First Beer Success!

Final had my first bottle of my first brew last night. It was a robust porter and it came out way beyond my expectations.

I drink Allagash Black and Smuttynose normally and this compares very well in head, taste, and mouth feel.

I think all the research I did on this site really made a diffence. I now have 4 brew sessions behind me.

I have also started to use yeast starters based on information from the forum. Hopefully this will lead to even better beer.

Now I need to decide if I want to go AG. Thinking of going to BIAB first as an intermediate step.

I am also thinking of gettting a keg setup. I have 3 carboys that need to be bottled over the next 3 weeks.

Thanks

woohoo! congrats!

don't know how your first brew day went, but I bet your were full of "oh, crap... I ruined the beer" kind of thoughts, weren't you?

now you see why everyone always says RDWHAHB

Congratulations!

Congrats on the beer success. You definitely will love AG. You really get into the nuts and bolts of every step of your beer. BIAB is a great way to get into AG without a lot of cost. You can then decide if you want to invest in more gear to expand your system or if you want to stick with AG BIAB batches.

Nice work! With 4 going already you must be pretty confident in your process....just curious, when it comes to the fermentation, could you say how you went about it...2-3 weeks left alone in primary, did you measure gravity frequently, etc?

Congrats! How bout a pic of that Porter??

beerluvva said:

Nice work! With 4 going already you must be pretty confident in your process....just curious, when it comes to the fermentation, could you say how you went about it...2-3 weeks left alone in primary, did you measure gravity frequently, etc?

Click to expand...

By nature I am not a patient person. I read alot on this forum that said leave it alone in the carboy for at least 2 weeks. I tool my first reading after 14 days and the FG was dead on.

I am pretty confident in my process at this point. First day was a bit hectic but the only oh **** moment was not straining the wort as it went into the carboy. I researched this after the brew day and found it was not a concern

I also cook large family meals a during Thanksgiving and Christmas. The skills and methods I have learned cooking for 20 people really carried over to homebrewing. Time management, cleaning, planning, equipment prep, etc...

Getting ready to brew a Heffe today with a yeast starter.

Thanks for all the encouragement. This is a great community and resource.