What do med students do in their spare time?

Learn how to brew beer.
Total NOOB here. Any general tips? We just did 3 (yes 3!) brews in the last week, just following directions. I'd love to be able to just buy our own stuff and not have to do this whole boxed thing. Let me know what you guys think about the beginning steps and progressing to making our own recipes etc etc or if this is just one of those trial and error, you'll figure it out sort of things. Thanks for the tips!!

-Jenna

I like to take existing clone recipes of beers you know and start tweaking them and learning how the changes come through in the final product. Obviously you can use other methods but this way lets you start with a base of something familiar. Another good method is to brew some SMASH beers to learn the individual grains/hops, but I find those beers to be boring to my tastes.

btw - I thought med students slept in their spare time.

Look at a lot of recipes in the recipe section of the forum. Try a few to get a good idea of what works. Then try making some of your own. Definitely get some brew software and start plugging in ingredients. Also if you have any brews you like, look on their websites, they often tell you what ingredients they use. You just have to figure out the proportions.

My first brew was a kit, second was one from the recipe section, third brew was my own recipe. Now I make all my own recipes for my brews. That to me is the fun part of brewing.

There are so many variables that you have to learn, to really start making your own recipe.

Malts/Grains: There is a plethora of different flavors you can get from the malts, sweet, caramel, chocolate, earthy, creamy, coffee, bready, there are so many.

Hops: They are probably the easiest to learn what haps taste and smell like what. But once again you can get some seriously different flavors from them.

Yeast: This is the hardest and takes longest to grasp what yeasts will add what flavors to the beer and at what temperature.

So its more of a either knowledge base from over time, or trial and error. Ive tried making a few recipes but I usually have someone look over them. Ive never brewed a recipe that Ive come up with usually its changed in some form. But I learn why and how.

SMaSH's (single malt and single hop) from what Ive been told are a great way to learn flavors.

Thanks guys! I'm sure there's a long road ahead on this learning curve of beer, but we'll get there.

And FYI: I slept 12 hours yesterday and 9.5 today. And took 2 naps yesterday. So yeah... med students sleep a LOT in their time off. Hahaha!

You should be studying. Classes start tomorrow at the med school I work at. Year I histo 9 am followed by an afternoon of Gross. Cutting begins on Tuesday.

I started brewing in medical school, wish I did sooner. It is basically a combo of biology and organic lab from college...but awesome

Third year baby! No more of those long library hours (until each shelf and then Step 2 come around!). So we have some spare time to do things normal people do! Hooray!

But really, to get back to the original point of the post...
If anyone has any other random tips for me to look into along the way, they'd be greatly appreciated. Anything about anything. My mind is ready to be molded. Thanks!!

There's some great reads about creating your own recipes. 'designing great beers' is one. I also second the idea of brewing known recipes and then playing with them as you brew more to get a feel for what changes do what in your beer.
Welcome to the addiction!

Speaking from personal experience, I brewed extract for a long time because I was so intimidated by all-grain. I did brew-in-a-bag for a few months, but was frustrated with the results I was getting. It wasn't until my friend made the switch and coached me on how to do it, as well as let me borrow his mash tun, that I immersed myself in it. There's so much more flavor options available, and I wish I would have gone all-grain earlier. My advice is to not be timid, find someone who can show you, and read as much as you can. Once you do that, brew more--the more you do it, and the more frequently you do it, the better you'll get.