2nd Brew Day Success!

Tonight I brewed my 2nd batch, I'm really excited that this will turn out much better than the first batch, given some extra equipment this time around to help control my temperature a little better.  The brew I cooked up tonight is an extract + speciality grains kit from Midwest Supplies; a cream stout.  I intend to rack to a secondary after fermentation is completed, at which point I am going to add 2 whole vanilla beans - hoping for a nice vanilla cream stout.  I can't link directly to it for whatever reason but here's the description from Midwest Supplies website:

Our recipe is similar to Milk Stout recipes of old. Sweeter than traditional Stout, this style is a nice alternative for those who find traditional Stouts too bitter. This beer is perfect for dessert after a satisfying meal. Our ingredients for this recipe include: 6 lb. Dark liquid malt extract, 8 oz. Lactose, 8 oz. Black Malt, 8 oz. Caramel 80L specialty grain, 1 oz. German Northern Brewer bittering hops, yeast, priming sugar and a grain bag.

For this brew, I got to use my new propane burner.  I was concerned this thing would be loud as hell - when I tested it the other night with just water, I had it on full blast and it sounds like a godamn jet engine...

I also wanted to do a full boil, instead of a 2.5-3g boil and then adding top-off water to the fermenter.  I have a 7.5g pot, so I figured with 6g of water in there, accounting for some boil off, that I would have enough head room.  If you look you can see I have maybe 2 inches of headroom at the top there.  I also had to mess around with the burner quite a bit, keeping it relatively low, to make sure I didn't get a boil over.  I completely over estimated the power of this burner and had a little mishap when I first added my LME.  I lost some hops during that boilover, but I am hoping enough stuck around after that for the beer not to taste like shit.

Aftermath of the boilover... my poor hops!

  Once I got the flame under control, the rest of the night went smooth enough.  I dropped a whirlfloc tab and my immersion chiller in @ 15m - luckily by that time there was enough headroom to account for the wort displaced by the chiller (something else I hadn't thought of).  The immersion chiller didn't work as well as I was lead to believe - I think this is because it was about 90 degrees F outside when I was trying to cool everything down.  That said, I did get the wort down to about 100 relatively quickly, and without the headache of an ice bath.  I am hoping when it gets just a bit colder out, during the fall and winter, the immersion chiller will work like a champ.  I am going to look into building a CFC at some point, however.  Right now, my brew is sitting in a better bottle, inside my new Cool Brewing cooler with a couple of jugs of ice.  I am hoping I can drop the temp enough to pitch tonight, otherwise I will have to do it tomorrow morning before I head to work.  I've got a blowoff on there anyway, mostly just to keep nasties out - I don't expect any fermentation without some yeast!

Lessons learned, tips for next time:

1. Apparently a 7.5G pot isn't quite big enough for a full boil
• There was technically enough room, but it was a little too much adventure and excitement for this to be worthwhile moving forward
• I am thinking a 10G pot at least for a full boil, but since I want to (eventually) get into AG/BIAB I am going to look into getting a 15G pot
2. It's easier to control the boilover by messing with the flame than the wort itself
• I found that if I stood there and stirred the hell out of my wort, it stayed down.  If I stopped even for a second, it was like Yosemite in there.  Simply dialing up or down the pressure on the propane seemed to be much more effective. 
• Subsequently, I found out I can leave the pressure quite low while maintaining a vigorous boil
3. Late extract addition means a 2nd hot break
• I have read a lot in the past few days about ways to improve extract brews, one thing that comes up time and time again is adding extract late.
• A lot of members at HBT said they add just a bit at the beginning, and most of it at the end.  In fact, some people just add it at flame out - that seems wrong to me, but I really don't know wtf I am talking about just yet
4. There is plenty of time to sanitize while the wort is chilling
• During my first brew and in most of the kit instructions, everything says to sanitize at the beginning.  The problem is after heating to a boil, and then the hour long boil on top of that its a good 90m or so before I need my primary fermenter, racking equipment, hydrometer etc...
• It only takes a few minutes to sanitize with StarSan - plenty of time to do so while the immersion chiller is doing its job.
5. Making a starter was easy
• There are already a ton of articles floating around about this so I won't make one of my own, but this was easy and I have way more yeast now than if I hadn't done one