I'm making my first beer. I made wine years ago but just followed instructions when I did.
So I got 4lb of hopped 'Irish stout' canned malt extract, and another 2lb of malt extract that the guy at the store gave me. I boiled them with 2 gallons of spring water, and then added another 2 gallons of cold spring water and put it in the sink full of ice until it was 75F. Then I added one more gallon of spring water, and poured it into the fermenter violently. This is when I noticed that I was probably supposed to add "water to make 5 gallons" rather than adding 5 gallons, because the batch almost filled up my 6.5 gallon fermenter bucket. I just sprinkled the dry yeast on top. and put the lid on.
I know you are supposed to ferment below 75F but I don't have a basement or anywhere cool really, so it got up to like 77-78F and bubbled pretty strong for the first day. I made a foam cooler for the fermenter and put it inside but since I put it in there like a day ago it's completely stopped bubbling. I wonder if my yeast died somehow, or maybe it was just so warm that it fermented in like 36 hours? I tapped some off and it really tastes like beer--warm flat beer, but beer.