bake got me a badass blichmann brewmometer for my birthday, which showed up just in time for our brew-in-a-bag experiment. along with the ingredients for a patersbier (basically a session strength belgian style trappist ale) I picked up a few new toys from SCBS with a gift card my parents gave me: a 2L erlenmeyer flask, a plastic mini mash paddle, and an XL straining bag and strainer for the brewing in said bag.

we started with 5 gal of strike water (I'll propably up to 5.5-6 which should be fine in my 8 gal kettle). since we were mashing in my kettle on the stove, we were able to do a traditional 4-step mash with different protein and enzyme rests- which we hit for the most part.

 didn't really need a starter for this beer with an OG of 1.050ish, so haven't used the flask yet. need to pick up a stir plate anyway.
the sparging process was a little difficult, brynne was kind enough to help get the strainer under the grain bag (9# of grain was definitely pushing it for this method)- I did still vorlauf several times draining the wort from the kettle valve and pouring it over the grainbag and ended up sparging 3 times with water from an electric tea kettle.

ended up with only 4 gal of wort at a gravity of 1.057 (which should've been 1.047, I think I'll sparge more next time.) as of today, we are bubbling vigorously with a good 3 inch krausen. I used NB's all grain patersbier recipe if anyone is interested.

-kris