the first thing ill say is i had a great time. im looking forward to trying this again. the first problem i encountered was when i mashed in, my grain was in the basement at 54 F instead of "room temp" so i ended up with something like 145 F mash instead of 156F. it took a lot of water to get it up to 156 so when i sparged i got 7 gallons for my boil and still had a lot of sugar left in the mash ton. oh yeh when i ordred my ingredients i assumed the hops would come with the same(or close) alpha acid% as in the recipe, so i ended up .45 oz short of hallertau. then it was time to start sparging and realized i forgot to heat up the sparge water. so it sat for an extra 45 minutes before i started sparging. what will that do to the taste(1hr 45 min instead of 1hr mash)? a bunch of other crap happened that i wont get into but somehow i think its going to be beer! the whole thing took like 8 hrs and i was exhausted, how long does it take you guys? its fermenting now and im out of town, my wife said the air lock is only bubbling like every 15 sec, its been 3 days since i pitched yeast, it was bubbling more than that after 16 hrs so im worried something is wrong. anyway, next time im going to be way more prepared maybe ill have a checklist or something. i had a good time but man i was totaly stressed out and tired as a dog when the dust settled. does this sound like a typical first time or am i extra stupid? wiggy