sense to me that after 60 minutes of a rolling boil, the water level drops so the sugar content would be higher, but I just want to confirm that im not crazy, cuz if so, I hit my numbers perfectly according to the recipe, and brewersfriend.com calculations. It's saying my brewhouse eff. was 72%, which im totally happy with, being my first batch, on all this new equipment i recently built/ welded/ slaved over for the last few weeks. Anyways, just the assurance from someone more experienced confirming all this would help me sleep better tonight...even tho ill probably still go stare at the airlock another few times tonight, waiting for activity....thanks in advance, sorry to hijack a thread...i just thought it was kind of related.