I think you’re fine, no issues there
Chilling quickly here gents. 10 minutes in and it’s down to 109. The lid is off of my kettle, is that ok?
Yep, you are fine. At this point you can put the lid on if it makes you feel better, but as long as nothing is blowing into it, you’re golden.
I only use the lid during the whirlpool settling, but only when it’s windy and the wasps are hanging out trying to get to my sweet wort.
WOW…what a day! Exciting, stressful, really fun today all in all. After the boil started my first beer helped me relax a bit 
Some notes below, if anything sticks out kindly chime in. THANK YOU to everyone who was quick to respond today, I couldn’t have done it without you.
-Mash temp was within one degree at strike. After an hour it only dropped 2 degrees.
-Vorlauf initially took about 5-6 quarts. It was clear rather quickly, just not sure about those little white buggers.
-My pre-boil wort goal was 6.5 gallons. I ended up getting 2.75 first runnings, added to 6.5 after sparging. FWIW, the mash tun has just over 7 gallons worth of liquid in it in all. Perhaps something was off. I only ended up with ~4.75 in the fermenter. I think I either boiled off more than a gallon or maybe I misunderstood what was meant by mash tun dead space.
**Mental note to either use my shiny new Blichmann as BOTH the HLT and the boil kettle or get a new kettle. Using a boil kettle with no measurements takes WAY too long to get measurements.
-Used my SS immersion chiller after much internal debate with the following results…
-5 minutes, 126 degrees
-10 minutes, 109
-15 minutes, 97
-20 minutes, 88
-25 minutes, 80
-30 minutes, 80 (at this point, I pulled it out. Although tap water temp. was at 66, I figured it wasn’t dropping any lower)
**Side note, I used a shi$ ton of water to do this. Figured out that I was using 5 gallons every minute and a half. That equates to 100 gallons of water to chill my beer. Not sure if this is better than other means of chilling.)
Finally, I was really stoked to find out that my post-boil gravity was 1.057, the recipe states 1.056! 
Again, thank you so much. Oh yeah, I tasted the wort after I checked the gravity and that was certainly the best tasting wort I’ve ever had. Miles above any extract I’ve sampled. Looking forward to my next brew!
Good for you. Told ya you could do it ! As the saying goes, you better brew again soon. You’ll fly through that first AG batch.
Great job! I’m impressed with everything that I’ve read! You hit target mash temp on your first shot. It took me a few to get that right…and still don’t hit it all the time after 52 batches in my set up. I did today though lol. And fantastic job hitting your gravity! I didn’t donthst today lol. Just remember…, you’ll have great days where everything flows wonderfully… Then there’ll be days where it just sucks. But in the end, when the beer is tapped, it almost always tastes great!
http://m.homedepot.com/p/Superior-Pump-1-4-HP-Submersible-Thermoplastic-Utility-Pump-91250/204589831/
Look into getting one of these or something similar. After your water hits 110 or so, stop your faucet and hook the pump up to your chiller. Put the pump in a cooler and empty your ice box into the cooler. Add couple of gallons of cold water. Output from the chiller should go right back into the cooler. If enough ice is used, this will chill your wort down to 64 in a reasonable amt of time without using more water.
Also: congrats!
First off, congratulations on surviving your first all-grain batch. All-grain brewing is a lot of work, but the result is more rewarding.
Wort volume expands by approximately 5% at 100C/212F. If you want to collect five gallons of wort post boil, you are looking at end of boil, pre-chill volume of 5 x 1.05 = 5.25 gallons plus the displacement of the hops and break, which often displace a pint if not a quart or more. Next time, try reducing the output of your burner to lower your evaporation rate. You only need a gentle rolling boil. With experience, hitting your desired post-chill, cast-out volume will become second nature.
Good day it seems. As far as the wort chiller- couple tricks. Bounce the wort chiller,as you chill and it will chill extremely faster. For about $50-$60, pick up a pump and then fill a cooler with ice and a little water. You will the be recirculating chilled water from cooler and will save water and time.
Great brewday!
I have never been able to consistently hit my post boil batch size target exactly. I usually aim to end up 0.25-0.5G below my batch size target and then top up with water. This of course decreases the SG.
For this beer, if you add 0.25G to get back to 5G your gravity will drop to 4.75*57/5=54 gravity points.
Being so close to your original gravity target you may want to stay where you are.
Another thing I do after a brew day is adjust all my recipe equipment inputs in Beersmith so the software predicts what I actually got. This will make the next batch’s predictions more accurate and give you an estimate of your IBU’s based on your actual batch size (in your case that won’t change much).
Sounds like a great day Justin!!
Looks like you took a lot of good notes as well which will help you tweak things in the process so the next brew days goes that much smoother!
Cheers!
Gary
Do you allow for kettle losses above beyond too high of an evaporation rate when you formulate a recipe?
I pour everything in the fermenter.
Just a follow up on this picture. Is it generally ok for these parts of the malt to get into the wort? Is this an issue with my MLT allowing too much “stuff” through?
You’re fine.
Editing to expand a bit. If you introduced too much grain into your boil the off flavor you would produce is called astringency, described as a mouth puckering dryness. I think Palmer referred to it as similar to sucking on a tea bag. (let the jokes begin) I believe this would take a significant amount of grain.
I think a more common cause for astringency would be inappropriate mash pH that resulted in tannin extraction from the grains. I’ve definitely done this before I decided it was in my best interest to learn about water. Luckily, brewers have a fix: Bru’n Water software from Martin.
What I see in your kettle is nothing to worry about at all.