CHUH-nook IPA Brew Session

Pulling 1.051 on first runnings. Mash temp swung a lot despite insulation due to how cold the garage is. After the mash, I noticed that the crush of the grain didn't look so great as I went to a different brew store to get a special variety of pale ale malt; half of the berries were intact entirely, and why I didn't notice before I actually started brewing I don't know. My preboil gravity being only 1.040 given that I stopped at 6.5 gallons rather than the 9.5gallons I initially went with is catastrophic. I'm really bummed about this. I'm adding 1.125lb of light DME to get this into an acceptable range for gravity. I used my new oxygen aerator and will see how that goes. What I notice is that the yeast slurry I added is hanging out at the top of the fermenter, even after I shook it up. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the oxygen. I ended up adding 384g of Imperial Dry Hop yeast slurry, which, given the harvest date of mid September, should give me about 175B cells, so just enough. What I also notice about this batch is that there is a ton of cold break, about 2-3 inches worth, so I'm hoping that compacts down a lot as that will result in significant losses otherwise. 10/18/17 - There was an exceptionally long lag time from what I'm used to. Activity still hadn't started after 8 hours but things are going fine by morning. High krausen by 10am and falling off by early evening. 10/19/17 - Krausen has settled to about 1.5 inches and fermentation is chugging along. 10/30/17 - There is still a light foam on the beer, covering 90% or so. There's no air lock bubbling anymore unless I shake the container a little bit. I'm wondering what's causing the foam to persist for so long. This is the first that I've seen something like this. I'd intended to bottle soon but will leave it for at least another week beyond this Friday. 11/3/17 - Foam is nearly all gone so I will bottle today. Pulled 1.013 on the hydrometer, so it's done. Hydrometer sample was mixed sweet/fruity from malt and yeast and then just bitter from the hops. Not overwhelmingly bitter on the hops, but only bitter. I don't really care for the beer as it stands now so I will add 0.5oz of Simcoe cryohops to the entire bottling bucket and see what that does for flavor. Bottling to 2.4 volumes CO2 via 4.5oz of dextrose.