Brewing the Oatmeal Cookie Amber Ale

I got lazy last night and didn't do anything to prepare for today's brew. That was a mistake. Here I am trying to clean my gear, toast the flaked oats in the oven, calculate my mash temperatures and volumes, and I still have to measure out my ingredients. And I have to do all this before my ketttle even sees any flame.

The night before an all grain brew day:

1. Read over the recipe. Make sure there's nothing unusual overlooked or forgotten.
2. Make calculations. Strike water volume/temp. Sparge water volume, etc.
3. Clean your gear. Especially your mash tun and at least one kettle. And a spoon/paddle, and thermometer. (You will use these first.)
4. Measure out your ingredients (Especially your grain and water. Again, you will need these first.)
5. Other things you may have forgotten: Propane, ice (for chilling), yeast starter (if applicable)...

Next day:
After all the frustration at the beginning, everything turned out pretty well. My mash temperature was a little low. It was 150 or 151 instead of 152. The initial temperature was high, and again, I over compensated with 2 quarts of cold water.
Other than that, everything went well. My OG was 1.055. My overall volume was a little smaller than I expected, but I left some trub in the kettle. And now I have some more headspace in the fermenter.

Racking the Stout. New Carboy

Well, I finally got a 5 gallon glass carboy to use as a secondary fermenter. I racked my stout last night and checked the gravity. It's at 1.012 right now, which makes it around 6.9% ABV at the current moment.
Also, I've got the ingredients for my next brew. An iced oatmeal cookie brown ale. I will use actual iced oatmeal cookies in the mash. I've already got the ingredients, and I plan to brew it this weekend.
I got the idea from an episode of Basic Brewing Radio where James Spencer interviewed someone from the Garage Brewers Society (out of St. Louis, I think). It has a 2-row base and 8 different specialty grains, a package of iced oatmeal cookies, an ounce of East Kent Goldings, and White Labs 007 Dry English Ale Yeast.
Anyway, here's a picture of my brand new carboy.

Just In Case

This layer of foam is getting bigger by the hour. So, since I have the proper equipment, I decided to fit a blowoff tube to my fermenter. I made a bleach solution (1 Tbsp per gallon water) in a bucket to run the tube into. I still don't have a way to fasten and secure the tube to the bucket, but you get the idea.
The only other time I've had this happen was with the only other stout I've brewed. In a plastic bucket. During which, the lid blew off and beer was all over the kitchen, including the ceiling.
Maybe it's something about stouts. I mean, the gravity is kind of high. But not that high. It's only 1.064.
The foam should be flowing out of this tube sometime tonight.

Edit: The first picture is from the next morning.

Brewing the Stout

Over the past weekend I bottled my English Strong Ale (which didn't turn out to be as strong as I expected), I tasted my (soon to be renamed) Simcoe Ale (which was very tasty). And, I brewed my Stout. It was a pretty active weekend for brewing, since I'll be going out of town next weekend.
The Simcoe Ale was really good. A nice, pungent grassy hop flavor. It didn't ferment down as much as I thought it would. The FG was 1.020. Which makes me a little worried that it wasn't completely done fermenting. On top of that, I know the amount of priming sugar I used was on the high side. So, I'm drinking one each day, and if the carbonation gets out of hand, I will ice them down and get them somewhere safe.
I was a little more careful with my priming sugar on the English Strong Ale. I accounted for yeast slurry, trub, etc. I figured I could live with carbonation on the low side. I fermented that beer for 2 weeks and only did a primary fermentation.
THe stout is the Northern Brewer Big Honkin Stout all grain kit. A successful brew for the most part. But, I did have a little trouble with the mash temperature. I was aiming for 153. The temperature was a few degrees high. At least I think it was. It was still early in the morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet. I added about a half quart of cold water to bring down the temperature, and the needle hadn't moved. So I added another half quart, and the temperature went down too far (150). So I'm thinking I probably misread the thermometer the first time. So, I boiled a quart of water and added that to the mash. It didn't help very much at all. I was already worried about the volume of my mash to begin with. Because, while doing the calculations for this brew, I realized my strike water alone was over 5 gallons, so I knew I wouldn't have much water to sparge with. By the way, I used 1.3 quarts of water per pound of grain, instead of 1.5 for exactly this reason (plus the two quarts I added).

Anyway, I had been struggling with volume control before, and I think my problem was just over thinking the whole process. I still have one concern, and that's the time it takes to drain the wort from my mash tun. It will flow pretty good for a while, then it will start trickling out really slowly, and I'm not sure when to cut it off. I actually let it drain into a container (while doing my boil) just to see how much wort I was losing. The last quart and a half took an hour to trickle out. So I definitely lost some volume there. But, I saved some time, and prevented my gravity from being any lower.
My OG was 1.064, by the way. The recipe called for 1.074. So, obviously I'm having problems with my efficiency. It seems to be around 60%.
I checked on the carboy this morning, and the airlock is bubbling intensely. It crossed my mind to use a blow-off tube, but I think I'll have plenty of headspace. The temperature was about 71 degrees.