Hello from Long Island

A few friends and I just started brewing after an intense brainstorm as to what would be a productive way to spend our free time.

We believe in being authentic, so we jumped right into the deep end with all-grain.

We managed a half batch of wheat beer (our groups favorite style) with a minimal investment (a 3 gallon carboy) and after sampling what had been fermenting for only a few days and discovering it actually tasted like beer decided to scale up.

We lucked out by inheriting a friend’s former winemaker fathers carboy collection... 8... Yes 8... 5 gallon carboys, plus one more in a family member’s basement.

With 10 carboys we decided to invest in most of the proper equipment instead of our makeshift.

Using our "real" equipment we produced a batch of pilsner, which we just racked to the secondary. I tasted the hydrometer sample and am happy to report that it is on par with the best I've tasted.

We are patiently waiting to bottle our batches, although we have 8 empty carboys at the moment, before moving forward. Since we do have the capacity to have nearly 50 gallons fermenting at once, we are a bit worried about what to do with it all.

We plan on going straight to the bottle for now, but would be willing to invest in a kegging system if we need to force carbonate. We would like our final product to be in bottles so we can easily distribute it among our friends.

This forum has been an immense help in getting us off the ground and I would like to that everyone who has posted their methods, recipes and solutions to problems. I am on many boards for various topics and can safely say this is the most civil and respectful group I have encountered.

Welcome
Make sure you are fermenting the Pilsner and the proper temps or won't turn out tasting like you think it should.

We have it somewhere around 50, it's in a bucket with water that we periodically add some ice to. We have an old mini fridge that we may build into a fermentation/conditioning chamber if we go that route.

Welcome! Just know, if you end up having too much beer, there is someone local who can take some off your hands.

Where are you getting your ingredients?

At the moment Karps hardware. Were talked to Alan there and he is very helpfull. We tried to find the brewers den as well, but I guess they are online only now. Any recommendations?

Welcome! Go fill those carboys.

Welcome brethren.

I was born and raised on Long Island. Only moved up here to New Haven from Sayville in October 2007.

Karps is the only place I have gone to for ingredients also. I emailed the brewers den people got one response asked about a product and never heard back. The first couple times I was at Karps the selection was small (had to buy different crystal malt and change amounts to get right color) but I liked being able to get my stuff local. The last time I was there their fridge was broken, yeast was just sitting out along with the hops. Decided it was time to just buy online unfortunately.