Saturday went pretty well on the new rig.  We kicked on the heat for the HLT around 0630. We were looking at a long morning as the temperature outside was around 36F.  Tom came over around 0645 with all the ingredients.  For the most part the new rig made everything…quite automatic.  We began doughing in around 0830ish or so.  As I mentioned earlier, we forgot to kill the MLT heat when doughing in and brought temperature up to around 130F – 10F higher than we wanted for the protein rest.  Once the 20 minutes were up, we brought up the MT temperature to 155F and held it there for an hour.  Most things went clock work.  Only minor items, such as when we were doughing in, the sparge arm needed to be removed.  A first for us with this rig.  After the mash, we commenced the boiling and things were pretty much simple at that point.  Another small bump was setting up the wort chiller.  Once we got that going we were able to bring the wort down to 80F and pump it directly into the 27 gallon conical fermenter.  Having an automatic system definitely  lifts the burden on a lot of steps.  Anyways the technical mumbo jumbo is all in the brewblog, so take a look at that if you want.   Here are some more pics:

Adding the grains

Is the beer done yet?!

There are more pictures in the recent pictures sidebar.  Hope you enjoy.  I am going to start scouring the web for more local beer events and other items.

Rob