As a followup, this beer turned out really nice. It certainly wasn't an IPA, barely any hops flavour, but it was a very good red. Friends have loved it.
It's mostly gone so I made a red rye ale today. Went much more smoothly this time. I actually did it inside on our gas stove, which certainly did take more time to get it boiling, but didn't slow me down at all.
Once I had the mash going, I heated up the 6 gallons for sparging and it was upto temp just as the 60 minutes was up for mashing.
Nice big analog temp gauge was very nice for the water temp in pot. A small instant read thermometer worked great for confirming mash temp. Recipe called for 152.6 mash and after I poured in the grains and stirred it it up, it was exactly 152.6.
i did forget to pour back in the first couple liters when sparging, so I ran it all through a fairly fine SS mesh sieve before boiling.
Use my copper coil for cooling which did pretty well but next time I'll ice bath and use the immersion cooler. Got an SG of 1.05 this time, which was right on recipe target.
All in all, Much quicker this time, no shirts with holes burned in them either. If I run out of the first red before this is done, still have the stout on tap too.
My garage is booze heaven right now. 60+ Liters of Dornfelder red wine in secondary, 45 Liters of Riesling in secondary, 80 Liters of Syrah in primary, 20 Liters of apple cider in primary, and now this 21 Liters of beer. Then there is the 120L or so of stuff down in the cellar in secondary still.
