Introduction To New Member

[BeerGeekInFL]

Hi there,

My name is Paul and I live in Greenacres FL, it is the place to be.

After taking a trip to the Tampa Bay area with my girlfriend and doing a brewery hop over 3 days and hitting up a dozen breweries I caught the bug to start brewing on my own.
A great guy, Connor, owner of Avid brewing in St. Pete that also has a home brew store in his brewery told me how easy it is to get into the craft.

Professionally I am a former classically trained chef and now work in IT as a network engineer for a major multinational company. I am a single dad to three kids, two of them teens and a four year old. They keep me on my toes.
My hobbies are cooking, baking and I have a bit of an obsession with rocketry. I build everything from the little Estes rockets you can pick up at any local craft store to 7 foot tall fiberglass ones that require a certification to buy the motors.

My favorite beers to drink are hefeweizen, porters, stouts, nitros, cream ales, brown ales, and Irish Reds. There are some IPAs I like but not the biggest fan of them. I do have a stockpile of DF120 in my closet though. My GF is really into cider, so I will be looking into making cider as well. Probably mostly apple, pineapple and will experiment with some blends.

I really want to cross my extreme culinary palate and come up with some interesting beer flavors. I am sure this is nothing new to brewers, but it is new to me.

Anyway, looking forward to meeting like minded brewers and brewers in general and sharing some beer.

 

[Phitz]

Welcome to the forum and the hobby. You have a leg up on most given your culinary and baking background. Lots of great info on these boards and everyone is super helpful. Get the basics down and the processes involved. Then you can get creative and have fun with developing recipes!!

 

[wallyLOZ]

Welcome from Missouri.
I'd like to recommend a couple of books. How To Brew, by John Palmer (there's a free version on line). The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing, by Charlie Papazian. Both are great reference books that you will use throughout your brewing career.
When you think you're ready and have your equipment at hand, do a dry run. Not my idea, but it sounds like a valuable experience. You'll quickly find out if your brewpot doesn't fit in your sink for chilling your wort with an ice bath, or you don't have a hose to fit that barb.
Good luck and keep us posted on your progress. Cheers!

 

[eric19312]

Welcome from New York. Looking forward to hearing about some recipes you come up with. You probably have a great sense of what flavors work together and how to balance them to show them off. You may be surprised by the range of flavors you can coax out of classic beer ingredients malt and grain, hops, water, and especially the yeast.

Are you going to brew in your kitchen or can you take it outside? A local homebrew store (LHBS) and/or a club are a great way to get started. I'm also in favor of new brewers starting with simple equipment like a big pot to boil in and a couple buckets to ferment in and some recycled bottles. If you like the process like that you will like it even better with more equipment (especially with your engineering and other hobby background) but I think if you hate brewing stovetop in a kettle and fermenting in a bucket and bottling you probably aren't going to suddenly love the hobby with thousands of dollars invested in stainless fermentors, kegging systems, electric all in ones etc etc.