Brew #2 - Yellow Dog Pale Ale 1/4/12; Bottling Beer #1

I meant to do this earlier, but I need to update what has happened.   I bottled Beer #1 - British Pale Ale - a few weeks ago.  Bottling was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that the Mother's Brewing Company bottles kept breaking.  I discovered later that these did not have the ideal "lips" for capping homebrews, so I will stop using them.

My next batch was some Yellow Dog Pale Ale, a dry malt extract kit bought from The Home Brewery in Ozark (just like the first one).  This time, I tried to follow my own advice and make the improvements I mentioned in my first post, and for the most part, it worked.    I rehydrated the yeast, with somewhat mixed results.  Still don't know if I did it right.  I still had some trouble bringing the temperature of the wort down, so I planned on freezing more ice for enxt time.

Since then, I've bottled the Yellow Dog and it's still conditioning in the bottles as we speak.  I've sampled the British Ale (i.e. the f'ed up batch) vs. the Yellow Dog, and even though the Yellow Dog is still a few weeks away from proper tasting time, I can tell it tastes "cleaner" than the British Ale, and will end up being the better brew.