Am I in over my head?

Thank you for replying, I appreciate the feedback--being new and all, I can use as much input from more experienced homebrewers as I can get.

You're correct in that I steeped roasted grains. I steeped them until just before a rolling boil kicked in, then I took the pot off heat and gradually incorporated malt extract. Unfortunately, I'm using the leftovers of a bunch of kits that a friend of mine has given me since they are moving away. The grains were simply marked "specialty grains" but he always drinks lighter brews, I don't know if that would help in having an idea of what these grains might be.

The malt was labelled a light pils malt. I then brought that back to a rolling boil and added Amarillo and Brewer's gold. All the hops I used in this were pellets. I then added microplaned lime zest. I'm assuming by gimmick ingredient, you mean it doesn't contribute to the reason why it was put in. It worked excellently, it smells like lime and hops--and it's actually pretty nice. My reasoning though was because I wanted to see if it would work well for smell.

Towards the end, five minutes before the boil was finished, I added Cascade. I was thinking of dry hopping sterling hops too.

I guess it's fortunate though that the champagne yeast I put in is apparently dead. I just doubled checked the packaging it was from and it was supposed to be used in 2012 (it's dry yeast). No harm done here I'm assuming, considering I've made wines (intentionally) using dead yeast for yeast food. What kind of ale yeast would you recommend me using?

I want the sterling for dry hopping mainly because I want its flavor.

Since the apple juice wouldn't really do anything, without the champagne yeast and the apple juice, do you think it'd be fine otherwise? Clearly I'm not expected some pitch perfect beer, but I'd like it to be at least palatable.

/r/Homebrewing Thread Parent