Welcome aboard!
Tell us a bit more about your progression from the Mr. Beer to AG, as I like to hear about what you learned along the way and what you made.
I recieved MB as a Christmas gift & promptly brewed the 1st batch-West Coast Pale Ale. While it was fermenting I found the forums & started to just read & learn. I didn't realy have any questions, hell, I didn't know anything :cross:
By the time my 1st batch should have been ready (2 wks ferm, 2 wks carb, 2 wks cold cond) I already had 2 more extact batches going- IPA's. 1st batch-barely palatable, left it in the frig to "age". Try another extract but steeped some grain. All these were beer, but I just didn't care for the flavors I was tasting. I knew I wanted to do something & by then I had been through Palmer & knew about AG. Hours & hours reading on the interweb. Went to small (2.5 gal) AG batches bc I couldn't afford to $'s to upgrade my boiler.
Then, in 1 day I found a 10 gal alum kettle & ordered it online- $22, 30 min later a buddy called & gave me a keg!
For some reason over the years I have collected numerous coolers of varying sizes, a 3 gal w/a braid became my 1st MLT & a 5 gal gott w/a ball valve was my HLT & a borrowed 16 qt stainless boil kettle. When I got my new treasures arrived I did a keggle conversion, put weldless fittings in the 10 gal kettle for a HLT, and dug out a 13 gal chest cooler that I had been using as a storage bin. Made a copper manifold for laudering & a cpvc manifold for fly sparging. Along the way I built an IC for the 2.5 gal batches, took it apart, added more copper & can now cool at least 10 gal. With the copper scraps I built a small chiller coil to pre-cool the IC h2o (ice bath in yet another cooler). Stir plate, sight glasses, corona mill, mega-burner, etc, etc, etc....a DYI'er & bargain hunter/scrounger
I'm a builder by trade w/lots of tools, resources, materials, & time; I'm also unemployed= little $'s
I guess I do these things simply because I can; too much time on my hands
I'm learning to be patient while the yeasties do their thing. My biggest learning curve issue seams to be mashing. I've mashed consistently 6 or so dergees too hot (of all things right?). My last AG batch I was shooting for 154 & hit 150. Crap, overcompensated. I'll get it down eventually. My AG's so far are drinkable albeit sweet.
BTW the 1st batch ended up in the sink. OK post is long enough- sorry.
