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A friend, sometimes I wish I never chose to brew on that faithful day......
 
Mr. Beer. After two brews with Mr. Beer I moved to 5 gal extract. Getting ready to do a PM and its my 4th 5 gal brew. I went from testing the water to cannon ball in about a month!
 
Mr. Beer. After two brews with Mr. Beer I moved to 5 gal extract. Getting ready to do a PM and its my 4th 5 gal brew. I went from testing the water to cannon ball in about a month!

Same here! Got Mr Beer for xmas, was kind of "ok, this is different, might be something interesting to do on a rainy weekend."

Finally got around to it, and now I've been building up 5gal equipment. Just acquired a copper immersion chilller.

She had no idea what kind of monster she was going to create by getting me that gift. (neither did I.)
 
i had some homebrew while visiting friends at virginia tech. it was disgusting, but i knew that if these goons could do it , i had to try. 10 years later, i'm still trying!
 
Back in 1988, my mother-in-law knew that I loved beer and thought I would enjoy making it myself. She came across a tattered book at a library sale and bought for me. The book, Making Beer by William Mares forever changed my life. It is out of print now, but I own several copies as I loan them out to friends.

The author, a journalist and a former dark-ale champion of Vermont shares his recipes, reveals his secrets, and introduces readers to an entire community of beer connoisseurs, in a comprehensive guide to preparing and bottling first-class porters, stouts, ales, and lagers, at home and on the cheap with funny illustrations.

While the methods are old school, many people will enjoy reading about the early days of homebrewing and how folks like Charlie Papazaian got started. It's very entertaining and a quick read.

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Christmas, 2002. My son gave me a "Wine" making kit. one 5 gallon carboy, racking cane, hoses, bungs, packets of "stuff" and other goodies. The kit sat for seven years in our wine cellar.
My son makes a pretty good beer, just not enough (or at least there's not enough to share).
So about two weeks ago, I get the bug to brew some beer. My wife suggests that I should get the rest of the brewing "stuff" for Fathers Day. I start reading this forum, I pick up a couple of the suggested books, and start wearing out my sons ear asking questions about beer.

I found a gentleman one state east that was getting out of the brewing hobby, and I scored four corny kegs, one 6 gal carboy, two 20 pound CO2 tanks, a four gang manifold, enough hoses, connectors, fittings, gauges, and parts to plumb a tavern, plus strainers, funnels, hydrometer, etc. etc. etc. for ...... are you ready?


$200.00... Swwwwwwwwwwwweeeet..


I stopped at Jim's Home Brew Supplies in Spokane and had a great chance to visit with the owner. A fountain of knowledge. I left with six extract kits that he assembled, and a big box of stuff, I drove five hours home, and started cleaning and sanitizing.

I have one carboy bubbling this morning with stout, and one carboy bubbling with IPA. Yeee hawwww...

So, today I have to clean kegs. sort hoses, clean, sanitize, and putz with all the extra stuff... What a Hoot!

My wife is pretty stoked to... we really enjoy good wine, good food, and good beer. The adventure of home brewing will be fun to explore.

Next week the Leavenworth Bare Knuckle Brewers monthly meeting will have a new "Rooke" member.

Thanks to everyone that takes time to share his/her knowledge, skill and expertise with neophytes like me... and thanks to Bob at Jim's Home Brew Supplies in Spokane. You patience was appreciated, I"ll be back..

Now, please excuse me, I have to go watch my beer bubble.....
 
Mr. Beer here was well. Saw one for sale on woot! and picked it up. Checked out further details and landed here to learn what all I needed. When I was readying to bottle my first beer and brew my second, I stopped at the LHBS to get myself a hydrometer and a capper and ended up coming home with a whole 5 gallon kit. From there it's just been a continued slide.
 
I was helping a work buddy build some speaker cabs and he was sharing his homebrew. It was pretty tasty.

A couple months later I saw AB's show and called this buddy to ask when he was brewing again. He said, "tomorrow, come on over."

He brewed an extract, I watched. Then we went to the nearby LHBS where I bought the basic hardware, some LME and hops. Brewed my first batch the next day. Found HBT during the boil.
 
A couple years ago, a buddy of mine was trying to accomplish the "10 things a drinker must accomplish before they die" or something to that effect. Brew your own beer was on the list, so he gave it a shot. His beer was ****ty, given it was his first brew (and only brew). BTW, he never brewed again.

Like I said it was a couple years ago and I recently got married and I was looking for something to do as a hobby that wouldn't take me away from home so I could spend time with my wife. I remebered the brew I drank with my buddy and started to research the cost and what all was invovled with brewing. I read John Palmers "How to Brew" online during some research, and then I went ahead and bought a basic equipment kit to do extract brews.

Shortly thereafter, I found HBT and learned a hell of alot more than most books divulge. I have brewed 8 times since February and I love it!, I wish I could find more time to brew, but don't we all?

I'm currently gathering equipment for my AG adventure, hopefully shortly after the new year I will take the next step.
 
From 91-2000 I lived in Germany with my now ex-wife. Before I went to Germany, I thought I enjoyed beer, but having been a soldier, much of my experience was with the mega-breweries. Once in Germany, my "wife" taught me what real beer tasted like, and I was hooked.

In late 2000, we were divorced and I came back to the US thinking that beer was beer....and I was so wrong. So I went on a search for the "right" beer, never having thought about brewing it myself. Until that fateful evening in May of 2004. My new wife had just given birth to our only daughter. I came home from the hospital to care for our 2 boys. Once they were in bed, I shared the news with my neighbor, who obviously knew that the preggo wife wasn't at home. He told me that it was time to celebrate and brought out some Grolsch bottles filled with what appeared to be beer....but the bottles were brown, not green. I commented on that and he told me it was "Home Brew" that a buddy of his made.


....


I was stunned.


.....

It was heaven. THIS was the beer I'd been searching for the past 4 years. Only to find out that it was possible to make this wonderful concoction at home.

Well, I spent the next few years being busy as a father, husband, working man, etc....you all know that story....and the idea of home brewing was put waaay on the back burner. I didn't forget it, I just dealt with the mega-brewers' swill that they sell, all the while remember. Then one day, on the spur of a wild hair, when I had nothing better to do, I googled "how to make beer" and came up with John Palmer's web book. It's been down hill since.

I have yet to put my first brew to the pot or fermentor, as I am still collecting parts, but I fully intend to to build my own "kit" for my first home brew. I think I have an idea of where I am going with it, but I most certainly am going to need the help of the well informed people here to get over that hurdle of never having brewed, to never again drinking the mega-brewers' swill.......

BH
 
Mr. Beer here was well. Saw one for sale on woot! and picked it up. Checked out further details and landed here to learn what all I needed. When I was readying to bottle my first beer and brew my second, I stopped at the LHBS to get myself a hydrometer and a capper and ended up coming home with a whole 5 gallon kit. From there it's just been a continued slide.

Pretty much the same thing here. I had my first batch going in the Mr Beer and was like well I would really like to batch prime so I ended up buying a 5 gal kit and already have my second 5 gal bubbling away. I actually did make 2 in the Mr Beer but it has already been retired but I plan on one day brewing some Eds apfelwein in it.
 
I would like to add one other tidbit...

In High School, back about 1966 or so, my two best friends and I were flat broke. And we had some serious parties coming up, so we decided to "Make our own beer!"

You can imagine how elegant this idea seemed to three teenage boys back in the old days.

We read what little literature there was, and we brewed up a batch under his bed. I'm not kidding here. His mom kept commenting on how bad his socks smelled. Well, we brewed it for about two weeks, and it was really crappy! But we drank it, it was almost impossible to swallow. But we were young and broke, so....

We had no illusions that it was good, but it had alcohol, so it met the test.

Now I have my two first batches in carboys bubbling away. My objective is for it be better tasting than the batch in 1966.

So, I'm quite certain that I've had worse beer than you, and I'm also pretty sure that I can only improve at this point. Thanks.
 
A buddy of mine has been homebrewing for 8-9 years now and I always liked his beer. I had been wanting to get into homebrewing for the last 4 years or so, but was never able to. When I was in school there was always an issue of time or money. Then when I moved to Texas, we lived in an apartment and we didn't have the room.

Then, when I got married last year, my homebrewing buddy and another friend got me a starter kit. It's been downhill ever since.
 
I used to make alot of mead, one day I was in the LHBS and they had some imperial stout on tap, they offered me a glass, I said "give me everything I need to make that" and the rest is history.
 
Back in 2002 a friend of mine had a buddy who was moving. He came to visit and brought all of his homebrew equipment with. He taught us how to brew extract brews and left all his gear with us. A couple of carboys, thermometer, hydrometer, tubing, bottling bucket, cappers and an old ragged copy of The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. We brewed a whole bunch of extract brews. Mostly IPAs and stouts. I had a converted keg fridge set-up for sanke kegs already and switched it over to a 2 keg corny set-up. We even planted some hops in my side yard. Unfortunately my buddy moved and had kids, and we couldn't find time to get together to brew. So, we only did a few batches from '05-'08.

When I moved at the beginning of this year, I found that I suddenly had space for brewing equipment of my own. I got set-up and did a couple of extract batches and that's when I found HBT. Now I'm doing PM and AG batches, upped my kegerator to 4 taps with 6 total cornies, got 3 varieties of hops growing in the yard and an ever growing assortment of equipment (Also a couple of batches in process of course).

Love brewing, love HBT.
 
I haven't yet, but tomorrow (Father's Day) will be my first batch...

About a month ago, I was browsing the book section of a local thrift shop (like the Salvation Army). I usually go about once a week searching for "treasures". I found a copy of Papazian's "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" for $0.50. It looked interesting, so I bought it.

I read it from cover to cover. There was a lot of interesting, informative and humorous information in it. I thought to myself: "Self, this looks like it might be fun, but the startup costs might be a bit prohibitive for something I'm not going to like doing."

Then I remembered... My grandfather had been a wine maker all of his life, and he had a wine cellar in the basement of the house in which my mom was living. So I asked her: "Is grandpa's wine making stuff still in the basement?" She said: "I think it is. We gave away his hand made wine press and hand made barrels to a friend who makes wine." I asked if the key was still there, and she said that she thought it was... Ummmm... No. So she hands me a few key rings with about 75 keys on them, 50 of which could fit the master lock on the wine cellar. So I tried them one at a time, and at about 30 hit the jackpot and it opened.

I pulled the string by the door to turn on the light and the circular flourescents started to brighten, then went out! Crap! So I went upstairs and got a light bulb to put in the regular fixture. I turned on the light and discovered.

Two 5 gal glass carboys with fermentation locks.
Two 5 gal plastic carboys.
Assorted tubing that had been engineered by my grandfather for unattended siphoning.
A tubing shut-off gizmo (will be great for bottling)
An stand-up bottle capper.
A plastic garbage can with lid containing a 2.5 gal bucket and a funnel.

The room has a raised shelf around two walls with a sturdy table designed for sitting on top of it for assorted gravity siphoning.

So my next trip was to the local home brew shop. I bought.

A 5 gal Dunkelweisen kit.
24 22-oz Beer bottles.
New tubing (threw out all the nasty rubber stuff that was there, kept the engineering enhancements, though. :))
Two new corks.

I cleaned out my working carboy and filled it with hot water with 2oz of Chlorox and have let it sit for a few days. I am also soaking my fermentation locks and new corks in the same solution.

One thing I learned from Papazian was "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew". I can't have a homebrew yet because it's my first batch. But I can relax and not worry.

I'm going to be working with my daughter tomorrow (who I invited to brew the first batch with me) and pretty much following the instructions in the kit. A couple of mods will be (and feel free to tell me they won't work).

1. Instead of seeping the grains in 165 degree water for 20 min like the instructions say, I'm going to be putting them in the cold water, bringing the whole 2 gal up to a boil, and taking the grains out just before it starts a rolling boil. The rest of the hopping instructions I'll follow to the letter, boiling the whole thing for 55 minutes, the last 5 dedicated to flavoring hops.

2. I'm putting 3 gal of refrigerated water in the carboy, and will be pouring the hot wort through a strainer/funnel into the chilled water. Then I'm going to affix an aquarium thermometer onto the middle of the carboy.

Later that evening I'll return and check the temp. If it's 70 or below, I'll pitch the yeast. I probably won't go back for at least 3 days to check the fermentation.

I'm going to work hardest on RDWHAHB :)
 
my girlfriend bought me a nice kit from the homebrew store. I made 20 or so batches of extract, thinking all grain was way too hard, took too much equipment, etc...

I moved, broke up with the girl (divorced, actually) and my new girlfriend said, "have you ever made beer?". "oh Yeeeaaaaa......" :D

I bought a new kit, made 3 extract batches, found this site and made a few partial mash batches and then started doing all grain.

I live in an apartment, I have beer stuff all over the place (empty bottles in the living room, bubbling primarys in the bedroom, etc). I've picked up speed and I'm loving it. :)
 
Started less than a year ago at the prompting of a buddy who has been brewing for eight years. Everything that he recommended that I do for years, and I used to say "yeah yeah!" or "I can't because I live in a dinky apartment", I'm now doing - all-grain, full-wort boils, kegging.

It's a hobby that is quickly becoming an obsession. For example, I got into collecting battle rifles about five years ago, and used to go to the range at least once a month. Haven't been once since I started brewing. It's sad.
 
If you want the longer version read my blog:
Home Brew and Wine: How I got started Brewing.


The short version.

I watch Craigtube and saw how easy it was. My first kit was from Coopers. I ordered it online. I had no idea there was a LHBS 5 minutes from my house. I found them, because I was googleing for homebrew supplies to make my next batch. I found this site:
Wine Making Supplies - Beer Making Supplies - Winemaking Supplys - Homebrewing - Homebrew Supply
I noticed they were located in Elkhart, IN. Hey!! So I googled for directions and realized it was only 5 mins from my house.
So I started with the prehopped extract, then went to extract with steeping grains after a couple of batches. I just did my first all grain last weekend.
 
Several reasons, but the main one is that I like beer that is full bodied and several different styles. I thought I would save money; Ha Ha, jokes on me. I've spent probably $700 and done 15 gallons so far, and I don't even drink that much:mad:

Another was I like clubs and groups, and after having to leave the Masons to embark on becoming a pastor in Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I was looking for a new one. Finding out about a home brew club in town (actually two) sunk the deal.

I also have to admit there's a little uneducated mad scientist in me who finds great pleasure in all his test equipment, fermentation, and record keeping.
 
Haven't seen this answer yet : a Brew On Premise business on Chicago's northside. It's now out of business, but I brewed three batches there before getting my own equipment and starting brewing at home.
 
Gift from the wife here too. Best gift ever. Christmas, '95. 5gal. setup, just single stage, extract & grains. Brewed the first batch New Years day, '96, a Porter & that was it for me boys. A fella needs a hobby. Still doing extract, works for me. I'm happy.
 
I've been a beer snob for quite a while now. I think I started drinking good beer somewhere around 2001 or 2002, and I've been hooked since. I spend a lot of money on good beer, and I thought it might be interesting to see how well I could do for myself. I have brewing friends, and so I asked about a million questions, and I started reading various sites.

So for the last two years, I've been working on improving my techniques and really obsessing over all of it. It is going very well so far, and I can't wait to do more.
 
My wife(fiance at the time) bought me a Mr. Beer kit about 11-12 years ago. I made 1 batch, not even sure what it was, and it was decent and got me drunk. I was about 22 at the time, so that's all I cared about. That's the only batch I made, then I put it away. Fast forward 10 years...cleaning out my attic, I found it again and thought, "what the hell, let's give it a go". From January 08 til April '09, I made about 7 5 gallon extract w/ grains batches. April '09 I made my first all grain batch. I will be brewing my third AG 11 gallon batch tomorrow.
 
Just prior to Christmas of '07 a strange box appeared on my doorstep. Hauled the bulky ponderous thing inside. Said something on the outside like "Cooper's Beer Kit". Was addressed to my wife and seeing as it was the gift giving season, I kept my mouth shut. Rather perturbed wife was mad I had seen it and tried to pass it off as a gift for her father, but I knew better....

After actually becoming mad because I had been home that fateful evening and not her, she relented and said, "I hope you enjoy your early Birthday, because your not getting anything else for a long time!!!"

Might be helpful to know, my birthday is 2 weeks after Christmas. I have gotten combined gifts my entire life. I'm used to it now.

Making my own beer??? Bet your sweet A$$ I was on it like stink on a dog! First batch was ready not too long after my birthday.

I was about 3 months in and I was gathering pieces to go AG. Around $1200 dollars later, I'm doing AG in a 60qt pot, with a 'DD Mother of Fermentation Chiller' and a 3 tap DIY kegerator from a 3.9cf mini fridge.

Yes, I'm addicted, and HELL NO I won't be giving it up.
 
found a bunch of old brewing equipment in a guys house i was staying in. i asked him about it as it had garage sale stickers on it and he said he was interested in brewing again, so i ordered my own kit... brewing had appealed to me for years prior, but it just seemed like a lot of work. every time i tried reading a website about brewing, i just got confused... anyway, i ordered an equipment and recipe kit from midwest, it sat in my garage for about a year, mice ate all the steeping grains, all that survived was the package of nottingham and the extract... the guy who had all the garage sale stuff finally emailed and said, all my stuff for $20. so i doubled my setup for cheap and finally got down to business... about 6 months later, all my other hobbies are gathering dust..
 
I've only just recently started brewing, but this was an idea I had been kicking around for years. For the past year I was one click away from ordering my brewing equipment but something would always end up swaying me away. A friend of mine brought up something about thinking about starting to brew their own beer earlier this year and that got it back on my mind again. So this time I went out and bought the charlie's book and after reading that from front to cover in two days I got palmer's book. After finishing that I headed right online and ordered my equipment and a basic extract kit. The rest is history. In a matter of weeks I've acquired 3 primary fermenting buckets, 3 better bottles, crafted a stir plate and will have 4 brews going by next week.

You think it's just a hobby, but it consumes you faster than I had imagined. It's all for the better, though. I've always enjoyed good beer but it isn't always easy to come by, and when you do, it's usually quite expensive. Over the past few years I started to shy away from beer and attended some whisk(e)y tastings and really developed a taste for good Scotch and Irish whiskey. It didn't take long to realize how expensive that can be and it just doesn't do the job as a cold refreshing drink, especially in the summer. So, I'm glad to move back towards beer and look forward to years of enjoying something of my own creation.
 
I should add I originally got the idea by seeing an add in some sportsman's magazine at perhaps the age of ten, some twenty plus years ago. I always had it in the back of my mind. If I am not mistaken it was Fur Fish and Game. I can still remember the picture of the guy selling his "kit" and instructions. It was black and white, he was in a plaid flannel shirt, and sported dark curly hair and a thick dark mustache. When you can remember all that your either in love with the dude or the concept, and I am brewing so I am OK.
:mug:
 
Back in the Middle Ages, in the last century during the pre-modern homebrew era (1970, for those of you who are old enough), I had just been married a year and we were moving out of state. My uncle suggested I try brewing my own beer, and gave me some old items of equipment that had belonged to my maternal grandfather. I got a hydrometer, plus a similar item that just measured proof directly, a few old clamps and a bench capper. I got a vague idea of what I'd need from somewhere, but real homebrewing supplies, let alone books or anyone who did it & could show you the ropes were nonexistent. Still, I was determined to try.
I gathered a big bilious green plastic wastebasket to ferment in, a large enameled steel canner, and a couple of cases of PBR returnable bottles for the beer. For supplies, it was a scavenger hunt! I could find nothing but a product called "Blue Ribbon Malt Syrup" in the grocery store, plus sugar of course, a box with a brick of compressed leaf hops in it at the drugstore, and that left yeast. Well, I was reasonably sure that I shouldn't just use baking yeast, so I asked at a bakery. He brought out a big brick of what they used, and it was labeled "Anheuser-Busch." Well, they made beer, so this must be the right stuff. He actually gave me half of that brick, I think it must have been over a pound. Bottle caps were finally run to ground at a local hardware store- with cork liners, no less.
So I went home and mixed that can of malt syrup with a few pounds of sugar, brought it to a boil in a big enamel canner, threw in hops (don't have any clue how long I boiled). Well.....I not only don't remember how long I boiled, I don't remember how I cooled it, or how much yeast I put in, I had no thermometer, and of notions like specific gravity I had only the vaguest glimmer from science classes. I brought the "wort" up to some volume with cold water (maybe that's how I cooled it....), then poured it into the wastebasket. All the stuff I used was clean, but I had no inkling of the importance of sanitiation. I dissolved a chunk of that yeast in water, and in it went. I floated the hydrometer in the wort, covered the wastebasket with a wet cloth (I'd re-moisten the cloth every day, to what end I have no idea). In a day or two, it would be bubbling like mad, and eventually it would stop and the hydrometer would be a lot closer to 1.000. At some arbitrary point, I bottled it using surgical tubing and a completely non-sanitary mouth siphon. I primed the bottles using a teeny plastic spoon I got somewhere, using a fairly constant amount of table sugar. I then bottled.
In a few weeks, there would be a "malt-like beverage." It had a strong taste, and plenty of "kick." Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, I was the only person who would (or perhaps could) drink it, and I gave it up within the year.

Then everything sat around, and I gave away the capper and lost the hydrometer and proof tester, as 36 years elapsed.

Then, in 2007, my eldest son announced he had watched some friends homebrew, and was getting into the pastime, and did I think I'd be interested? I started looking around at what was available, and it was a whole new world. I read Palmer's How to Brew online, and ordered an equipment kit and some extract kits from Midwest. The rest, as they say, is brewing history. Last Monday I did my first all-grain batch, so the disease is spreading.....but the best news is, everyone now enjoys my beer.
 
We were at my grandmothers house, a first generation american of german parents, for a dinner. I remember my father and uncle bringing in a cardboard box full of homemade beer. They set the box on the table and opened one. The beer spewed out of the bottle, I remember foam dripping off the ceiling and the look on my grandmothers face. That was 55 years ago or so. Much later in life I remembered that and spent one whole summer drinking Blatz beer from returnable bottles. By the end of summer I had 12 empty cases. That was 18 years, two children, and the usual family responsibilities.
This winter I was working in the basement and had to move the cases of bottles and thought why not. I found this website and never turned back. 4 extract batches and two AG batches done and will do my 3rd AG batch tomorrow. Oh there was still a price sticker on the cases of Blatz, $4.59.LOL
 
My older brother and I shared a house while we attended Michigan State University. He was 23, I was 19 when he brewed his first batch in 1999. I was only vaguely interested in what he had going on and, while I definitely liked drinking beer, I was not particularly interested aside from the general aesthetic curiosity of his experiment.

His first batch turned out fine, nothing spectacular though, and the equipment itself rotted in my parents' basement for years following. Once, on a whim, I dug out that equipment to see if I could salvage it. The glass carboy was absolutely caked in a film of blackened caked on gunk. I couldn't muster the gusto to clean it.

Flash forward 9 years. A few months ago my brother-in-law received some brewing equipment from a friend who moved to Australia. It had three carboys, one of which is a Pyrex solution bottle... woot!... a capper, some airlocks, hoses, a funnel, etc. He has a second kid on the way and asked me if I'd like the equipment since he really didn't have the time. I threw it in the trunk, went home, browsed around, found Palmer's "How to Brew" and the rest is history.

All carboys are in use. I have two Apfelwein's and a Dunkelweizen brewing at the moment and have three other partial-mash / extract batches under my belt. They all turned out GREAT. I am getting propane burner and a 36 quart stainless steel pot for my birthday in a couple weeks. I plan on building a wort chiller and going all grain after that.
 
As a kid, I spent every summer at the Jersey shore. Parents always allowed me to drink beer around the house, and while fishing. Went fishing, and all of us would group up after,and dinner was at a friend of the family that night. Fished all day with him, and while cleaning his boat, he offered a brown ale. Kegged. On the deck, overlooking the boat dock. Beer was great.

Fast forward to last summer, started working from home, looking for a new hobby since I was essentially tied to the home office M-F 9am - 8 pm. On the heating forum I am active at, someone mentioned making beer. Googled it, found HBT, and the rest is history. I have slowed down due to renovations and being on a diet, but enjoy every beer I make twice as much as the beer I buy.
 
A friend of mine expressed an interest in brewing, so I bought him an equipment kit for his birthday one year. 1996, I think.

We brewed the first batch together (it was really his batch but I was interested too so I helped...he threw in everything but the kitchen sink, including, if I remember, apple juice in place of half the water). It was different. But beer, sort of.

We were both intrigued and brewed a few more batches. Then kind of drifted out of it, with the rest of life happening. We both subsequently moved out of state, but as fortune would have it, both to the same state. We live about a half mile from each other now.

About three years ago I got the bug again and brewed up several batches over a period of a few months, then took another year and a half (or so) break. Have been brewing again over the past year or so, and now my friend down the street is interested again and bought some new equipment last weekend, and we took it back to his place and brewed his first batch in many years.

I think we're both permanently back in the fold (my having spent a considerable amount on new equipment and built almost all the 'necessary' all-grain DIY stuff).
 
Well I was sitting at home a few months ago, drinking an imported beer (not sure what it was) and I though, with all this recession talk and such, why am I drinking imported beer? I should be doing my bit and buying NZ beer.
So, next day at work I started telling one of my workmates about my idea, prettty much word for word the above. Just after I finished saying "Imported Beer" he piped up with "You're gonna do homebrew". To which I said, "Ummm, actually that wasn't what I was going to say, but it's an even better idea!" and that's how it started. Since discovered that another guy here brews as well. We're just doing extract kits at the moment, but I feel the gentle nudging of the idea of AG each time I brew....... I guess it's just a matter of time until my addiction develops further and deeper!
 
It all started back when I was about 14. We, as teenage boys wanted to get our hands on some booze. Living on the farm in a rural area, it was hard to find someone to buy for us. We found a recipe to make wine using frozen grape juice concentrate, sugar and dry baker’s yeast. There were 4 of us and we each started our batch a week apart. I made mine in my bedroom closet. Mom never went in there. So after 4 weeks the first batch was done and every week there after we had a gallon to share. (our first experience with keeping the pipeline full).

We quickly became bored with that so we built our own still at age 15 and made our own corn liquor. It didn’t taste very good but it got the job done. I even have some B&W photos of that still, but the still is long gone. On our graduation day the state changed the drinking age from 21 to 18, so the problem of getting our beverage of choice easily was now solved. During my post high school bachelor days we put together a kegorator, but that went away as marriage and family life came to be.

About 20 years ago, I saw an ad for a kit for making your own sausage and started making my own meat products like jerky, sausage, ham and bacon. I started with a couple kits to make stuff in the kitchen oven and now have an electric grinder, stuffer, mixer and built an electric smoker capable of smoking 50 lbs of meat at a time. I always was one to make my own way and even have been heating my house with wood for the last 33 years. People that knew I liked beer so well and knew I like to make my own stuff would always asked if I brewed my own. I would reply that I didn’t think I could keep up with the demand.

Around a year or so ago, I started thinking about making homebrew and last fall I saw a deluxe brewing kit at a store. A few days later I went back to that store, bought it and a couple extract kits and stated brewing beer last December. I acquired some cornys on evilbay and resurrected the Co2 regulator and gauges from the old kegorator. Since then I’ve brewed 60 gallons and have 25 gallons of that in the pipeline as we speak and I don’t see any reason to stop brewing. I like it and my friends and relatives like it.

So now when people come over they can sit down to an ice cold homebrew and some smoked meat or sausages. :mug:
 
I always had an interest in it, but didn't bother pursuing it. A friend taught me a couple years ago how to do extract brews and next thing you know I'm building MLTs, HLTs, joing HBT and having a blast. Thanks Marty :mug:
 
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