Brew day went great-for the most part-on Saturday. One simple rookie mistake that I am just kicking myself for however. Took my SG once I was ready to boil and it came out at 1.040. I drew 7.5 gallons, which is more than I generally take, but I wanted to overshoot a bit to get closer to 6 gallons when pitching. So here I am, wondering and worrying how this is possible-I generally get great efficiency when fly sparging and have never been so far off... I'm thinking, what a mistake it was to take 7.5 gallons, should have killed it at 6.5-7.
So I boiled for an extra 60-75 minutes before my hop additions to make up the difference and just hoping to come in around 1.060. So at the end I grab my OG and it's 1.074 with a little over 5 gallons of wort... And at this point I am just wondering how the hell this is possible. Then it hits me 20 minutes later what happened... I didn't account for the temperature adjustment, which was around 140* when I took the SG. Threw that into a calculator and my SG was actually 1.053, so about perfect of what I needed. So looks like this batch is going to be a bit higher on the ABV than I wanted, but overall I am just glad I figured out my mistake because I was stumped for a few hours. I paid too close attention to all the fine details and totally skipped the simple steps... Oh well. I will say, the fermentation smells amazingly hoppy right now and I love it. The color looks great as well. Will probably pitch the dry hop in a couple days and see where it's at.
The only negative experience I had was using the HopShot. Can't say I am huge fan, because that stuff is a pain in the ass to clean off. It leeched onto my kettle (obviously) but also my chiller, and anything else that touched the wort. StarSan did next to nothing to rid anything of it after 2 cleanses.
Just wanted to say thanks again to those who helped me understand the water chemistry bit and with other questions.. Excited to try this batch out.