First brew day is a wrap.  There were a few bumps in the road but I now have ten gallons of soon to be beer in my fermenter.  The biggest lesson is pumps do not like whole hops.  This caused issues with chilling, transferring, and cleaning.  I am using a whirlpool with immersion chiller.  I figured I did not need a screen on the kettle pickup.  From now on I will try to stick to pellets only and use a hop bag if I need to use whole leaf hops.  The rest of the system worked great.

Efficiency came in at 90%.  It should be higher if I manage the sparge  water better.  I also think I will heat my strike water higher to hit my mash temperature faster.  I may try half way between my mash temperature and the temperature I would use when batch sparging in a cooler.  I also will fill the mash tun with enough water to cover the dead space under my false bottom and fill the pumps and coil.

Water profile.  I got relatively close using straight tap water and salts.

Target – Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=50, S04=275, HCO=70
Actual – Ca=109.8, Mg=19.4, Na=11, Cl=49.5, S04=215, HCO=101.3

Mash pH looked fine but I was using test strips and not a meter.  I did not acidify my sparge water.  I will be getting a meter and some latic acid to address this on the next brew day.