The 30qt Turkey Fryer Brew Kettle was supposed to take 9 business days to get here (what do you expect for free shipping?) It took 3 days. Santa must not have paid close attention to his naughty list.

So I went to The Beer and Winemaker's Pantry today during lunch and picked up the rest of the equipment. 2 6.5 Gallon buckets, hydrometer, racking cane, siphon tube, stirring rod, caps, sanitizer, butterfly capper, bottle brush and a bottle cleaner. I also decided to pick up a Brewer's Best India Pale Ale kit because I didn't want to do the pre-hopped extract brew that seems to be the norm for first time brewers. The only thing that I'm unsure of is the kit comes with priming sugar, and it looks like fine table sugar. I'm assuming it's really dried dextrose however I've heard it said many times that DME is better for priming than corn syrup. I may end up switching to DME before it's time to bottle.

I chose the IPA because I like IPAs and most every other beer drinker I know likes them too. I'll want to get rid of my first batch as soon as possible so that I can start on the next one. I'll be thinking of what to brew next probably while I'm stirring the boiling wort.

The only thing I'm sure I'm short on is bottles. As I was leaving I realized all the bottles my neighbor gives me are Budweiser and they're probably twist off types. Those won't work for me later.

Anywho, I plan on documenting & photographing the whole affair and will set up a page for it later. Any tips or advice, of course, is always appreciated.