The First Brew Day

I apologize for my lack of consistency in writing. I am not a writer nor do I pretend to be one on the internet. I do realized I tend to change from past tense to present tense in my storytelling. I am sorry but thankful for you taking to the time to read.  You may not learn anything from it and if you do, please let me know. If you do have any questions, pleast let me know. Anyhow, enjoy.


Once I was home I had realized a key item that I had forgotten to purchase, a hydrometer. Without the hydrometer I would not know my Original Gravity or my Final Gravity. I had an idea approximately what the OG was from the recipe. But I did have a book and I read said book and learned. I was inspired. Instead of waiting until I had a hydrometer I went ahead and started brewing.  Sunday morning, valentines day, I began laying out all my equipment on the table. I began feeling a little nervous but just told myself "relax, its just beer" ( I later found a similar mantra from Charlie Papazian's book The Joy of Homebrewing). The first thing I figured I'd start with, since there was little room for error, was measure out my carboy to the 5 gallon mark. As I was filling it I adhered my fermometer to the carboy at the 3 gallon mark which I figured was centered and would give me the most accurate reading of temperature. Now during the brewing process I learned that a good time to sanitize and mark the 5 gallons would be during the 60 min boil, for future reference. So then I had a carboy full of water. I took this moment to try out my racking cane. I didn't know why there was a cap on the end of it so I took it off and started a siphon. Now afterwards I watched some Youtube video's of other home brewers racking their beer and all their canes had that little black cap on. So I started thinking. . . maybe its so it won't suck up the trube that would be almost directly under the cane? It sounds like a good guess to me so i'm gonna roll with that. (if i'm wrong and someone knows please leave a comment and let me know). So I siphoned out the water, that was exciting. Then decided the next thing I'm going to do is wash and sanitize everything, a key and probably most important step in the brewing process.
TO BE CONTINUED. . . . .