Brew Day - Cream Ale

So All Grain batch #2 is in the books. Another pretty good brew day overall. I'm happy with it, but there are still parts of the process that I want to clean up. I had a small stuck sparge but was able to get out of it by moving the grains around, but it taught me a lot about how my mash tun works so I can avoid that in the future (see below).

My original gravity came up a few points short of where I wanted to be but that could have been due to a little extra volume of water post boil. I left a lot of trub in the kettle, which I typically don't do, cause I wanted to test to see if I get a cleaner product in the end.

Just getting to the boiling point.

Above you can see how my braid came out of the grain bed. Next time I need to just spin it/bend it so that it turns down below the grains. Once the tip was exposed to air, that's when I had issue with the sparge. After I got it back below the grain bed, all was fine.

A 1L starter just before putting it on a stir plate.

Here's the recipe for this Brew Day

FL Cream Ale

Recipe Specs

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Batch Size (G):           5.25
Total Grain (lb):         8.750
Total Hops (oz):          1.00
Original Gravity (OG):    1.046  (°P): 11.4
Colour (SRM):             4.2   (EBC): 8.3
Bitterness (IBU):         17.5   (Average)
Boil Time (Minutes):      70

Grain Bill

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4.500 lb American 2-Row (51.43%)
2.000 lb Vienna (22.86%)
1.500 lb Flaked Corn (17.14%)
0.750 lb Crystal 10 (8.57%)

Hop Bill

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0.5 oz Cluster Pellet (7.6% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)

0.5 oz Mt. Hood Pellet (4.7% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)

Misc Bill

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Single step Infusion at 150°F for 60 Minutes.

Fermented at 66°F with Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (1L Starter)