When I did one…a Munich Dunkel…the beer had an interesting “grainy” taste, that actually worked very well with the soft/subtle chocolate malt flavor. It also had an all-grain yeast starter. But I found that I needed to decoct with more than 1/3 the mash…especially with a thinner mash. This was definitely different from previous beers. I’ll definitely try it again.

One way to check volume very quickly and accurately, is to use a dip-stick. I simply made marks on bamboo skewers with little tally-marks indicating how many gallons are in there. (fill the pot with water, marking the stick one gallon at a time) So you’d simply run the dip-stick along the side of the pot and stop the dip-end at the surface of the wort. Then read the volume at the brim of the pot. When the boil resides at times, I check it, cause it get a little tricky during very vigorous boils. I’ve got a different dip-stick for each pot. It’s very simple, and it works very well…and no melting tape or stupid looking sharpie marks.

If you have a keg kettle and the opening is smaller than the diameter of the keg, it might be a kindof tricky.

I think this will be a good beer and after some introspection, I realized that if I had hit my target quantity, I would have been on point with my OG, I used 2.0 qt per lb for dough in when I should have used 1.5qt.

Live and learn!
Cheers.