Well, the beer is in the fermentor and I'll be checking on it later today to see if there is any bubblin' going on. I won't be surprised if there isn't, I really managed to mess a lot of things up. It was pointless to even have instructions there, because I didn't follow them. You know, they say it's okay if you LEARN from your mistakes though - I did a whole bunch of learning yesterday.
So, I did all the sanitizing, added the two gallons to my stock pot and put the grain in my cheese cloth and threw it in at 12:40. Unfortunetly I did not have a floating thermometer (already my first mistake) so I didn't know if it was between 160 - 170F. It wasn't boiling and it was really hot, so I'm hoping it was somewhere close. I let it steep for a little longer than twenty minutes (which the directions called for) just in case it was a little cooler than that. I took out the grain at 1:05. At 1:10 I added the malt extract, but before it was a rapid boil.. it was just barely boiling (I think I've should've waited until it was really boiling.... already my second mistake). It didn't started boiling until 1:33, at which time I added the hops... we then had a VERY VERY slight boil over (my third mistake). Luckily only a slight amount went over the top - I felt like an idiot... at this point everything I'm doing is wrong. Also, during the whole boiling process we should've stirred more, because as you will see in some pictues I'll post it looks like some of the malt extract got crispy on the bottom of the pot.
At 2:28 we added the finishing hops and boiled another five minutes. After that we transferred it into the fermenter and added the additional three gallons of water. We put the lid on and set it outside in the snow to cool down.
By 4:30 it was done cooling (73F), so we brought it inside and waited a little longer. We took the OG and of course it wasn't what the starting gravity on the recipe calls for. However, I think our reading was pretty poor and we weren't very accurate.... so my fifth mistake was our OG read apprx. 1.045, the recipe calls for 1.050 - 1.055.
We put the airlock in and hid it in a dark place.
So, I only royally screwed this up. I don't know if it'll be any good... but I feel pretty confident in my sanitizing, so I'm hoping atleast it's fine in that regard.
I sure will be much better prepared for my second batch though. I feel way more confident that I'll do atleast 65% of it right.