The "official" what/how YOU started thread

BrewSwag 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I took apart my older sisters Easy bake oven, for my boil kettle and made a mash tun outta my little brothers legos. It was a 3 teir made of my tinker toys…….
 
Surfing my favorite Moutain Bike forum and saw a few threads on making beer or rather that someone made beer.

It got me curious and I started looking for forums on brewing and decided to give it a try and wham.. it's been downhill ever since.
 
My fiance got me a kit for Christmas this year after I had talked about wanting to get involved in brewing. Once we moved into our house and got settled I brewed my first batch and English Bitter. Just finished conditioning this week and I was really surprised how well it came out. I'm brewing a clone this week of Great Lakes Burning River APA.

People laughed at me when I told them that I wanted to brew, especially since I constantly talk about it. Now that the first is done and a couple people tried it, I think they're a little surprised, ha ha ha.
 
I got a Mr. Beer in mid December last year, made a couple batches with that. Got my tax return mid February and quickly spent $300 on equipment and some ingredients kits. I have done 7 to 10 extract batches. I have some apfelwein in its second month. And I'm getting ready to make the jump to partial mash and all grain very soon.

Just want to thank everyone. If it wasn't for this forum I would be lost.
 
After graduating college I moved to Cleveland for a job. Not knowing anyone in the area my fiance introduced me to one of her friends husband. We hung out quite frequently and got to be good friends. One day (in 2001) he mentioned that he had found this place called “The Brew Kettle” where you could brew your own beer in their store. Being a person that loved drinking beer, this seemed very appealing and I agreed to go. The store was like something out of Willy Wonkas Chocolate factory except they made beer instead of candy. There were huge brewing pots with pump driven pipes to move beer to and from place to place. Needless to say I was very impressed. In addition to all of the cool beer equipment they had a wide assortment of beers to sample. We probably tried 10 different varieties of their beer and agreed that we should make the Dopplebock. We made the beer that day and came back 2 weeks later to bottle. The beer turned out awesome. We even made custom labels and named the beer “Monkey Butt”. I mention the name of the beer because we shared it with our friends and our SWMBO’s. One evening while going out for dinner with our SWMBO’s we ordered some beer. The waitress handed one to my friends wife and she said “Mmmm…This tastes like Monkey Butt”. Not knowing that we had named our beer “Monkey Butt” the waitress asked if there was something wrong with the beer. Realizing that I could make good beer on my own and have a good time doing it is what got me started in this.
 
About 10 years ago I got a MR Beer kit for xmas. I can not remember if it was my parents or my best friend who bought it for me. I do remember my best friend bought me a few cans of extract a few months later. I brewed one batch and it turned out terrible. I went out to seek help on the internet and found a very active forum for homebrewing, don't remember the name, but everyone there acted like Mr Beer was the devil and put down anyone who had questions about their Mr Beer kits. So I did not brew with it again. I kept all the extract cans because I knew one day I wanted to try again. Fast forward two years ago I went to a beer festival here in Birmingham and the local homebrew shop had a booth. I talked with the owner and got interested again. A year later, last summer, I decided I wanted to brew again so I went to the local homebrew shop and purchased a started kit and a wheat beer kit.
Now its been just over a year and I am brewing all grain, have 12 kegs, a three tap keggerator, and I've brewed over 30 batches of beer. And I've done all this out of a two bed room apartment.
 
After last year's GABF, there was an article in the paper about Homebrewing. I thought it might be fun to try since I like good beer, but really hate paying $8 a six pack for it.

I asked for a beginner's kit for Christmas, SWMBO said okay, go pick it out. I actually made my first batch so it was ready for sampling for Christmas Eve. Everyone seemed to like it (at least no gagging that I could hear).

Next thing you know I've got 4 carboys in the basement, just did my first AG batch, and am so hooked it's silly. Love the beer I make, love the process of making it. Love all the science and geekiness of the hobby. Fits me perfect!

Can't wait to start kegging, doing 10 gallon batches.
 
Believe it or not, my entrance into the world of homebrewing was all SWMBO's idea. She is the one who suggested (almost to the point of mandating) that I buy all the necessary equipment and learn how to make beer. A friend of ours brews a lot and has a big x-mas party every year and I think that's where she got the idea from. She has let me spend what ever I felt necessary for my gear which is about $1200 so far. She even likes my very first batch, an Irish Red extract kit, and is claiming that my second batch of Irish Red is "her" beer and I'll need to make more for myself. Yesterday she was telling my she want's me to do my first AG batch next week when we're off for the July 4th shutdown.
 
I Google'd beer brewing on a rainy Saturday in May, 2008, and most of the results were for homebrew shops. Found Palmer's "How to Brew" site and thought, "I can do this!".

Asked for a starter equipment kit for Father's Day and exactly 1 year ago today I brewed an Irish Red extract kit from Nothern Brewer.

I now keg, been doing all grain since October, and am building a HERM's system based on Pol's model.
 
In college, I interned at a place where a lot of the people at work homebrewed. I always thought that sounded awesome and that I wanted to try, though I never pursued it. A couple of years ago I went to a party and was introduced to a guy who homebrewed. I mentioned to my wife, at the time just my girlfriend, that I thought it would be awesome to try. That Christmas she bought me a homebrew kit. I didn't use it, it sat in the basement for about 2 years until I got back from NH where I had gone on some brewery tours and was instantly inspired to give it a go. I've been doing it ever since...
 
My girlfriend got me a homebrew kit for Valentine's Day. Ten months and four batches later I proposed......
 
I refused to drink any alcohol (bad family history) till I was 23 and started sampling the different craft brews on the shelf. Pretty much after trying the small selection and finding several I liked (Red Stripe, Fat Tire, Guinness Extra Stout, etc) I thought about homebrewing to lower costs (ya...) and increase variety.

Went to the LHBS store got a starter kit, came back next paycheck got 2 carboys, and 4-5 batches later I started kegging and shortly after stove-top AG (now if only I knew someone to do a bulk grain buy).


I've picked up a couple Sanke's and cut the tops off, but atm I have them in storage because I don't plan to go >5g batches any time soon. Got too good a deal to pass on.
 
Everything started seven years ago;

Me and a friend at Engineering University thougt about brewing our own beer.

We didn't have internet,
there are no LHBS in the Basque Country (I don't know any in Europe yet),
we didn't know anybody who had done it before...
We didn't know Palmer, Papazian...

WE THOUGHT WE WERE THE ONLY ONES AROUND THE WORLD WHO WERE GOING TO MAKE BEER AT HOME!!!! (quite naive isn't it?)

We started planning how we would grow the barley, the hops, were at university we could isolate a valid yeast strain (undergroud university utilization :cross:). We built our own airlock (without haven't seen one before) :ban: and got fermenters from an old chemistry factory.

Our ridiculous plan started to seem too unattainable :mad:

But two years later (five years ago) I started a job where I had internet access and much time on my own. There I read about Palmer, Airlocks, DME, LME...:confused:
I meet my friend and...:tank: We just had to find where to buy all those things (this was the hardest part)

Today 14 gallons of Stout are fermenting at home. :ban:

Greetings from Basque Country.
 
Tried Mr. Beer about 6 years ago with poor results, then I saw commercials about the Sam Adams Longshot and dropped the $$ on a starter kit and started doing extract batches. After 3 extract batches it was on to steeping grains+extract, my 12th batch was AG and I haven't looked back since.
 
As a sophomore in high school my father got me a starter kit with 3 extract kits for Christmas. I was pumped until he gave almost everything i brewed to his friends at work.
 
Marius said:
Everything started seven years ago;

We didn't have internet,
there are no LHBS in the Basque Country (I don't know any in Europe yet),
we didn't know anybody who had done it before...
We didn't know Palmer, Papazian...
Click to expand...

Superb story. Brewing in adversity.

I thought I had it hard being unable to get Challenger hops and UK malt.

Did you grow and malt your own barley or did you order some from the UK over the internet? All grain or extract?

I heard of a guy whose first batch was from barley that he had malted and kilned himself. That's hardcore.
 
We had the idea in college. I always liked craft beer and thought it would be a good way to get it cheaper. My friend ordered the True Brew kit and we started with extract. We moved to all grain using a drilled double bucket lauter tun after about 2 batches. My friends kept brewing, but I really took it to the next level. Last summer I had an extremely boring internship. I spent most of my time on HBT, reading the BYO archives and other brewing literature I could find. I also made it through every Jamil Show episode.

Now I'm graduated but brewing more than in college. I've really begun to dial in my process and am producing some great beer.
 
1986. Loved beer, but was tired of the BMC stuff and drooled over the fancy imported beers, but alas, being a poor graduate student I couldn't afford them. I found a carboy in the attic of the apartment I was living in. Somehow I discovered there was a LHBS in Lansing (in the yellow pages maybe?) and checked it out. Came home with the ingredients was hooked. I brewed a couple batches a year until 4 years ago when I started kegging and then almost immediately afterwards switched to all-grain. Now it is at least 20 batches a year. My friends love it.
 
I don't remember the thought process but suddenly I had a kit and made my first batch of extract beer. Luckily, I started the second batch before the first was ready...

I messed up the transfer to secondary and the first batch tasted awful, but my second was already on the go so I stuck with it. Also I met some people at Bobby_M's brew day and Ollllo clued me in on what I did wrong. So I stuck with - no disasters since, except wasting money on equipment, when I should have gone AG and kegging from the very start!
 
had recently moved home from college to work and was living with my parents, i don't remember why but i was looking up things about beer. I believe i was looking up different styles of beer and getting exact answers about the differences between them. Then i stumbled upon an article from homebrewtalk.com. I started reading the beginning brewers section. I was amazed at the number of people that also loved beer and were making it in their homes. I stayed up most of the night researching brewing and looking at peoples brew setups and fermentors full of beautiful beer.

Later that week i went and picked up How to Brew by John Palmer.

read a lot of that. Started discussing my new found obsession with my girlfriend who promply bought me my first brew kit for a light german ale for valentines day (definitely the best vday present i have ever had) i finished gathering up all the equipment i needed to do my first batch and then finally brewed for the first time on March 1st. Since then i have brewed 5 more batches of various beers and also started a bach of Apfelwein!

god i love this hobby

will be moving to AG very soon, just gathering up the materials to get it going

BREW ON!:mug:
 
Decided a while back to try home winemaking just on a lark. I make a batch of red with Welch's concentrate and yeast in a gallon of bottled water and liked it. Never drank beer till I tried a microbrew in Colorado and decided it was pretty good. I don't have the setup to go all out with beer, but I was interested in trying something. So while at the LHBS getting wine yeast I picked up a pound of Munton's Extra Dark DME and a packet of yeast. I put the DME, yeast, and a half-cup of sugar in a gallon of bottled water, shook some oxygen into it, and stuck on an airlock. A week later I put a half-teaspoon of sugar in some 12 oz PET bottles (recycled Dr. Pepper bottles) and filled them with the brew. When they got rock hard I put them in the fridge, waited a few days, and tried one. Wow...that's all I can say! It wasn't boiled; it doesn't have hops, so I don't know if any of you would call it beer, but it sure tastes good! Very smooth, nicely carbonated, and a pretty head. Think I'll call it "Ignorance In A Bottle," since I pretty much broke every "rule" of brewing in making it. One of these days I'll get around to doing it the right way, but till then I'm having fun and I think I'll make another batch just like it.
 
I started out on Mr Beer and now I do 10 gallon all grain batches with a 4 tap kegerator in the living room. :mug:
 
Won a single stage fermentation vessel and a canned kit at a home show 25-30 years back. First batch was excellent but second not so much. Needed to learn about sanitizing.
Went to grain kits with all the boiling time and what-not .... decided I'm not really into the mad scientist side of this, back to canned kits.
 
shipfaced said:
decided I'm not really into the mad scientist side of this, back to canned kits.
Click to expand...

Wow! never heard of anyone going from all grain back to kits. That's really an endorsement of the quality of kits. I read on here about a guy who won a best in show with his all extract beer.

I've only ever done all grain because I didn't really know what kits were until I was well underway with preparations with batch #1, but I am intrigued by the ease and simplicity of kits and extract. However, the mad scientist aspect of brewing really appeals, too. i suppose you don't need to do all grain to get a stirplate, erlenmeyer flasks and petri dishes for yeast cultures.
 
Sometime late 2004 early 2005, a buddy got a Mr Beer kit. We drank it and thought it wasn't bad, but knew there had to be something better. There was and still is.....I just haven't tried them all yet
 
About 15 years back, my brother and I went to a U-Brew and made a batch of a BMC clone, it tasted horrible but was fine for the time.
My taste buds have developed furthur over the years and I started to enjoy the microbrew far more, but I never had the time, or thought I would have the abilty to brew at home.
Last year, I was flipping through a magazine order form (kids' school fundraiser) and saw a listing for BYO (Brew your Own). I mentioned to my wife I thought that might be interesting to learn how to make my own beer. I ordered the mag, and started looking on-line. I mentioned it to my brother, and he was thinking the same as me but said the magic word keg.

Next thing I knew I was finding kegerator parts, brewing kits, corneys, freezer to convert, and hops to grow.

Now I have 4 five gallon extract with grain batches under my belt, a 5 gallon hard lemonade made, a functioning keezer, a 15 gallon pot and a 48 quart cooler mlt conversion underway (to upgrade to 10 gallon all grain batches), and 7 hop bines planted in the back yard.

Thanks for everything guys!
 
Philsc said:
Superb story. Brewing in adversity.

I thought I had it hard being unable to get Challenger hops and UK malt.

Did you grow and malt your own barley or did you order some from the UK over the internet? All grain or extract?

I heard of a guy whose first batch was from barley that he had malted and kilned himself. That's hardcore.
Click to expand...

Actually we heard about a place where they grow hops for Pharmaceutical industry 400 km for the Basque Country, we drove there and just "borrowed" some kilos (we didn't even know how they looked like, so we didn't know exactly what to "borrow"). The Malt Extract came from Germany (via ex-girlfriend) and the Yeast finally was "donated" by university:cross:

One year ago we found a couple of on-line stores in Spain, so those adversity days are over, but anyway, they are nothing compared to the ones in US.

Today we still brew Extract batches due to the lack of space at home, but someday I would like to try All-Grain but those thoughts of growing malt have definitely faded.

The guy you talk about who malted and kilned his first batch... Here we call him God.
 
I have several friends who brew. I resisted the urge for years because I knew I would get addicted; as if I need another hobby. So, I started reading How To Brew and slowly picked up equipment here and there. My first beer was a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale clone. Turned out pretty good; slightly overprimed, but tastes great.
 
In the late 90's I was still in high school and I would help my dad brew his own beer. It was a way to drink with my folks, so I was all about it. The problem was that it seemed I was never around for the drinking. The first batch exploded the bottles, the second was ready as I was moving to college, the third was when I visited my swmbo's family for the first time. I always thought to myself, I could do this and my beers could even better than his.

Everything went to the back burner for awhile as I pursued college, more college, auto industry work (they'll eat your soul!), and then marriage. At the behest of the same swmbo, I started brewing about a year ago and refuse to look back. She's my biggest enabler but doesn't like hoppy beers. Permission to buy stuff AND all the beer I want? Yes please.
 
Like most my love of beer started with a Coor's Light, progressed (barely) to Red Dog, and then one day went out for brews to an english pub and knew right away that they weren't serving anything yellow and fizzy. Being from PA, the guy next to me suggested a Lager (not the style. . .a Yuengling. . .it's a PA thing). Anyway, I was in love and spent the next few years drinking only Lager. I finally graduated onto some darker beers (ie. Guiness, Murphy's, etc) and some imports like Heineken and Corona. I mention this history because almost from day one I had this desire to brew my own beer, however, I kept coming back to the same feeling that I just didn't think I could create a Yuengling Lager any better than they could for any less $$$.

Fast forward about 12 years, a couple of jobs, a couple of states, a couple of houses later and I find myself back in the same town I grew up in and about a mile from a small local brewery called Stoudt's. One night my father in law shows up with a sixer of theirs and a 750ml corked Scotch Ale. We proceeded to split the Scotch Ale and it was outstanding. We worked our way through the 6 pack and were both buzzing by the end (keep in mind that all of them were in the 8, 9, 10 % range). By the end I was in Malt and Hops heaven, I was buzzing on fantastic beer, and I was bound and determined that I was going to make my own beer.

I spent the next 6-8 months reading everything I could get my hands on including reading through each section on HBT everyday. I started gathering my supplies last spring and decided to launch full steam ahead into AG. I have been brewing for just over a year and have made 100gallons of beer ranging from a Wit to an IPA to a BarleyWine to a Belgian Strong Ale. I am loving the entire process from beginning to end and of course love the fruits of my labor.

Oh and as a continuing thank you gift to my father in law for bringing over that fateful 6-pak. . .he gets at least a sixer of everything I brew to enjoy on his own and of course there is always cold beer in the fridge whenever he (or anyone else for that matter) stops by.
 
For me it all started as a joke with Mr.Beer. My wife and her grandparents got me a Mr.Beer kit two years ago for x-mas. We had seen Mr.Beer on T.V. and I looked and said "no frigging way am I going to make beer". She still went a head and bought it and thought it would be used once or twice if it was lucky. Well after the first batch I quickly seen my self fallen for this hobby,madness. I quickly started my second batch and half way three threw that I found HBT and and the next week found a local hbs and the madness hasn't stopped since lol.
 
The Man, otherwise known as Mr. Alton Brown. I knew a good thing when I saw it, so I've been AG since after my first batch. :cool: I even roasted my own grains since that's how the Irish do it. I figured I'd pay homage to my ancestery. .
 
Last edited by a moderator:
When I was a kid my uncle brewed his own beer for a while, and I always thought that was pretty neat. And so I wanted to brew my own beer when I got old enough to start sneaking beers out the fridge from time to time. But I never brewed anything till I got in my late 30s, and then one night I was chatting with some metalheads in Cannibal Corpse chat and someone said their Dad was making beer, and we started talking about beer and beer making. I ended up googling about how to make beer, and found the site makebeer.net - it looked pretty cool, so I ordered the Cooper's Microbrewery kit. But then I couldn't wait for it to arive, so I went to the LHBS the next day and came home with brew buckets, and ingredients, and bottles, the whole 9 yards. So I made a couple extract kits, the first couple was great - the next couple were not so great and so I got to wondering why and what went wrong, and that sort of started me on a quest to learn as much as possible about brewing, and that eventually led to All Grain and Kegging.
 
My son came up to me and said, "we should try making beer". I'd thought about years ago but heard stories of bottle bombs, bad batches and their ilk, (that's for you LGI!). Thought it was too much of a hassle.
But then I found this site and decided I'd give it a shot. Very glad I did! :mug:
 
At a very young age A friend and I decided to make wine. There was a grape vine in his driveway, there were OK ,full of seeds. So we picked a bunch smashed them and put the juice and some sugar into a 40 bottle put the lid on it and put it in the garage, a few weeks later , we remembered to check it but all we found was shattered glass and a lid?

Later in life tried experimenting with sugar and bakers yeast with different yeast nutrients you could find in the kitchen that I had read about online ... tasted like crap but lots of alc... bleh

Later again, I found a Mr Beer kit at the store on sale for 15 bucks. made it, it turned out ok , so i got a refill kit ... made them they were better.

Started drinking every kind of new or imported beer i could find but the cost was killing me.

Wanted a cheaper way to make good beer so started reading and gearing up to make beer from scratch , going all grain is the best decision if your thinking about doing it ... do it.
 
started for me back in the late 90's. I have been brewing on/off again ever since then and have recently had a friend help me to get back into it. Now that I am addicted to IPA again I can never drink that watery domestic crap anymore. My 1st batch was an imperial stout that came out great as it is pretty hard to screw up. Now I am up to all grain and have 5 kegs in my fridge. going to be trying a newcastle clone next. Life is good when you have good, inexpensive beer :mug:
 
Back in the early 90's I would read the alt brewing newsgroup and wonder if I could do that. Then I was in Augusta GA and I saw "U-brew-it" homebrew store across the street. After one illegal u-turn I was hooked. Turns out the owner of the store lived in the same complex as I did so I had no excuses not to brew.
 

Similar threads

B
Moving from Primary to Secondary?
Replies
10
Views
490
mac_1103
mac_1103
bf514921
Condenser lid hooked up to a exhaus fan?
Replies
4
Views
317
bf514921
bf514921
Beer Viking
How much honey will get be a certain ABV?
Replies
4
Views
307
CKuhns
CKuhns
Collin Evans
Fermentation Lag
Replies
5
Views
262
sibelman
sibelman
R
3 vessel system
Replies
35
Views
1K
redrocker652002
R
SSBrew 300

Latest posts

Back
Top