Brewing Notes, Brown Ale (wed 26dec)

I brewed up an easy brown ale to pitch right on to about 1/2 to 1/4 of the remaining yeast cake from my previous brew. The recipe for this brown ale kit (from Northern Brewer) was:

6 lbs. Gold Malt Extract
0.25 lbs. Simpson's Chocolate
0.25 lbs. Dingemans Special B
0.25 lbs. Dingemans Biscuit
0.25 lbs. Briess Special Roast
1 oz. Challenger (60 min)
repitched onto Danstar Nottingham cake from previous Pale Ale

This will be my first brew using only pale/gold extract. I will be curious to see any differences in how fast/much it ferments and in taste differences as most people recommend brewing this way to have more control of the end result (you know what is in your malt extract...)

Some Notes about this brew as I tried some new things:

1 - Used 1.5 tsp burton salts prior to steeping. I also steeped in only 1.5 gallons instead of the full 2.5. I then poured the remaining gallon of 170F water through the grains in a collander as a sort of "ghetto sparge." Mainly practicing for when I do a partial mash for the oatmeal stout.

2 - I skimmed the foam off periodically during the boil. These are supposed to be some proteins that it doesn't hurt to remove and might make for a clearer beer.

3 - Strained wort through mesh strainer when pouring to trap hop debris. Didn't really matter as they mostly stay at the bottom of the pot which I don't normally pour out anyway.

4 - Pitched directly onto the ~1/4-1/2 of previous yeast cake (the rest was harvested).

5 - Used 3 gallons of "purified drinking water" (still has minerals for flavor, but is not spring water) to top up as it comes in convenient 3x1 package at the grocery store, and I figured I was already adding plenty of minerals with the Burton salts.