Dream of Californication

I decided my next brew should be a California Common. This is what I call Californication:

Pale Malt- 2 row US 10.3 lbs
Crystal Malt - 40L 1.5lbs

.5oz Northern Brewer- 60min
.75oz Centennial - 30min
.5oz Norther Brewer 10min

1/2 tbs Irish Moss

Wyeast California Larger

OG- 1.050
FG- 1.010

**Racked it 6 days after I brewed it

I just brewed this today so here are a few things to take note of on this brew:

-I did a yeast starter for this one, though there is some discussion on weather or not a starter is needed with Wyeast and a brew under 1.065, but I still did it. I used my wine bottle with about 2 1/2 cups of water and about 3/4 cup of extra light DME and boiled it for 15-20 min (this was done at about 9pm night before brew day). It started to bubble by the morning and it continued to bubble until I pitched it.

-Over headed Mash water to about 170ish, I added ice and let it sit with the lid open on my mash tub until it got down to 158f. Once at 158f I let the mash go for an hour.

-I went by the 1.5 qts water for every lb of grain giving me a mash water of 4.5 gallons. I may want to cut that back to 1.25qts/lb or even 1 qt/lb next time because I did not use all of my sparge water (input welcomed on this point)

-Fly sparged this batch fully successfully. I used 5.75 gallons for the sparge, but wound up dumping out about 1 gallon or so.

-My last gravity reading was 1.046 and I was shooting for 1.050 so I let it go on a rolling boil for about 15-20 min before adding the 60 min hops. Before I pitched the yeast it was at 1.050 so I was on the nose for that!

I couldn't be happier with the way today's brew session went. I am about 1/2 dozen (maybe 1/2 a bakers dozen, but who is counting) brews into all-grain brewing and I finally have a really good handle on whats going on. This took me about 5 1/2 hrs from start to finish so I am even doing it in pretty good time as well.

I am going to bottle 3 or 4 of these and enter it into a contest. I figure since I am hitting my targets on my brews now I am ready to get some feedback. Either way, it's nice to know the investment in time to come up with some methods that allow me to make the recipes I am trying for has paid off.

Cheers!