My first brew ever, which was all-grain, was a Fullers ESB clone. The day of, I realized how unprepared I was, having to figure out how to measure my water, having to boil a bunch of water, and so on. I had a thin mash because I GUESSED at the strike temp to get at the right mash in, and had to keep adding boiling water to get up to temp. So, around 8 o clock that night (started at 10 am), I was finished. Alas, I didnt know how smack paks worked, and only smacked it about 1 hour before pitching. This would have been bad enough, if it wasnt that persnickity 1968 ESB Yeast. Well, after 3 DAYS, fermentation started.
What did I end up with 2 months later? A phenolic, marker tasting, wild yeast infected beer. O well. At least its 6% ABV, if I could only get it down.
Not knowing yet my yeast was bad, I decided to save money and use it on my next batch, but luckily I thought to do an experiment and used bad yeast (unknowingly) on half of my 10 gallon batch of Pale Ale, and threw Windsor dry yeast on the other. Then I found out about my bad yeast, and dry hopped the bad half of the new Pale Ale with 2 oz of Cascade.... It is GREAT! Im just about sick of my yeast problems though.