#don't squeeze

After venting all the bottles and then tasting it all over again, I am fairly pleased. The acrid after taste is now absent, and although still a tad bitter for my taste, it was drinkable.  It also made my evening playing Xbox with my pals fairly enjoyable ( a bunch of jerks all of them).  I'm not saying it helped me keep a positive Kill/Death ratio in Call of duty, but I'm not saying it didn't either.

And now for my second round of brewing.  I found a clone recipe that I thought I'd give a shot.  And since I've made one batch already and didn't get violently ill, I'm all cocky and think I can adjust the recipe as I see fit.  So since I don't have apricots, I'm going to use peaches, and since peaches are sweeter, I made adjustments to the hops additions.  Also, this is my first time using specialty grains.  It should go well, after all I'm an old hat at this.

So I'm getting started, warming up the water so I can steep the grain and also cleaning and sanitizing stuff. As the water starts to warm up, I try and get the temperature with the 5 dollar thermometer I bought for this specific purpose. 

I place the thermometer in the water and after about 3 seconds it cracks.  I guess that's why its a 5 dollar thermometer.  Now I'm dumbstruck because I am at a loss as to what to do now.  From what I've read the temperature has to be fairly specific to steep properly.  So at this point I'm searching the internet to see if the numbers on my stove knob correspond to temperatures. Instead I found a bunch of btu equations. Not helpful, so I resort to guessing at the temperature.

Right off the bat, I have possibly ruined everything. Awesome. But I soldier on and clean and sanitize, but I can't find the turkey baster I bought earlier. So I look and look but can't find it.  By this point the steeping is done and I remove the grain, drain the grain bag, and squeeze it out.

After doing this, I've read in several places not to squeeze it out.  But I've also read it doesn't matter as long as it has been steeped at the right temperature.  But I'll say not to squeeze it because its effing hot, and it will burn your hand.

At any rate got the brew up to boil and added the extract and the hops.  I also found my turkey baster in the parking lot while I went to check the mail.  I'm still having problems cooling my wort, so I suppose I'll invest in a immersion chiller next.  It may have been a tad too warm for the yeast initially, but now around 68 on the third day of fermenting.  But after a week it'll be time for adding the peaches.