First Brew Follies

Well, my first brew day started great. I bought a chest freezer and a johnson controlled for a fermentation chamber, it's pretty slick. I bought four 3 gallon better bottles to go in it, pretty neat.

I went to measure the temperature of the water before I steeped my grains and I found out the digital thermometer I bought was defective. SWMBO ran to the grocery store and bought a meat thermometer (this will be important later) at my request.

The brew goes fine until I go to chill my wort. My kettle is to big to fit in the ice bath in the sink and the meat thermometer I had SWMBO buy does not go below 120 degrees. So, I add ice cold water until I get to 5 gallons and do my best to chill the wort in the pot that won't fit in the sink.

I ended up quickly sanitizing my bottling bucket and dumping the wort in that and attaching a fermentor thermometer to see when the temperature gets low enough to pitch the yeast. I'll let you know how it works out.

Good, clean, brewing fun. All of my brews so far have included plenty of random variable permutations and have ended with wort sloshed everywhere. Got another just starting on the stove now. We'll see how it goes.
Here's to progress!