1990, a Bock made from a kit (manufacturer is now long forgotten, at least by me). It wasn't a bad setup, as it happens; the kit included both unhopped LME and specialty malts, making it unusual for the time, and the hop pellets were reasonable quality. Mind you, I'd been reading about homebrewing for at least a year and a half at that point, having found and readily devoured a copy of CJHB, 2nd ed., in early 1989. Curiously, I had had little interest in beer or drinking until I found that book, which appealed to me as much from a Biology standpoint as anything else.
While I had done some all-grain brewing by 1993, I was out of the hobby (mostly) for fifteen years, though I kept up with reading about it the whole time. When I got back into it, I used a Brewer's Best Brown Ale kit to test things out before jumping back into designing my own recipes. In retrospect, I pushed my way back into AG a bit too quickly; had I thought it through, I would have built a fermentation chamber and gotten my yeast starter equipment first, and I would have used a 10 gallon cooler for my MLT from the start rather than trying to use a 5 gallon cooler.
While I had done some all-grain brewing by 1993, I was out of the hobby (mostly) for fifteen years, though I kept up with reading about it the whole time. When I got back into it, I used a Brewer's Best Brown Ale kit to test things out before jumping back into designing my own recipes. In retrospect, I pushed my way back into AG a bit too quickly; had I thought it through, I would have built a fermentation chamber and gotten my yeast starter equipment first, and I would have used a 10 gallon cooler for my MLT from the start rather than trying to use a 5 gallon cooler.
