8/31/09 - Mashed in for a protien rest at 133, held this for 30 minutes before I started to add boiling water to raise the temp.  I'm not sure what temp I ended up raising it to as my thermometer was slow to respond and I had to leave for church.  I think the mash got up around 145 or therabouts.

Came back from church after 1.5 hours and started pulling out grains with a strainer and adding it to a seperate kettle for a mash out decoction.  It took a bit longer than expected to bring the decoction to a boil, but once it was going I boiled it for 10 minutes and then returned it to the mash.  You could definately smell the sugars starting to carmelize, which makes me think this is one of the benefits of doing a decoction (where appropriate), but I only did it because I thought it was appropriate to try it on a German style.

This was the first time using a new lautering device I made out of a stainless steel braid in the mash tun.  I also tried 'batch sparging' for the first time which involves draining the mash tun until it runs dry, then adding another volume of water, stirring, and running off again until dry.  I've read you lose a bit of efficiency points, but should experience a faster runoff. 

For the first runoff I cracked the ball valve until it ran clear (much quicker than with a false bottom) and then I opened the valve all the way.  Unfortunately my runoff was extremely slow.  Even after stirring a few times and retrying it, it still ran very slow.  Over the next hour or so I finally collected about 5 gallons of wort. 

For the second runoff I tried something different; I cracked the valve to clear it and just left it cracked.  Oddly enough, it ran faster cracked than wide open.  I believe opening the valve all the way compacted the mash.  Collecting the rest of the wort took about 30 minutes. 

Pretty straightforward boil afterwhich I began chilling.  I added some rock salt to the ice water and it got much cooler, although when I dumped out the bucket I noticed a lot of warm water was trapped under the very cold ice on top (a bit strange).  Since the pump was pulling from the bottom, it probably wasn't as effective as it could have been.  I'll stir the ice bucket from time to time in the future.

Even after chilling for a long time with the ice and salt mixture, I was only able to get down to 75. So I moved the wort over to the fermenters and stuck them in the chest freezer to get them down to around 45 degrees.

8/31/09 - Pitched yeast at 48 degrees; it took 7 hours to get down to this temp from 75. 

9/1/09 - Both carboys showing active fermentation, although one of them started about 10 hours ealier than the other.  Makes me think that I didn't put equal amounts of yeast in them, next time I'll pour my starter into a measuring cup before pitching the yeast.

9/23/09 - Cold crashed around 35 and racked to secondary.  I saved both yeast slurries for use in my next brew (an Eisbock).

10/22/09 - Racked 5 gallons to a keg and carbonated (30 psi and shaking method).  Tastes like a light lager, with a bready aftertaste, color is probably a little dark for the style, but is clarity is good. 

12/16/09 - Racked the second half of this to the keg, it will be interesting to see how the extra two months of lagering changed things.  Of course I don't have any of the first half left to compare too though...