Hello from Illinois

Hi everyone. I am new to brewing and was looking for advice etc online and stumbled upon this forum. Looks great, from what little I've seen appears to be good people with all range of perspective and advice.

A word about myself. I just turned 22 and am student at UIS (I live in springfield). My friend and I decided to have a go at brewing this summer. To start, I picked up a copy of John Palmer's How to Brew, read through a good part of it, and we are midway through the simple pale ale recipe from the book. Seems to be going well so far but I just have this feeling something went wrong. It has been fermenting for a week now and barring unforeseen circumstances, I will be priming and bottling in two weeks.

Hopefully it turns out well, but if it does not, we don't plan on giving up. The plan is to get at least one passable good brew under our belts then start experimenting with our own ideas and recipes.

I may put up some photos of our setup later. Not much to it really, a couple buckets, nothing you haven't seen before I'm sure.

Anyway, good to be here, look forward to learning about brewing and getting to know some of you.

welcome bro. I live just outside of scott afb. I bet nothing went wrong with your beer! Relax and have a homebrew

Hey thanks. Have you been to the St. Louis beer and winemaking place in chesterfield? That is where we got our hops as all I can get around here are a limited variety of plug. Anyway, seems like a pretty good store.

I thought there was a Friar Tuck's in Springfield, and they seem to have a decent homebrew selection.

By plug hops do you mean pellets? If so, there is nothing wrong with pellets.

Welcome to HBT!

Welcome!!

RogerMcAllen said:

I thought there was a Friar Tuck's in Springfield, and they seem to have a decent homebrew selection.

By plug hops do you mean pellets? If so, there is nothing wrong with pellets.

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There is nothing wrong with pellets, however, that is all they have here, and the selection of pellets is fairly meager. I have since learned they will special order any hop you want. we are going to St Louis again this saturday mainly because it is only a little over an hour drive and there is also a whole foods near the homebrew store that has like 30 different kinds of sausage. This time we are also going to tour the Annheuser brewery while down there

. the staff is very helpful in knowledgable and they stock way more hops and grains. We won't be going to Stl every time, but it is a fun trip.

Welcome

Thanks for the welcome. My buddy and i bottled our beer yesterday. My fears were put to rest. It smells great, and it tasted pretty good for a flat beer right out the fermenter. ill let you all know how the finished product tastes in a few weeks. cheers