Brewed this one up on 16th December and used yeast recultured from the bottom of a couple of Brakspear Oxford Gold bottles.
Following on from the last brew, where I think I finally sorted the water treatment out properly, I treated 36L of water with 31ml of Brupaks CRS (alkalinity measured as 194mg/l), and added 10g of gypsum (CaSO4) and 5g of Epsom Salts (MgSO4) to really bump up the sulphates and calcium in the brew (looking for about 450ppm of sulphates to see if I can get a nice sulphur bite!).
2.7kg Maris Otter
100g Crystal 120L
50g Flaked Barley
20g Black Malt
250g Dark Brown Sugar (boil)Mash 66C
OG 1034 (22L in FV)Various goldings for hops:
30g EKGs (4.1%, 60min)
20g WGV (8.7%, 15min)
30g Styrian Goldings (1 min)
Gonna bottle it tonight – it’s down to about 1010-1008 (3.1-3.3%ABV) as far as I can see (the krausen came and went very quickly indeed – a day or two and it was mostly done – but at 1034 there’s not much there to chew through anyhow I suppose).
I’ll harvest the slurry from the fermenter too – this will be used with any luck in the new year – maybe something along the lines of a Bishop’s Finger and then in the third batch a nice traditional IPA, bitter, and hoppy with a reasonably high OG 
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I take my hat off to you for going to all that trouble with the water treatment, I have an A Level in Chemistry and I reckon I could still do the math but it would suck all the fun out of my brewday.
I’ve got some brakspear yeast on the go at the moment and I too found that it top crops really fast then drops back quick. I have been experimenting with reclaiming the sludge from the bottom of the fermenter recently. Make sure you leave a little bit of the beer in the bottom of the fermenter (around a pint or so) and give it a good swirl before you decant it into a clear plastic container, put this into the fridge overnight and in the morning the viable cells will have come to the top of the container and will be seperated from the trub by a layer of beer. Spoon off the viable cells leaving the trub behind. Simple but effective!
I really have to – the water has too much alkalinity down here to leave without treating (unless you want to use it for a swimming pool, or you make porters and stouts all the time!). I use Graham Wheeler’s water calculator here: http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/water/water.html along with the average values for my area from Thames Water. The only thing I have to do is a quick titration with diluted CRS and the methyl orange and the web page tells me the rest. Reckon I could do the maths too, but a lot easier to “cheat”
Thanks for the advice on the sludge harvest – I was hoping to just be able to pitch directly on the cake but sadly can’t manage another brew before new year… and like you the top cropping was over and done with before I could skim some off for later!