Overanxious newbie mistakes...advice?

Brewed my first batch on 4/18/2014 after years of resisting brewing and settling for drinking my friends homebrew. Pitched liq yeast, no starter into a German Hefe and it turned out fine, though clove was strong, banana barely there due to lower fermentation temps. My second was a Belgian Dubbel on 5/2/2014 pitched two packets of T-58 dry yeast straight from the fridge. Still in the fermenter at 1.020 gravity, OG was 1.069. Thought stuck but got it going again by raising temp to ~72 with target FG of 1.013-15. Both were extracts so then I branched out with a minimash cream ale of my own recipe on 5/16...quite fun and a bit stressful, but got to the end and had a couple of issues, not to mention the mistakes I made that seasoned brewers will have already picked up on. First, pitched the US05 yeast straight from the fridge, again...dumb, dumb, dumb. Didn't have a hole prepped with tube or bubbler for my second fermenter, and no second fermometer...oops! So what I have done is covered with an unpunched lid but not sealed. I have a new lid ready to go with grommet and tube. How long should I wait before making the switch? Since I am running blind T-wise, I thought about placing it in a water bath where I can at least monitor external temps. Any advice is much appreciated!

The lid thing isn't that much of a big deal. The sooner the better tho, as long as it's still fermenting it should produce enough co2 to purge out the air.

I have pitched straight out of fridge before and didn't start yeast (my BAC was pretty high that night). It took about 1.5 days before I noticed any activity in the bubbler and it took a couple of days more than normal to ferment but it still turned out to be a great beer.

I would wait no more than 2 days and if you don't see any activity pitch in some freshly started yeast. If your cleaning and sanitizing was good, your beer should be safe.

Thanks for the input. Opened and changed lids today. Really nice foam and yea sties deposited on wall. Blow off tube bubbling immediately. Learning from my mistakes, hopefully will still be a good batch. Smell seemed good. Now to keep that temp down! Adding items to my Father's Day list!


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We all learn from our mistakes. That's part of the fun. I have made a few mistakes and still make them from time to time. I haven't had to dump a batch or mop one off my ceiling yet.

Maybe cut back on the coffee a little bit, and relax It should be fun, your first batches aren't going to be your best. Forgive your self for that. Learn as you go, and have fun