Bottling Day

Today was brewday for my third batch, an American Dark Wheat ale. This one is going to come out very interesting. Its extremely dark. In fact, it looks about as dark as my stout, if not darker. I ran into 3 issues. The first, after steeping the grains, I realized I had too much water in the pot. I let it boil for about 20 minutes or so to boil down some of the water before adding the extract. The second issue was my first boilover. I turned around for about 10 seconds after it returned to a boil and it was everywhere. Luckily, it stayed mostly on the stovetop with a tiny bit that dripped over the front (thank god nothing went over the side). The rest of the boil was uneventful. The third issue is probably the biggest, and hopefully wont ruin the beer. I pitched the yeast before aerating the beer and then aerated it. I then realized my mistake. I opened it back up and took some beer for my gravity reading. I really hope this wouldnt have screwed anything up. I really wanted this one to be good. Other than that, everything went well with brewing. I also bottled my second batch, the Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (which I named The Chocolate With, after the Phish song The Curtain With). That went pretty well. I ended up with 3 22 oz bombers and 38 12 oz bottles. After a mishap upon opening a bottle of the Alt during which the top of the bottle snapped off, I think in the future, I am going to stop using Anchor bottles. They seem to be a bit thinner and more fragile than the other bottles Ive used. Its all fine and well because Anchor costs more anyway. Now I need to drink more commercial beer to collect more bottles for the Dark Wheat Ale.