The New Guy

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum and I would like to introduce myself.

My name is Tucker and I am 32 years old and live in New Hampshire. The reason for joining this forum is, I am thinking about brewing my own beer. A friend of mine was really into all grain brewing and I helped on about 5 or 10 batches. I am an electrician so I enjoy gadgets, so we made a RMS setup with thermo couples, controller, two pumps and counter flow wort chiller and all that sort of stuff. That was about 5 years ago, my friend moved about 2 hours away and took the equipment with him (he paid for all of it). Right now, my main hobby is making maple syrup. I have 175 taps a new sugar house, (would make a great brew house) a new tubing system, and a new evaporator. My wife is sick of me poring money onto the maple because she dose not like gallons of maple syrup. She said she would like it a lot more if I made beer as a hobby because she likes beer more.

I am looking at different brew setups now and trying to learn as much as I can before I take the plunge and start building/buying a setup.
My friend hade all the technical knowledge so I followed his lead. Now I will be doing this on my own so I have a lot of learning to do. I have the theory down but need help on the technical part. If any one were to start, over what would you do???

Thanks a lot!
Tucker

P.S.
If anyone wants to see my maple, setup go to http://picasaweb.google.com/uncletucker

Welcome aboard! You'll have lots of fun here.

If I had to start all over again? I don't know that I would do a whole lot different at all. I got a deluxe all-glass starter kit from a big internet brewing supply place. It was a great deal and I don't regret it at all, but maybe if I was starting over I'd scan Craigslist and the classifieds here for a few weeks before buying new stuff. You could possibly save a LOT of money buy picking up someone else's equipment when they quit the hobby or leave town and can't take their brewing stuff with them.

Also, I'd probably skip the whole bottling thing and just start out with kegging. Now I have 8 cases of empty bottles that I spent a lot of time cleaning and collecting, and I have no desire to deal with the hassle of putting beer in them ever again because kegging is so much easier.

Also, I would NOT drill into the back of my chest freezer and vent all the freon into my basement. Yeah, that was not a smart thing to do at all!

I will rember the freezer thing. thanks

Welcome! I checked out your site- You have some incredible land!!! That is one hell of a view. There are lots of people here with some great ideas, so ask away with any questions you may have. Your syrup house would indeed make a great brewhouse. from the pics it looks like you already have loads of kettles, and a propane burner, so you're on your way already. I guess it depends on how elaborate you want your setup to be. You've already built one, (and pretty fancy, sounds like) so that helps, too.
BTW, I'd gladly trade you some homebrew for some syrup......

I will be tapping at the beginning of March. Last year I, hade 50 taps and made 6 gallons of syrup, this year I have 175 taps and hopfully a lot more syrup. I will have to see the totals at the end of April but defnitly interested.

The reason I am looking for setup adavice is I have a habit if buying something and realizing it is to small or there is a better way. I am even conceding buying a system from a manufacture just because it is tried and tested. I would rather build something but I don’t want to rebuild it all the time. Where on this site could I see some setups that people have built setups that work good?

I hope I do not get as addicted to brewing as am to maple. Some of you know what I mean by addicted.

I would kill for that brewshed! Nice setup.

Most of us here started simple, and slowly aquired more equipment, some faster than others, with many that have brewed for quite some time, not even having built a brewsculpture yet.

If you're determined to build first, I say read up (check out the member's galleries)and go for it, since you have some experience already.

But my advice would definately be to start small to make sure you really want to do this ALL THE TIME first.

Addiction? Who's addicted? I don't know what you're talking about!

I think you need to make some maple syrup mead!

SixFoFalcon said:

I think you need to make some maple syrup mead!

Click to expand...

Now THERE'S an idea........