Monday Brew night

So after I got the porter put to bed and since I now have a small surplus of hops (natch) I headed down to the Brewstore to get some grain and to make an IPA.  After my big beer disaster I retreated to safer low sugar targets and thought I would focus on getting the hop character just right.  In spite of trying for me I ended up with too little water in the kettle again and at the end of the boil I found only 3.5 gallon in my fermenter.  Luckily given how inefficient the last few rounds have been with just simple infusion brew in a bag mashing I keep the grains around and put them in my smaller pot on medium heat and about 5 more gallons of water while I boiled the first runnings with the hops.  At the end of the boil I was pretty sure that there wasn't enough water, so I went and got the other kettle and brought it down to drain the grains and boil.

The hop sock with the leaf hops came undone in the first boil so I used the paint strainer to filter the first runnings when I put it into the fermenter so I dabbed all the hops in the second runnings while they boiled to get every last bit of hoppy goodness out of them, and since it was getting late and the pot had been sitting for so long with already rinsed grains at about 155°F for more than an hour I only did a 30 minute boil on the second runnings.  taken together I managed to get 73% efficiency this time around so I may take to having a second pot with a large amount of boiling liquid to dunk the grains into for better extraction.  I managed to get another 6% efficiency and had a larger batch to boot.

I realize all of this probably would make more sense with pictures, but I was busy trying to watch Game of Thrones while I was brewing so I didn't take any pictures.  I have one more beer I want to try and sneak in brewing before the wife pops.  I though having an Oktoberfest beer would be a fun middle distance beer and great way to celebrate the little one.  I suppose if my brain is still with me in November it probably will be cider and winter ale time.