Newb

Hey guys. I'm new to the home brewing world and I wanted to get some advice. The biggest piece of advice I am looking for is what starter kit is the best to get?

Awesome. Thank you. Any other tips before I start?

summervillehills said:

Awesome. Thank you. Any other tips before I start?

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Start with an Ale. I made the mistake of ordering an ale kit and a pilsner not realizing there was a difference in brewing methods.

Also, make a beer you want, not what friends/family may want.

summervillehills said:

Awesome. Thank you. Any other tips before I start?

Click to expand...

Read lots on this forum. I could have been making much better beer 3 years ago if I had know a place like this existed.

Try to keep your fermenter cool. Yeast seem to give off less bad flavors when fermented at the cooler end of their preferred range.

Don't rush to bottle. Longer in the fermenter means more yeast to clean up and it seems to encourage the beer to mature faster. You'll get good beer faster by leaving it in the fermenter for more than 2 weeks.

Don't do it! This hobby will consume you. All you will be able to think about is gravity levels, yeast strains, hop profiles, etc.

If you choose to pursue this hobby, get a notebook and take thourough notes on each one of your beers. Study the directions/your brew plan before you start, then get everything together and go over it one more time. When I first started, I thought it was a little overwhelming with trying to get the timing and temps right. I think my brewing got better when I just relaxed. There is a saying Relax Don't Worry Have a Homebrew (RDWHAHB), remember that. I think a lot of people can over complicate things, when its actually really simple. Your making sweet water and dumping yeast in. Once you get that part figured you can always make this harder and harder to make better and better brew.

Welcome to the obsession, have fun and let us know how it goes!

I gotta say, this really isn't a very difficult hobby. I'm drinking my very first homebrew, an IPA, and I'm loving it. No way I thought my first batch would taste this good. All extract brew, but my expectations were low and I had hoped for something at least drinkable. Good luck! I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised (and maybe as amazed as I am) that you can brew your own beer in a bucket!

I've posted this quite a few times already. For me the cheapest way to do it was to buy local. Buying a kit, or buying online and shipping it, was always more expensive. Basically, just look at a kit list and buy it all separate.