Thank you very much for all of the help, information and welcomes from santoch, erockrph, blair.streit, ethinson, PORTERHAUS, crynski and klickitat jim.
With the help, I finally went through my first brew process. I tried the technique for adding the dark DME pre-boil, adding hops at boil and then adding LME at flameout. I opted to boil for 20 minutes because I’m hoping to add some flavor to this beer. As mentioned, the LME was a Coors Light generic type of thing (could not be further from my first choice in beer!). I only bought it because the kit was on clearance price.
I also took the advice to rehydrate the yeast. This step proved that no matter how prepared you are (pre-planning and organizing and writing out each step for brewing), something will always screw up. I think some of the sanitizing liquid seeped inside my cheapie grill thermometer and messed up the LCD screen. I could not take the temperature of the water in order to rehydrate the yeast. After some thought, I broke out the human thermometer and tested a few batches of 4 ounces of water in the microwave at different times to get the “right” temperature. Then duplicated that with sanitized bowls and such.
After completion, I do have a few concerns but am hoping they are really nothing to worry about…
1. I did not sanitize the pot. From what I’ve read and via a post in this thread, I think the “boil” is good enough to steralize/sanitize. Also scrubbed it several times before using it.
2. Water temp for the yeast. I watched a video by a company that looked to be rehydrating Safale-04 (the same 11 gram package as mine). They suggested a temp between 95-105. I estimate that my temp was about 100. After, I completed everything, I was randomly searching on line and saw a page that showed the specs for that yeast with an 80 degree temp for rehydrating.
3. Because of the grill thermometer debacle, there was a 1 hour and 25 minute lag between putting the wort and bottled spring water into the keg fermenter and the time that I actually pitched the rehydrated yeast. Supposedly, that might not be a bad thing if everything is sanitized properly. Plus, I think that lag helped the temperature drop some.
I’m storing the keg in the freezer portion of a non-working fridge and swapping out ice bottles to try and keep the temp down. The temperature strip on the keg has been about the 61-64 range since it has been in there.
4. I shook the keg to aerate it before I pitched the yeast. The lid on the keg is designed with slight air gaps in order to act as an air lock. So of course if you shake the keg with sanitizing liquid or wort, there will be some that collects in the lid grooves and leaks out. Hopefully that won’t be a problem.
All in all, it was fun. I can’t wait to taste the beer but I’m actually more excited to actually brew again once the keg is emptied.
Thanks again.