The hardest part of home brewing...

...is having patience. Unfortunately a lot of brewing is about patience. RDWHAHB!!! I can't!!! I feel the need to check temperature and airlock activity at least 3 times a day, it's almost as if I'm trying to find something to worry and obsess about. However, I'm starting to learn to stop worrying about every little detail, chances are the beer is going to come out just fine. My girlfriend already thinks I'm nuts! I really need more space, ie large fermentation freezer, so I can brew several batches and stop worrying about the one.

Drink more

Patience is one of the things always push around here.

Right now I have 8 cornies in the keezer with 7 more standing by in the (cold) garage...plus 2 on tap in the kegerator...and 3 in the primary/secondary stage.

Some of my kegs are over 1 year old and tasting pretty good.

If I can get home early enough I'll make a Leap Day Mead tonight.

I'll probably brew another batch of Weizen over the weekend too.

The patience will come with time (hopefully). Before you know it, you'll have 2 or 3 fermenting away, a couple batches aging, and you won't even think about it.

I'm working on it...

One of my problems is that my friends don't drink anything other than American light beer or Dos Equis, so I'm mainly just brewing for me and I can only drink so much. Who cares though, it's fun and it's better to have too much beer than not enough

Just for fun, I made up a batch of a Dos Equis clone for those DE drinkers that I know to enjoy when they came over(mainly my younger brother). I took a few bottles to a tasting along with a few of the real item and the consensus was that the color was right and the taste was better but the greater cloudiness gave away it's home brew origins. I've got the recipe around somewhere - PM me if curious. I used an ale yeast and did not attempt to lager it.

Brett3rThanU said:

I'm working on it...

One of my problems is that my friends don't drink anything other than American light beer or Dos Equis, so I'm mainly just brewing for me and I can only drink so much. Who cares though, it's fun and it's better to have too much beer than not enough

Click to expand...

So, where's the problem...???

It's just me and the wife and she doesn't drink, but that doesn't stop me from building an inventory...

You can call it patience-or procrastination. Could I bottle yet? Maybe-but why bother?...let it sit for another week or so so the yeast can clean up the mess. In the meantine, brew another batch!

I almost wish that none of my friends liked my stuff. Problem is that if it turns out good, then the beer disappears pretty quick. I've begun the pattern of brewing a low or normal gravity beer followed by a big beer. One to drink fairly soon, and one to put away for at least a few months. Having something on hand or close to on hand keeps you from drinking the strong stuff too early.

I used to worry about airlock activity, and still watch it for the first day or so after brewing. Once it gets going I pretty much forget about it until I rack to secondary or bottle. I've been putting of bottling my 8-8-8 RIS for the last three weeks.

I've found that brewing way too much and kegging have drastically reduced the amount of patience required for this hobby.

.... is finding the time to brew as often as I would "like" too.

I have no problem in building up a stock of beer klnowing that I wont get to a keg for 2 maybe 3 months. I can brew around that and design a recipe to fit the storage/ageing schedule.

Problem is that in having a house, a yard, a wife, a kid, 2 cats, and a job. I don't have near enough time to brew.

I have the capacity to pour from 4 faucets and am planning and upgrade to 6.
I can cold store up to 8 or 9 kegs (again 4-6 on tap) in my Keezer and could warm store another 9 if I had the time to fill em'.

If I could brew enough beer to fill the equipment I have. Thus leaving me at the mercy of , god forbid, having to wait for 2 kegs to empty to have room for more beer. I would be in heaven and consider myself a man blessed by the beer gods.

And I am also the ONLY beer drinker in the house. Rarely do I ever have guests over that drink beer.

I feel ya, waiting sucks but it is worth it

I kind of enjoy waiting on the beer to ferment and mature. I like the feeling of having different beers in different stages of maturity. Right now I have a red ale bottle conditioning, a stout in the secondary and a brown ale in the primary. Next week the red should be ready to drink and the stout and the brown will be bottled. I will also start a hefewissen some time next week. I am trying to keep this cycle going because I find it much easier to be patient when I have multiple batches of beer maturing. I had no patience with my first batch. I drank almost all of it while it was still green. I only had two bottles left once it was mature and very tasty. I won't let this happen again. Right now I don't have any homebrew that is ready, but I find micro-brews to be a good substitute. I can also justify buying micro's as research beers to help me decide what to brew next. I love this new hobby. The only thing I don't find very fun is cleaning and sanitation, but I realize in order to get good beer it has to be done.

I got the flu for 10 days. I'm telling you - nothing takes your mind of your beer like a fever of 104. Some auditory hallucinations in which you can't pinpoint where any sound is coming from (some people sound like they are down a hallway some sound like they are inside your head) really puts brewing on the back burner. Then I got some medicine and when I was better my winter ale was done.

At a certain point I thought I would never be happy or be able to taste beer again. I was convinced I was going to die in my bed.