First FG Reading. Want to make sure my process is alright.

So after having the beer in the primary for 8 days, I took my first FG reading. It read out a bit above 1.015, and that seems about right for my Brewer's Best APA Extract brew. Of course I tasted the sample. Flat and bitter, as can be expected. It was warm going down, so at least I know there is probably some alcohol in there.

I used Fermtech's "the thief" for collecting my sample and measuring, after dowsing it in Star-San inside and out. I found the thief to generally be leaky. A few drops made it back into the fermenter as I lifted it out, and I'm gonna guess this won't ruin my beer by way of aeration.

Through the whole process, the bucket was open for probably about 3-4 minutes. Should this process be faster? Any feedback on how I went about taking the reading is appreciated. In the meantime, I will RDWHA....MB?

Deep breath bro - all is well. Beer is tougher than most give it credit for. Give it another few days and check it again. I leave my beers in primary for no less than 2 weeks - good portion here recommend 3 or more.

I don't use an airlock and only loosely set my lid on - the CO2 coming out will keep other stuff from coming in; 3-4 minutes makes no difference as there is a layer of CO2 on to of the beer keeping stuff out.

Cheers!

I agree with jmprdood... your fine. I'm one year into the obsession, and your concern was mine when I started (right into my 4th batch). I started noticing that I was focusing on taking the gravity reading an not closing the lid... all my beer has been good (at least I think so) so I stopped worrying. With my last batch, I didn't set the lid tight after the last reading (quite by accident) and it was the best batch I've made.

Enjoy and Cheers!

I usually put my samples in the fridge before they go down. Far better!