Remember your first brew?

My GF, who gave me all of the equipment (except the kettle) and kit, reminded me that I threw some baker's chocolate and dried cherries into the boil as well. Obviously not enough, cause all I don't remember any of that coming through. Actually, all I remember it tasting like was generic stout with a hint of clove.

 

First brew was in August of 1999. EDME Red Ale kit (4 lbs hopped LME) fortified, with John Bull Amber Malt (3.3 lbs LME). Boiled for 1 hour (for no good reason as I added no other hops, but what did I know then?). Fermented with yeast that came with the package. The beer was at least drinkable. My notes say "Not bad after 7 days. Much better after 2 weeks. Fairly sweet. Not bitter. Little head. Carbonation less than expected."

That was my first and last kit beer. After that (next batch in October 1999) I moved on to extract with specialty grains, real hops in the boil, and a brand name yeast. The second batch, a Pale Ale I remember as being quite good. In fact, my notes say, among other things, EXCELLENT!

There have been the good, bad, and ugly beers since, but that second batch had me hooked. Next batch will be #135.

Cheers!

 

Got the set from my GF for a X-mas present in late 2011 and remember being totally surprised. She purchased a pale ale kit along with the equipment from the LHBS. I remember watching some terrible video they provided a link to and must have watched the video ten times while brewing. I was paranoid of everything, I couldn't tell you how many times I took the lid off and the first time I opened the lid and it smelled like beer, I was so jazzed. Since I immediately thought I was a pro brewer, I decided I would just go out and dry hop the little guy for the hell of it and it actually turned out quite nice for a pale. It did have some off/yeasty flavor after a few weeks, the fermenting temps got a bit high at times but it tasted like beer, I made it and had a damn blast doing it.

 

Did my first batch about 2 years ago. Did some research and made a recipe for a 7% IPA with extract and steeping grains.

Batch turned out pretty good and we drank it all really quickly. Not accounting for boil off meant it turned out at 9.5% and far fewer IBU's than I'd calculated. I guess there are worse mistakes to make...

Learned a lot from that batch, like you should account for boil off, not throw the dry hops into the fermenter without a bag, and lots of ice is necessary if you're going to go the ice bath route. It was a lot of fun then and it's been a lot of fun since. Will be working on batch #24 and #25 pretty soon.

Cheers!

 

Made a blonde ale (extract) and let it ferment in the garage... Temps varied between 62-74. Oops. Still was drinkable despite the off flavors.

 

I am brewing my first batch as I type this. It is an American Amber Ale from More Beer that my GF got me for Christmas.

I guess she got tired of hearing me talk about brewing all the time and just made me dive straight into the deep end. I have been stalking forums and youtube for the last year or so and have wanted to brew but too scared to attempt.

It has been about 9 days since brew day and I can gurantee that I messed up a few times. Since I have researched brewing for a long time I thought I knew more than I did. Very humbling.

After a week in primary my rookie ass decided that moving it to a secondary would clear it up a bit and that all that sediment on the bottom of my carboy would just make the beer taste bad (Pfftttt). Its now sitting at room temp in my guest room 60-68 degrees depending on who is home. It definitely smells like beer but who the hell knows, right?

 

Yeah, there are a lot of things that you don't realize about brewing until you actually start doing it. Making sure you have all the tools you need on hand, figuring out what to do when to avoid wasting time, making sure everything that needs to be sanitized is ready when you need it. I probably wasted 45 minutes on one of my early brew days because I forgot to rehydrate my yeast during the boil, so I had to boil some water and then cool it down and give the yeast some time to absorb it. Getting to bed at 1 AM on a brew day teaches you things in a way that reading a book can't!

 

My first batch was with my roommates our senior year of college in April, 2008. I think it was some kind of amber ale extract/grain steep kit. It involved an impromptu trip to the store to buy a proper thermometer part-way through the brew, a very scorched kettle (black rings from the electric burner scorched into the bottom of the stainless steel pot), and starting a siphon during bottling by sucking the beer through a tube. It turned out surprisingly alright. A little grassy, if I remember correctly. We brought some bottles to a house party, and it got some compliments.

 

Extra pale ale kit from northernbrew, everything went okay until pitching time when I found out I didnt actually activate the Wyeast pack.

 

Brewing day can easily be very confusing if you don't stay organized and be thinking two moves ahead. Some additional experience with more brewing will begin to help soon, so 'keep the faith.'

 

The good old days. A homebrew "shop" opened here in our small town so my wife bought me a kit. With the kit I got to go and choose my first extract kit and get advice from the store owner. It was an "Irish ale"-one 3 pound can of pre-hopped extract, 1.5 pounds of corn sugar and a little paper pack of old dry yeast taped to the can. His advice was to mix the extract and sugar into a gallon of water, almost bring it to a boil and then sit it in an ice bath until it quit steaming. Add enough water to get 5 gallons in the bucket and let it sit at room temp for a week, Then transfer it into a collapsible 5 gallon camping water bag for 2 weeks, bottle it and enjoy it. I actually made 3 of these kits before I really started looking into brewing(this was way before normal people had access to usable homebrewing forums). After the Irish, I did a stout and a lager(at room temp with the same pack of yeast), then I replaced the corn sugar with another can of extract, bought and boiled some hops and the beer was much better.

 

Brewers best IPA kit. The kit only used columbus hops, so I purchased an oz of cascade and simcoe to substitute to "make it my own". Probably wouldn't have won any awards but I found it to be very enjoyable.

 

My soon to be father-in-law and I did our first homebrew in late November 2014. We started off simple with the bare essentials in terms of equipment which means we're using extract kits from Brewer's Best right now. Our first brew was their American Amber Ale. We went through the primary and secondary fermentation, bottling, etc., and tried the first one after about two weeks of letting it carbonate. We thought it turned out to be a pretty damn good beer but we also figured our own bias was getting in the way. Gave some to a buddy or two and they really liked it. I was really surprised our first brew turned into a really solid beer.

Since that first brew we've done a Belgian Tripel and an Imperial Stout. The Stout just got brewed this past weekend and the Tripel really needs another couple of weeks to carbonate. However, we did decide to get one of the Tripels out after it had only been in the bottles for one week, and we were pleasantly surprised. Obviously it'll get better, but for only being carbonated for one week, it was pretty good.

We're working towards a keezer project by sometime this summer when we both have a little more money and time off to put everything together. Really looking forward to having my own freezer in the house with three beers on tap. I'm "this" close to "living the dream."

 

But all-in-all it turned out pretty good? The next brew I'm doing is Brewer's Best IPA. I wanted to do their PSA IPA but they were out of stock. Have you tried any of their other IPAs and/or beers? We've (father-in-law and I) have brewed their American Amber, Belgian Tripel, and Imperial Stout. The only one we've drunk so far is the American Amber and we were pretty pleased with our results.

 

I did a flower power clone, extract, some steeping crystal and some honey. I ended up loving it despite pitching at 90 (damn Ice bath was useless). I also remember when bottling the last six pack had TONS of sediment because I didn't want to lose an ounce of my prized concoction.

 

I was very pleased with the beer. It surpassed my expectations for a first homebrew. This was the only kit I brewed with though so I can't comment on any other styles or brands.