What a day!

Well long story long let me explain what has come of my day.

My mom came home about two months ago from my grandma's house and guess what she had in the back of her truck. A brew kit that we bought for my grandpa 5 years ago who has since passed. He never got a chance to use it and it was sitting in there garage. Well it had been over 10 years since i did home brewing. Life, girls, bars, being young, etc got in the way so anyways my mom asked if i would like the equipment.. i thought about it for about 3 seconds and said hell yea i will take it. Well i started immediately thinking about how much fun i had home brewing. so later that week i headed to the LHBS and bought a kit as i did 10 years prior and came home, brewed it up. Well about that point i started doing some research as i always do on the net and stumbled upon this website and found out how much everything had changed! and how much i had done wrong with my first batch haha. So after days of spending hours at home and at work :rockin: reading through the forums i came to that i wanted to do AG. And my usual motto is 'Go BIG, or GO BIGGER' I made one extract, two partial mashes to get back in the basics of brewing again and to get some inventory (beer to drink) and plan on my next batch being all grain!

Like i said at the beginning, 'long story LONG' Well today i made my first steps to becoming an AG brewer. I made my keggle, its cut all i need to do now is add the drain and its done (once its delivered). I figure from what i have read on HBT that im going weldless with the drain. I also made my MT today out of a Coleman Ultimate Extreme 50-qt. Cooler. I know it might seem odd this is only my second post but i honestly got so caught up in reading/learning i forgot to even post. Another thing i want to say is thanks to all the brewers out there that share all this good information for us newbies. I plan on posting some pics soon and cant wait to do my first AG batch!!!

There are thousands of options but I would like to hear some recommendations on what you guys/gals think i should do for my first AG? I am open to try mostly anything but would like a beer that a wide variety of people would enjoy.

Thanks again!

I too am getting into brewing more and more (am new to the site as well) and am interested in hearing some suggestions on a "broad" beer as well.

Congrats and glad to hear you have the brewing bug again. If you like dark beer, I would probably start with a porter or a stout. That way, if you make any unintentional mistakes, the darker grains will cover up all but the most serious of flaws. Pale ales are kinda hard to keep the color in the correct range, so I would hold off on those until you have a few AG batches under your belt. You are gonna love that cooler. I have 2 like that and I added a 1/4 inch ball valve and the braided ss line from the toilet water line-works like a champ!

If you like cascade hops, EdWort's Haus Ale seems to be the defacto standard first AG brew.

Thanks for the recommendations! I think i will go with brads choice (Bee Cave Brewery Haus Pale Ale). As for the darker beers i will do that for more personal batches later on once i get some inventory/practice in Thanks again!

yup I too just did my first AG last week. I also did Ed's Haus pale for my first. Simple recipe, easy grain bill, 1 step infusion mash....sweet!

just can't wait to try it! The smells coming from the air lock are awesome!!

Cheers,