Brewing again in Ashfield, MA...

[GerryL]

OK, time to post a message and get the new member message to change!
I was in the basement 2 weeks ago and stumbled across our dusty brewing equipment. It dawned on me that it's been 8-10 years since we brewed any beer. Wow, time flies! I think we had a poor batch or two from the basement being too warm when we were heating with wood, and we stopped. I got the urge to start a batch, and checked the net to see what popped up for forums...and here I am! We started with a pale ale/partial grain kit last week. We were anxiously watching the bubbler, and not seeing much action in 2 days. Today was the 3rd day and we decided to have a peek. Found a foamy ring around the top of the fermenter and the SG had dropped to 1.012 already! I guess it was a fast action and we missed it while at work. We'll rack to secondary in a couple days, then start another batch. Ah, it's good to be brewing again. Now we need more equipment I think. I've got to start some brews for the fall and winter too.
I can't wait to try some of this first batch.
-Gerry & Robin

 

[the_bird]

Welcome back to the obsession!

I'm not too far from where you live, out in the Northern Berkshires. We've been getting more and more folks from the area on this forum, which is great. From all accounts, the malts and the grains that you can get today are of a much higher quality than what was available ten years ago, so hopefully, you've got a great batch on your hands!

 

[Zymurgrafi]

Welcome aboard.

Now we need more equipment I think.

Yup. That is pretty much a constant...

 

[LouT]

It dawned on me that it's been 8-10 years since we brewed any beer. Wow, time flies!
-Gerry & Robin

Welcome back -- there's a bunch of us getting back into it - I call it the Hiatus group - one batch and you really really remember how much fun (and work) it was, and really will wish you had never taken the hiatus!
Like Bird said, there's a growing number of folks from new england, enough to have a pretty big homebrew throwdown, I think! Think about Thhhaaaat!

 

[BierMuncher]

Sounds familiar. Did you have a hard time getting the dead spiders out of your carboy?

Speaking from experience...be ready to be engulfed.

You're only a few batches away from a complete obsession with kegging, secondary capacity, lagering equipment and...oh...about 313 other brewing odds and ends that will make your life complete.

 

[GerryL]

Thanks everyone!
Reguarding the carboy spiders...well I guess one of us had the foresight to tightly stuff a rag in the top so it was good. The fermenting bucket on the other hand took some cleaning (8+ years of dust), and the racking cane had gotten snapped.
We stopped at the LHBS and got another one, along with some other goodies. Got the brass bottle/carboy washer for the faucet: man is that sweet or what? I used to hate scrubbing bottles. Then I rmembered how I knocked the bottles all over the place as I was setting them up to drain out: another pain. We saw a bottle tree and had to get that.
And of course supplies for another batch, which we start tomorrow (hefe) after tranferring the current one to secondary (pale with some extra cascade hops in there). And now I'm getting the urge to start a potent winter brew like barley wine, that'll take a while so we should start soon.
Gee, we're going to need more bottles!
-Gerry