Ski bumming in Salt Lake = time to learn to brew

Hello everyone!

My name is Andy Reiner and I'm a musician who just graduated Berklee in Boston and moved to Salt Lake City to be a ski bum for a season. My main instrument is the fiddle and I play in the bands Fiddlefoxx and Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers. Google us...

As beer here is ok, but low in alcohol, me and my roommate decided to make a trip to our friendly local homebrew store. We got the kit that had everything we needed, and earlier this week we tried our first beer.

It was an IPA, but it didn't come out quite like we expected.
We were shocked by how well balanced it was; brown sugar, oatmeal cookie, caramel like malts were balanced out by delicious floral hops. Pear also made a fairly strong showing. It was also EXTREMELY TASTY and very satisfying, definitely has me sure I will be brewing for a long time. We expect it to mature with age, already it was tasting better from on 8 days from bottling rather than 7. I am sure that next time we brew an IPA we will use twice as much hops (5 or 6 oz instead of 3). We are definitely hopheads!

In the glass fermenter we just got an overhopped belgian tripel going. .. a belgian pale? Anyways we love belgians and we love hops, soo... yea.

Next up, we'll be starting some imperial stout in the plastic fermenter. We are in Utah... we're going for big beers!

Good to meet all y'all. Cheers!

Check out Squatters Brewpub downtown. Their beers are pretty good (for 3.2). There is also a place up in park city (cant remember the name) but their food and brews were good too. I don't live there, but have spent enough time there, for work.

Welcome to HBT!

Squatters is awesome! Their 6% IPA can be purchased at state liquor stores and is a staple in our fridge. Not to mention they have beers with names like "Polygamy Porter" etc.

Also lemme just say real quick:
3.2% beer is measured BY WEIGHT, not by volume.
so 3.2 ABW = 4.0 ABV.
not so bad.

Welcome to Utah.....it's not so bad here once you learn the ropes. Also you don't have to go to the liquor store to get there 6% IPA anymore. The law changed and they can now sell it at their own beer store on 3rd west. They also have an strong double bock called The Devastator thats pretty good. But personally my favorite local beer is Uinta's Cutthroat.

Yeah being here in Utah definitely makes me crave big beers more then i did when i lived in Long Beach. I too have an Imperial Stout in my secondary fermenter right now.

It's always good to have another Utahn here on the board. Cheers!

Gives bottles 3 weeks at room temperature as a minimun if you can stand it.
They will always taste better and be more consistent.

Wasatch Brewery in PC has good food and IMO only OK beers, YMMV, but GREAT beer names.
Wasatch Brew Pub

They took a lot of heat from the locals when the beer names and logos were released.