Brew day went off without a hitch yesterday. I hit an OG of 1.042, which is lower than I formulated for but within style and I was more concerned about being too high than too low on this one. With that in mind I assumed a pretty high extraction eff of 85% in my calcs. This is quite possibly the smallest beer I've ever brewed and next time I'll know what my system's efficiency is in this gravity range for recipe formulation.
I mashed right at 150°F for about 75 minutes. Woulda mashed shorter, but it took that long for my sparge water to heat up. Recirc'd while raising the temp to 170°F then rolled right into the sparge. Collected ~13 gallons, boiled 90 minutes, and chilled directly into two carboys. Oxygenated for about 30 seconds per carboy with pure O2, then pitched an Activator pack of 1028 in one carboy and 1098 in the other. 1098 half was foaming up after about 14 hours, and 1028 about 3 hours after that. Nice thing about these small beers: there's really no need to make a starter.
This beer should be done in a week or less, and according to Matt I'm going to naturally condition half of it in the keg, so it will be ready for Yard City Cask Fest-YCCF- (or the "Yard City Real Ale Party" as I like to call it) in early March.
