This is my first batch of beer I ever made. I started brewing it on 1/10/2010 and I finally got to taste it for the very first time on 2/6/2010. I made quite a few mistakes on this batch, which I suppose is to be expected for a first time brew. But it ended up tasting pretty good. This was a great lesion in the home brew golden rule: Relax, don’t worry, have a home brew . So here’s a rundown of the mistakes I made: When steeping the grains (this is a partial mash recipe), I let the temperature get up to 175° – 180°. This can cause the grains to release their tannins and will make the beer bitter. I was using a dry yeast: Safale US-05 (American) – Dry Yeast (11.5 gram). I didn’t make a starter culture for the yeast. Instead I just poured the dry yeast into the wort. This ended up being okay, but not doing so can cause the yeast to have a hard time getting started and can allow bacteria to take hold. Once the yeast gets going, bacteria competes with the yeast and eventually (hopefully) the yeast will win out. Luckily, I properly sanitized my equipment, so no there wasn’t any indication of a bacterial presence in the beer. I forgot to agitate the wort and introduce Oxygen into it right away. I did do it 24 hours later, after the yeast had been pitched into the fermenter. At the end of the day, everything ended up okay though. Introducing Oxygen (at this stage) is important for the yeast to start doing their thing. I didn’t filter out any of the trub from the boil. I just poured the whole thing in there. This means that all of the hops and grains that were in the boil were also in the fermenter. This can lead to bittering of the beer. After putting the lid on my 5 gallon plastic bucket, I popped in airlock and the rubber gasket. I accidentally pushed the rubber gasket into the wort. I only had one so I had to retrieve it. I sanitized the crap out of my hand and arm with bleach. I was already worried about bacterial contamination and this didn’t help anything. After fishing around the wort for a few seconds, I found the gasket, re-sanitized it and put the airlock in. Again, everything turned out okay, but this probably isn’t the best way to keep your wort bacteria free. I also took horrible notes. I didn’t write down what kind of hops I used, and other things that’ll make this recipe hard to re-create. Later on, I refined my note taking skills. On 1/17/2010, I bottled the beer. At this point the beer is pretty much done fermenting. A little fermenting will happen in the bottle, but nothing appreciable. On 2/16/2010, I opened up my first bottle of home brew and was pleasantly surprised at the taste. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but for my first go, it wasn’t half bad.