5/5/08 - Made a 2 Liter - 1 lb. DME yeast starter.  The yeast had been in the fridge for a few months and was a bit sluggish to get going.  By Saturday the 11th, the starter was just at it's peak fermentation.  In the future if a yeast has been sitting that long I will get the starter going at least a week in advance.

5/10/08 - First time brewing since February, and I knew I needed to be more organized this time (as the last few batches stressed me out).  I arranged everything I would need on a card table in the garage and before starting I made sure everything was clean and ready to go.

I hit my mash temperature perfectly, adding the water to the mash tun first made it much easier to stir in the grains.

For the mash out I added boiling water until the temp hit 170 and held that for 10 minutes.

I tried a different arragement of the kettle, mash tun, & lauter tun which made things a bit easier.  (Kettle & stand on the ground, mash tun sitting on two corny kegs on the ground, lauter tun sitting on sanke keg which was on the chest freezer).

When recirculating I made sure any drips would go into the kettle, avoiding a sticky floor like before.

Everything went well with the exception of chilling the wort. I now have two immersion chillers which fit insde one another so I figured I would have a better chance at chilling down to pitching temps.  Unfortunately with the warmer weather the tap water was quite warm and I was unable to get below 80 degrees.  Next time I will have to buy 25+ lbs of ice beforehand and pump the chilled water through the chillers.

I wasn't willing to pitch the yeast at the high temps so I racked to the carboy and put it in my fridge. After about 3 hours I was able to get it down to 68 degrees to pitch the yeast.

My volume was a tiny bit lower than I expected, and in turn gravity was a few points higher (1.052).

5/11/08 - Fermentation activity begain last night a few hours after pitching however it was still a bit sluggish until 12 hours had passed.  Seems to be going strong now, and the chest freezer is holding the temps at 66-68.