First All Grain Batch - Not A Complete Disaster

I decided to get back into brewing after a several year hiatus.  Before I did extract brews, but I decided I wanted to do all grain.  I put together a recipe for a single hop session IPA with El Dorado. 

I'm looking for some advice both with dialing in software settings and my technique so I can get more predictable results.

My equipment is a 10 gallon Blichmann kettle, a 10 gallon round cooler with steel braid for a mash tun, and a second cooler to stash sparge water in since I am using the kettle to heat the bulk of my water.  Right now I'm brewing indoors across two burners of my propane stove, and can get 8 gallons to a boil in about an hour and 15 minutes.  I'm doing single infusion with a batch sparge.

Brew day turned in a much longer day than it should have.  First off I hadn't tested my mash tun before brew day, and turns out it was leaking.  I ended up having to go out and get a couple of o-rings to replace the single rubber washer I had on my bulkhead.

Then I had a hard time getting my mash water to the right temp. I'd decided to just overheat the water, let it cool to temp in the cooler, and then add the grain when it cooled.  I didn't heat it enough, and spent time trying to add hotter water, and draining excess to get it right.  I think next time I'm going to just use the Adjust for equipment feature and be done with it.  I have an IR thermometer so I can get an accurate temperature for my mash tun.  The good news is that I hit within a degree of my mash temperature once I hit the water temp.

When it came time to sparge, the water I'd stashed in the other cooler was colder than I'd have hoped.  After wasting so much time already, I just sucked it up and sparged at 163.  Hopefully that won't have a negative impact in the final product.

I collected less wort than calculated by about a gallon.  Part of that might have been technique, but I did measure the amount of water left in my mash tun when I drained it after cleaning up at 0.5 gallons, so I'm setting that for my deadspace in my equipment profile. 

In the moment, I did get a bit frustrated at getting that much less wort than expected.  I poured some additional water over the grain bed to compensate.  I'm pretty sure that partially explains my pre-boil gravity of 1.035 instead of the expected 1.041.

The boil went well, but I ended up with 1 gallon less into the fermenter than expected.  I had trub loss set to 0.5 gallons.  When I measured the remaining wort in the kettle during cleanup there was 1 gallon.  I don't know if I should have tossed more break into the fermenter, done a better job whirlpooling with my brew spoon, or what.  Also, that only accounts for 0.5 gallons of the difference. 

Ultimately I'm not too worried, but am want to try to get things dialed in as closely as possible for predictability down the road.  Any suggestions?

I didn't heat it enough, and spent time trying to add hotter water, and draining excess to get it right.

Click to expand...

If that happens again, instead of adding boiling water, try removing some of the mash, bringing it to a boil, and adding it back in. That way you don't dilute it.

That's how I do my mash out. I'll remove a third or so of my 150ish degree mash, bring it to a full boil, and after mixing it back in it stabilizes between 165 and 170.  Then I sparge with water at the same temperature.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter16-4.html

Other than that, it looks like you're on the right track to dialing it all in. A few more trials and errors, and you should be well on your way.

Thanks!  I hadn't added the grain at that point figuring water first, grain second, so I didn't dilute anything at that point, just lost a bunch of time.

Do you think I should adjust my brewhouse efficiency down for the next batch, or get a few under my belt to get more data?  I used the default of 72, but it calculated my actual at 49.2 which seems really low.

I don't use the software, so I can't answer that.