What was your first Home Brew?

It was can and kilo kit, prehopped extract, add a kilogram of sugar. I think it was purported to be an English Pale Ale. I'm pretty sure it was a coopers kit. It was 1987 or 1988, the year my grandmother died. At the wake, my dad said to a cousin that I tried to brew a batch of beer and they pressured me into getting some bottles for everyone to try. It was a cidery, bottle-infected, gusher of a mess, because I had no knowledge of sanitary precautions back then. Quite embrassing for me.

 

It was John Palmer's Cincinnati Pale Ale recipe (extract) from his book. I just changed the hops. Turned out decent.

 

A Brewers Best Porter Kit....

 

Mine was a Brewers Best Imperial Pale Ale kit. Friggin' fantastic brew.

 

Yeah dude, Cincinnati Pale ale all the way. Pairs good with spaghetti & chili. That was my first brew, and I remember it well because when we went to pour our wort into the fermenter, we didn't have a proper funnel. So we cut a milk jug in half and rested it on the lip of the carboy - it didnt go inside the carboy neck, just kind of rested flush against the opening. Needless to say, when we went to dump the wort in, about a gallon ended up on the floor.

Hey, it tasted good enough that I kept brewing for the next 5 years.

 

Pumpkin ale; tasted like alcoholic candy.

 

My first brew (back in 1999) was also my last kit. It was an 4 lb EDME Red Ale pre-hopped ale kit with 3.3 lbs of John Bull Amber malt extract added. Boiled for 1 hr (totally unnecessary) and fermented with the yeast that came with the kit. Results were about what you would expect. My next beer was an extract/specialty grain pale ale, hopped with N. Brewer and Cascade, and fermented with Whitbread dry yeast. Much better! I have to thank my brother who bought (and shipped) me my original equipment and kit; I've never looked back. Still using the carboy and capper!

 

That was my first too. Suppose to be a Arrogant Bastard clone from what I found out.

Mine turned out okay. A bit dark, a bit sweet.. finished around 1.020 which is just a sugar bomb to me. I've found that I like drier beers, and like that I have that control in AG brewing.

Not a bad start. I think it was like a 1.080 OG.. Big beer for a newbie.. I dry hopped it with Citra I think!

 

Also my first, but I opened it in the homebrew store and saw that it was a single hop columbus beer so I decided to change up the hops a bit.

I did something like

columbus 60
simcoe 40
cascade 15
cascade/amarillo FO

 

My first beer brewed you can see it in my avatar,it looks nice but was undrinkable, was a pale ale i had to dump.lol

 

Brewer's Best Robust Porter. Turned out okay... does not age well however as one might guess

 

Tried a couple in college that didn't work. Did not understand the extreme importance of sanitation back then. My first successful was an partial mash/extract Double IPA. Turned out great for my first beer. Still wondering what I was thinking trying that for my first one, but alas it was success. 2 years later and well into all-grain. This hobby is way to addictive.

 

my first was back in 96/97 when I was 16/17, spiced cyser fermented with bread yeast in the closet so my mom wouldn't find it. Tasted like shit, but I got really, really drunk, which is was mattered at the time.

First adult homebrew was an oatmeal stout kit that I added chocolate and spices to the boil and did a secondary on sour cherries from my roommate's parents' tree. It was pretty damn good, as I recall.

 

Here's the instruction sheet I got from the local Wine Hobby USA shop in 1976 (complete with hand-written additions from the shop-owner). Pretty sure I brewed the "German type beer like Lowenbrau" recipe. I had earlier picked up some recipes when I lived in Los Angeles (long forgotten which shop that was) but didn't brew until I got back to NJ that fall.

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(Right click "View Image" for easily readable view).​

 

I don't remember the exact name of the beer but it was a Brown Ale extract recipe from Charlie Papazian's book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. For my first attempt ever I was quite proud of my accomplishment and at the moment in time it was tasty as far as I can remember. Fast forward 15 years of brewing evolution and I'd probably say it sucked

 

I've only done 2 batches so far, the first was a bavarian hefeweizen extract kit from truebrew. It came out pretty good, I'm looking forward to making up my own recipes next.

 

I did an all grain dunkelweiss. I remember it coming out awesome but a little under-carbonated. I'm sure if I was able to go back in time and taste it again I would think that it was exceedingly average at best.

 

A Brewer's Best Brown Ale kit. Turned out pretty good considering my knowledge of brewing at the time. Tons of sediment; I'm talking stop pouring nearly halfway through the bottle, haha. Also, flavors that come to me now make me thing it didn't attenuate very well. But, ya gotta start somewhere.

 

My first was a Belgian dubbel extract kit from northern brewer 2 years ago. I still have a few bottles in my fridge and they are still delicious.

 

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I did an IPA kit with a friend which we got from the local homebrewers supply shop. I think it was a Cooper's but i'm not sure. My first batch on my own was a Marzen style Lager. The IPA was ok, but the Marzen was great, I still make the original recipe. I also adjusted the recipe to use it as the basis for a Winter Brew with orange peel, coriander, nutmeg and cloves