What do you do?

My first experience with craft beer, Sam Adams in the late '80s, thankfully ruined cheap beer for me, and I'll never forget my first Sierra Nevada Pale Ale a few years later. In college I was a pre-med chemistry major-I was always curious about beer brewing but too busy or otherwise distracted to give it a try. Fast forward 20 years - I'm a physician with 2 kids now in college and a very understanding wife. Took a homebrewing class at a local bottle shop about a year ago and I was totally hooked, thinking about the biology/chemistry/physics/engineering as well as the creative art of brewing. Plus it ends with beer. A beautiful hobby. I switched from extract to BIAB after 3 brews and I'm now looking to get out of the kitchen and get outside. Also built a keezer over the last holiday. The family mocks my geekery and then joins me with a pint. Nothing better than that.

 

So yer the one providin' the hooch for Steve Avery, ain'tcha?

 

*yawn* Hell no. He can have my cats though.

 

@KeyWestGator go gators! And go everybody else writing in, it is a super thread!

 

Yeah, maybe a photo next to your brewing set-up. Kind of like a photo of a man next to his favorite car. I can't think of anything else I own that I revere more than my brew stand and equipment....I bet Victor Frankenstein felt the same way about his lab.

 

Have BS in mechanical engineering and currently work as a design engineer. Down the road I would like to get into the brewing business, in some way. I've been brewing for about 6 years, after my wife bought me a starter kit for Christmas, (I'm sure she had no idea it would grow to the obsession it is now). I've entered some competitions and did pretty well over the last couple years.

 

I'm a proud graduate of Forest Park Community College (Class of '76) with an AAS in Automotive Technology. After a few jobs as an auto mechanic, I went to work as an assistant engineer for an automotive brake manufacturer; a job where I could work around cars and not end up with a bad back. Unfortunately the auto industry went to hell in 1980 and I got laid off before i could go back to school for an engineering degree. Twelve years later I got my BSME while working for the local electrical utility and went to work at their nuclear plant as a materials engineer. After I put my in time there I went to an evil coal fired power plant as a boiler engineer and now I’m a combustion engineer supporting all the coal fired plants for the company. My work group’s job is to minimize plant emissions without spending billions of dollars on pollution control equipment. I’m near retirement having turned 59½ last week. The old folks reading this will know the significance of this age.


I started brewing in 2010, mostly brewing clones of beers I like. Now I’m more into creating my own recipes of the styles I like. I’m a bit weird for a craft beer drinker in that I’m not a fan of IPAs; English style beers are my thing. I brew killer brown ale and am working on perfecting my winter ale, oatmeal stout and red ale recipes. My brew buddies and I were asked to brew a beer of our own creation at our local brew pub with their head brewer who we have known for years. We were asked again last year but couldn’t work out a time to do it. It was fun, but I’m too lazy to start up my own brewery; it’s way too much work. I enjoyed building my brewing equipment as much if not more than the actual brewing.

 

Nice. I like watching BBQ Pitmasters. Myron, Tuffy and Big Moe are some funny dudes. I do a lot of smoking and got to see DivaQ at one compo.

 

Great thread - such diverse backgrounds! I'm all about diversity: since I entered the workforce as a teenager, I have held the following positions:
Grocery store clerk; tennis court repair laborer; gas station attendant; offset printshop worker; fast food busperson, cook & shift manager; auto parts clerk; auto service sales; bicycle mechanic & sales; newspaper delivery; interior painting; building construction laborer; pizza delivery; have a degree in Geology (Rutgers 1984); worked as a geologist doing superfund site soil and groundwater investigation; migrated to IT and am currently a software programmer /analyst writing banking software.
A true Jack-of-all-trades.

I became enamored with the beers my brother-in-law was making in the early 1990's and got hooked! Did a couple of extract batches, but stopped brewing for a number of years. Just couldn't find the time raising a large family and working a lot! A number of the jobs above were concurrent!

Finally got back into brewing about three years ago with a so-so extract dunkleweizen and decided to go all grain. I am an avid (almost rabid) do-it-yourselfer, and the thought of making beer from grain is such an appealing idea to me that I HAD to get it done!

I don't brew nearly often enough to really be creative, and my equipment is rather primitive, but after reading extensively on hefeweizens, I am proud to say that I produce an excellent hefewiezen that I believe would stand up to many commercial varieties. I love the process of brewing and more so love sharing with friends.

Equipment limits my batch size and would really like to be able to do some larger batches, and brew more frequently so I can get my head around hopping rates to work on IPA's, as well as try some other favorite styles (Belgians!). Thinking about a Marzen for Oktorbefest... there is a local comp I might consider entering.

Cheers!

 

I started making wine about 10 years ago in high school as a convenient way of getting around my inability to purchase alcohol. In college I decided to move onto beer and brewed a handful of really crappy batches.

Today, I'm a supply chain analyst at a tech company which I'm quite happy with as it does a great job of funding this fantastic hobby. I started taking brewing seriously 3 years ago and very seriously 1 year ago when I switched to all grain. Now I've got the stir plate, kegerator/temp control chamber, oxygen stone, the whole deal. All I feel like I'm missing is a PH meter and a bigger brew kettle. Not bad for a 1 bedroom apartment in downtown Portland though.

I love to brew IPAs (west cost and NE), stouts & barleywines (usually with a huge OG, oak, spirits and adjuncts), and sours (berliners and saisons so far). My ultimate goal in brewing is to make a true gueuze, but I'm afraid to start because I don't know if I'll be in my current location for the 4 years.

 

Mind blown!!

I work at a small magazine publishing company, we published BYO mag, and as such wear many hats in this arena though have zero background in this arena. Was a bio & chem student (pre-med), worked at a national lab in the biochem field for a couple years, became a ski bum for a couple years about the time I got my first experience as an assistant brewmaster, then landed in vermont as a high school teacher. A couple years later found out the magazine I subscribed to and read cover to cover was located in the same town, so started working part time during summer break. Was made an offer I couldn't refuse given I had a young family and still here 8 years later...
So been on & off brewing since about 2000. Divorced…and yes I can thank home brewing for that (my brew stand build was her "last straw"). Have two kids, 6 & 9 and my girlfriend has a son who is 7, so the house gets busy when all three kids are there…but having the kids at their other houses bides me time to homebrew (when not working on the house) which I still enjoy and have definitely become less anal & more leisurely about it over the last few years.

 

Most impressive. I also have pretty beat up old equipment that dates back to 99/2000; second mash tun cooler but same hardware, propane burner, spoon, airlocks, most of my buckets though I've probably broker 19 hydrometers in that same span.

 

I'll be sad when my hydrometer dies. It's worked so well for so long. I've even dropped it a few times and had to recalibrate it. But it hasn't broken. I still trust it even more than my refractometer which I've found has deviated/drifted by 0.8 Brix (0.003 on the hydrometer scale) just in the past 3 months. The trusty hydrometer is also off by 0.003, but I know that and simply subtract that amount every time I use it -- it was probably from those times I dropped it without breaking. The refractometer...... I have no friggin idea how it changed from 0.0 Brix with plain water to 0.8 Brix in 3 months. No idea. I never dropped it. Hmm.

I still use my first brewing bucket too, but no longer as a fermenter -- now I use it to sparge, to hold sanitize and/or equipment, etc. It's scratched up real bad yet it remains very useful in my brewery.

 

Well, can,t compare with personal equiptment, but, was fortunate when I became acquainted with a older retired home Brewer who gave me 6 milk crates of of fisher bottles. He had home brewed over 20 years.

 

I am a Metal Model Maker by trade. Automotive Prototype metal stampings and assemblies is my specialty. Married for 26 years and have two girls and a grandson. I have been brewing since 2007. My other hobbies are hunting, fishing, golf. Not sure if I am good at any of my hobbies but they keep me off the street!