AG#10 All Grain own recipe Amber - part 2

Continued from part 1 all grain own recipe Amber malt beer... EDIT Pics added and a bit more text.

Well I'm about half way through the boil now and after some good advice from a fellow brewer via Twitter and a couple of comments on part 1 I have altered my hopping schedule.

Scum forming prior to rolling boil. As usual, I skimmed this off before adding the bittering hops.

All of the bittering hops went in at the start of the boil and I have weighed out an additional 50g of Bramling Cross to add in at flame out.

Rolling boil and bittering hops in.

The wort run off from my homemade mash tun smelled and tasted really nice and the OG before boil was 1,045. I ended up without about 27.5 litres of wort in the copper and with the reduced boil time of 60mins evaporation losses will be less than usual so I should end up with around the 23l target volume. I think it is going to be higher than the intended OG so I may have to add some freshwater which means I'll run the risk of being over volume for the size of my fermenting bin so I'll split the surplus into a smaller vessel if need be.

Spent grains which will be making their way into some home made bread and what's left, to the Chickens.

EDIT post boil. I ended up with just over 20l almost 21l and on checking the gravity and allowing for the high temperature got a gravity of 1.052 OUCH!!! So as I'm letting this cool overnight I'll test the OG again tomorrow at room temp (just in case adjustments due to temp aren't bang on) before deciding whether or not to add freshwater to bring that gravity down towards the original target 1.043 - 1.045

Flameout and in goes the 56g of Bramling Cross, lovely smells coming straight off. Quite an impressive amount of break material churning around considering I didn't use my chiller.

EDIT post boil: The aroma hops steeped for 30 minutes before I ran the wort off and sealed it up to finish cooling.

I'll be letting this brew cool overnight rather than using my immersion chiller for various reasons but after it's cooled enough in the copper I'll run it of to FV and seal it up ready to pitch my yeast tomorrow.

I've set up my water bath and aquarium heater and set it to temperature ready to plonk the fermenting bin in tomorrow after the yeast goes in.

See you in part 3...