Well the weather here in Minnesota was so damn nice this weekend that I decided to spend the entire Saturday in my garage to do a double decoction mashed German Alt.
Started the day off at around 8am
Protein rest



First decoction boiling away

And here goes the second


Time to sparge, it was about 2 in the afternoon by this time


Forgot to take pics during the boil, but here its chilling.
Got a new immersion chiller, upgraded from 25' 3/8 copper to 50' of 3/8 stainless, as you can see in the pic 15 min into chilling and it had already gotten down to 92*


and now the little yeasties do their thing


OG came out at 1.061, which surprised me as beersmith had my estimated OG at 1.052. Its usually pretty accurate for me so the only thing i can figure is that the decoction mash gave me a bump in efficiency.

In all it was a fun day of brewing, if any of you havent tried decoction mashing I would suggest you give it a shot.

Well hot damn, that Wyeast 1007 is potent stuff

One possibility for your unexpected efficiency is a lower volume than you calculated for.

Nope, hit my volumes right on the money.
6.25 gal pre boil and 5.25 post

Do you crack your own grain?

Sometimes when I use AIH's store machine, my efficiency goes down about 5%.

Used the mill at Brew and Grow the day before brew day as I usually do.
Unless they changed their mill settings

Another customer might have changed it to a custom setting, and that happened to increase your efficiency.

I will take a .009 increase in OG anyday though

Possibly, i'm chalking it up to the double decoction mash.
Guess we'll see what happens next time i do one.

1007 is my house yeast. Keep it cool and it does good. Under 65 or so.

This time of year my basement hovers around 50, its been rocking like a champ.

Looking good op.  I kegged my Pliney The Eldor clone this past weekend.  Nailed my gravity's and just waiting on it to gas up.  Came out around 8.7% so I will be breathing fire when I drink it!