9/27/07 - This was the first brew I did after work so I was pressed for daylight.  Overall I didnt have too many problems, but I did do a few things poorly and a few things well.

Bad: Normally I would steep the specialty grains for 45 mins at 158 degrees, remove them, and then bring the wort to a boil.

This time I cut a few corners by putting the grain bag in around 130 degrees while bringing it up to 158, I let it sit at 158 for about 15 mins and then continued to raise the temp with the grain bag still in.  At about 180 degrees I consulted the kit instructions and saw that it mentioned to remove the grains at temps above 170.  I immediately removed the grain bag once I saw this. Doing a little research, I found that this mistake can release 'tannins' into the wort (which can cause haze and astringency).

Good: The good news is I managed to achieve active fermentation in about 8 hours due to a combination of low gravity and smacking the yeast packet much earlier than normal.  The yeast was a Wyeast smack pack that has a small bubble of unfermented wort inside it, when you smack the packet it mixes the wort and the yeast inside the larger packet.  The packet then swells to let you know the yeast is viable.  I figured the best possible scenario was to let the yeast consume as much of the wort as possible in the packet before pitching.

I had Cara smack the packet about 8 hours before I was set to pitch, the packet was swollen almost to the point of bursting. 

10/8/07 - Transferred to secondary, took a gravity and taste sample.  Taste was pretty bland.  I'm sure with another few weeks of conditioning it will improve.

One thing worth noting, this was my first kit that had no DME in it, (it was specialty grains and malt syrup only). the beer in the primary was much clearer than anything else I have brewed, probably a combination of the light color and the use of malt syrup.