from casual reader to craft beer maker!

[blitzgp]

So I have been reading these forums off and on for about a year and a half and for the past month or 2, i have pulled the trigger and started buying my equipment.

2 weeks ago i made my first batches, based off northern brewer extract kits: wee heavy scotch ale and the 90 shilling scotch ales.

My discoveries were:

a) my stove sucks and takes forever to boil 5 gallons of water ;p
b) i love the smell of cooking hops!!!
c) making beer is messy - wort becomes a nice sticky mess and now i have a rag soaking in my sanitizing bucket for quick wipedowns as i go
d) i feel like a surgeon when i make beer because i take sanitation overboard

this weekend i racked the 90 shilling scotch ale (more like 120 cause i added some more extract) to a secondary and i got to taste some and it was delicious! OG 1.092 and intermediate gravity 1.030 (maybe final, but i moved based off time and not gravities).

My wee strong scotch ale is also beefed up with an OG of 1.105 and looks good in the fermenter; will probably move to a secondary in a week or 2.

I also made a strong IPA yesterday, with an OG of 1.094 and a calculated IBU of 68. I tasted the OG sample and it blew my mind on the bitterness ;p

This post is basically a thank you to HBT and all the sound advice ive received and that as of yet, I dont even need to post "wtf is wrong with my beer" or any other negative experiences thanks to you guys!

 

[h22lude]

Welcome to the obsession.

A few tips/pointers...if your stove can't boil 5 gallons you might want to look into either doing partial boils or getting a propane burner to do full boils. My stove sucks so I do partials but will be buying a propane burner this month with a 10 gallon pot.

Read up on using secondaries. It was used a lot a few years ago but now most people let the beer sit in primary for 3, 4, 5 weeks even longer for bigger beers. This helps the yeast clean up after themselves. Moving to secondary will make it harder for the remain yeast to clean up.