Ha!, well I did forget to use the fermcap during actual fermentation. My carboy is spewing krausen like no tomorrow. It is a life saver during the boil though.
First beer brewed. Witbier turned out a bit darker than I had hoped; I read about late extract additions only after brewing. It ended up making a bit less than I had hoped for -- around 35-40 bottles instead of 45-50. But I'll give it a week, taste one, see how it goes, and then wait another week before chilling.
Next up: finding a round cooler to make into a mash tun.
Two things - one, my first witbier looked a lot darker than commercial offerings, but tasted really great. It was a bit sweet but certainly drinkable after a week. As for the cooler, check your local Lowe's or Home Depot. I do half-batches, so I got a 5gal cooler for $20 at Lowe's (I presume they're cheaper because they have Lowe's branding plastered on the side). If you're doing full batches, the 10gal ones are still pretty affordable compared to buying them elsewhere. I went with all stainless fittings via BargainFittings.com and everything went well (no connection, just a happy customer).
Tried a bottle of the wit a week after bottling. It's heavily carbonated (I should've used a priming sugar calculator, rather than dumping the whole bag of sugar into the boiling water), but I hope it'll settle down over the next few weeks. Not bad; it's defintely beer, so that will work.
I've got to bottle an American stout in the morning... I used a healthy dose of Bravo hops; it was my first time and I'm curious to see if they make an impact.
Next up is an India Black Ale (aka Black IPA) where the hops are yet to be determined. After that I have enough Simcoe hops to do some late-hopped IPAs and after that I'm going to do some hoppy American Browns!
Cheers! I would recommend investing in BeerSmith 2; once you learn your way around it, it's super handy for any and all calculations. You can get by with freebies, like Mr Malty or random online calculators, but I like BeerSmith as a recipe holder and all that.
I have to agree. I lasted about a year using different online calculators, but finally purchasing BeerSmith was definitely worth the investment. I especially like the brew day print outs that lay everything out step by step.
I'm now very interested in this beersmith2 program. Is it strictly desktop or is there an android app? I can't check right now because I am at work.