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My First Home Brew
Ok, so I made my first batch of beer tonight - its a Fat Tire imitation beer. I made so many mistakes, its laughable.
I am fairly sure I burnt the specialty grains as they were resting on the bottom of the boiling kettle. I didn't smell a burn of any sort, and maybe the heat was well enough distributed, but I would be surprised if they didn't get at least a little singed.
Also, sanitation proved to be a problem. I was working with a few other people, and being unsure of how to do things, I know we missed a few sanitation steps.
The good news is, I can't wait to start my next batch and correct all those problems. I'm going to let this batch ferment so I can get a hang of that process, go through the bottling procedure, and learn everything else associated with finishing the brew. Once I get this batch done, I'll give it a shot, then start over again.
Check out
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html
Good luck on your next brew.
Brew on...
Steve
Webby, it's just trial and error. You can read 100 books on the subject and still make mistakes. My first ever was a Coopers Wheat kit that I bought 1 1/2 years ago. I was paranoid that I made all kinds of mistake and it would be horrible. While it wasn't world class, it was alright.
I converted to all grain last fall and I made about 5 batches before I realized I did a LOT of things horribly wrong. Didn't sparge right, had the wrong temperatures, not enough run off, etc...
The more you brew, the more you learn, and have a chance to fix your mistakes. There is not one brewer alive who has not screwed up during their trial phase.
Best advice I can offer is to take notes! I have brew logs that are fairly detailed. The batch size, grain and hop bill, hop AA, all weights involved, yeast, how much water I mash and sparge with, then I put tape on each carboy so I know what goes in it, since I have multiple batches. Weeks later when I keg and suck it down, I note what it's like in my logs. I also have friends try it. I once had 2 friend say "man those hops are WAY too bitter." I couldn't remember what I used without my logs.
Anyway, just keep working on it. We all started the same way. Trial and error.
cubx wrote:
Webby, it's just trial and error. You can read 100 books on the subject and still make mistakes. My first ever was a Coopers
The more you brew, the more you learn, and have a chance to fix your mistakes. There is not one brewer alive who has not screwed up during their trial phase.
Or any other phase for that matter 
I think brewing is a life long lesson. St. Peter has all the best recipes but I want to brew as much as I can before I meet him.
Beers,
Steve
Absoutely correct. Every brewer has their "bad batches".
In the beginning, my success rate was about 50/50. With continued practice, I'm up to about 80 percent success. (I still get a bad batch every so often, but that's just life.)
Keep trying.
DaveSlash
Well, beer day finally came on Sunday - my friends and I cracked open the bottles and gave it a taste. The verdict?
It was actually really good!
I am a little disappointed with the carbonation (not as much carbonation as I would like). The taste is extremely good, but there is a slight taste at the very end which kind of 'gets you'. The beer is extremely rich...I'm wondering if I did not add enough water at the end. I know I spilled some of the water I was going to add (maybe a quarter of a gallon), so I'm thinking that just made the beer a bit more potent in flavor.
I also got to share the beer with people last night (we got together to watch the Vikings/Patriots game - we are all Vikings fans...the beer was very much needed 
). The reaction was very positive, and now I have a couple more people who are interested in home brewing. Overall a very good experience!
Did you use cheese cloth (straining bag) for your specialty grains or did you just dump them in. Just wondering how they would have got singed. What I do is I put them in a cheese cloth and then I tie a string to it and hang it in there tieing the string to the handle on my pot. That way it isn't sitting on the bottom. I do the same with my hops, just make sure there is plenty of room in the cloth for the hops to expand or else you will get poor utilization.
I did use a cheesecloth, but I did not tie to prevent it from sitting on the bottom of the pot.
Obviously it didn't effect the brew at all - any off flavors I am attributing to other 'mistakes'.
I feel your pain Webby. I too brewed my first batch the other day and I burned the bottom, didn't do the yeast right, made a mess in my kitchen... BUT with the help of some friendly folks at a home brew store I think that I've got it under control. I'VE GOT BUBBLES!!! YEAH!!!!!!!
Cubx reccomended taking notes. I've found some really cool shareware that helps you take notes about the beer you brew. The program has some neat calculators and will even help you print labels for your bottles. I found it at:
http://www.djsoftware.co.nz/
If you want the full version you can register it for $15.
Hap
That slight taste at the end probably is due to the grains. When I would do an extract plus adjunct brew, I would usually try to keep the heat off the water while steaping the grains. This helped to keep them from burning. The water you were using to steap the grains may also have a relatively low PH. You can add a bit of extract to your water before mashing to eliminate this problem. The low PH will extract some tannins from the grains, which may also be the flavor you are getting.
I doubt that spilling a quarter gallon of water had much effect on the final product. It probably did lead to a bit of a stronger beer, but probably not too much so. In general, my experience with homebrews is that they are just much more rich in flavor than commercial products.
You should also try to take notes on future batches (as others recommended), as this can really help fix any problems you may be having, as well as help you to recreate a particular brew you like.
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