Over the past few months I have been working on getting my all grain homebrewing setup up and running. It's taking me several not-so-great attempts to fine tune a lot of the details needed for coming out on top in the brew process.
1) Souring infection – This was suprising, as I have brewed several beers without having any issues. Then I had at least 3 in a row with a sour off taste and extra foaming that is indicitive of an infection. Not ok. The biggest thing to take away from that is don't let anything sit exposed between sanitization and adding the beer. I started rinsing the iodine just minutes before pitching my beer in order to minimize the chance of infection. I also started making extra sure all bottles were throughly scrubbed before adding sanitizer.
2) Low gravity – This is something I'm continuing to struggle with. No matter how closely I watch my mash temps I seem to continually end up with low(40-50%) efficency. My next steps are to check my grind closer, possibly sending it through the grinder twice. If that does't yield any better results I think I'll try a different shop.
And now for a few pics of brew day from my Google+ profile.
These are the breaks 