About Time!

Hi all,
So, I suppose I took what you could call a hiatus away from blogging. Getting readjusted to actually working after having an 8 week vacation is a new experience for me. But I swear that I'll make it a plan to keep this updated. So, the last blog discussed my plans to brew my first all-grain batch. And I can happily and proudly report that it is complete and ready to drink! The process went off without a hitch, WAY better than expected, and the results actually taste quite good. Particularly for a first effort all-grain. So, here's how it went:
The recipe:
7 lbs. American 2-Row Barley
1 lb. Special B malt
1/2 lb. Crystal malt 70
1/2 lb. Chocolate malt
13 ripened bananas
1 oz. East Kent Golding hops (added at 60 minutes)
1/2 oz. Willamette hops (added at 20 minutes)
1 package Safale US-05 dry brewers yeast

The process:
I won't go into all the details of the brewing process, but here are a few pics that show how it went throughout the whole month from brew day to tasting.
Here's a picture of all the grains in the mash tun getting ready to sit in really hot water for an hour. The bananas were not added yet here, but I like this picture, showing all the different grains.
At different points, you need to stir the grains to make sure there are no dry pockets and to ensure everything is mixed evenly to get a good run-off. This is a cool image of the mash being stirred up! After the hour of the grains being mashed, you collect the remaining liquid, now containing the sugars from the malt, into your brew kettle to be boiled. Here we are collecting the "wort" into a bucket that will collect about 6.5 gallons and transfer it into the kettle. It looks dark! I suppose it should, as a brown ale.
Once it starts boiling, we added our hops at different intervals. The earlier in the boil the hops are added, the more bitterness we will get out of them. The later in the boil, the more flavor and aroma. Here's Colleen pouring in the first addition of our hops. Looks good! (So does the beer...)
There's no reason to let all those grains go to waste! So, we baked two loaves of bread using the spent grain. It's actually a very simple recipe, and quite healthy! At least as healthy as bread goes. But, it's awesome and a lot of fun. It's a good time waster too while the beer is brewing for an hour.
Here's the full 5 gallons of beer in the fermentation vessel. This is actually the secondary fermenter, where it conditions after the first week of a more active fermentation. This is how it looked just before bottling.
And here's the final product! This was poured after being in the bottle for two weeks while it carbonated. Sorry, no action shots from the bottling process. But, here she is, our Banana Nut Brown!!Evaluation:
So, here are a few quick notes from what we think about the beer now that we've tasted it--
Positives:
Well balanced between malt and hops, nice sweetness with very slight fruitiness (maybe banana?), very drinkable, slightly roasty, appropriate alcohol (about 4.8%), nice head and carbonation, no off tastes that I can notice
Negatives:
Seems a bit thin, could use a bit more body or sweetness, should have used 2 or 3 times the amount of bananas (or added at different time?) to get a stronger banana flavor, a bit dark for a true brown ale

Overall, I'm extremely happy with this, particularly because it is my first all-grain attempt and I was somewhat nervous and skeptical. On top of that, we created this recipe on our own and even made adjustments throughout the process based on gut instinct. We're that good. So, that's the story on the brew. Hope you get a chance to taste some!!