First Brew Is ON!!!!

[Jimbob]

Hey Everyone,
I'm new to the forum and new to homebrewing. I just got my first brew going today, feels like the day my twins were born....WOOOT (j/k). A Bavarian Hefewiesen is in it's first stage of fermentation and I hope like hell I didn't screw it up (by the way, I have been drinking during this process so please excuse the spelling). I had a blast making it and getting everything ready.

I've been thinking about homebrewing for the past 5 years but haven't moved on it till now. As I said above I'm the father of twins, 17 month old girls. Their great!!! But the beer budget has suffered and homebrewing is cheap. Bought the stuff with birthday money and 2+ cases will be ready in 3 weeks...DOUBLE WOOOT. So I don't really care what it tastes like I'll be consuming.

So I hope to be in and out of the forum and get to know some of you. Take care...good brewing...and pray mine is successful.

Jimbob

 

[bradsul]

Welcome to HBT!

Congrats on the first brew (and the twins!)! Beer is actually pretty forgiving stuff so as long as you were good with your sanitizing I predict a great beer in your future.

Birthday money is great stuff, it got me a kegerator this year!

 

[Jimbob]

Thanks for the welcome and the "Congrats". While this is a full recipe from someone else I thing I'll call it the Rowdy Girls Brew, because they did in a way contribute. Hell they "gave" me the birthday money to get the stuff.

Sanitizing was my biggest concern. I really made an effort to do a good job...so we'll see. I've spent the past two weeks reading/studying John Palmer's book "How To Brew". He had a lot of great process suggestions that I will try, but I stuck to the recipe from the local homebrew shop. I did take into account some of his suggestions and glad I did (saved me from a couple of boil overs).

I did have some trouble taking a sample for measures the boil specific gravity, so I just moved on and will learn from the mistakes. Really the point of this brew was to get the hang of things, how to plan, sanitize, timing, and just the over all process. I do hope the beer turns out alright.

I'm uber excited about this first brew and can't wait to really get into it.

 

[Jimbob]

UGG and the wife made me stay up and clean, too...OH MY GOD, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT CRAP.

 

[bradsul]

howtobrew is pretty much the best resource you could have had so I think you'll be ok on your first brew. For taking samples you might want to think about picking up a wine thief, they really do make things easy. A large turkey baster works really well too.

The cleaning sucks but it really is a huge part of brewing, I didn't like it at first but it's just part of brew day and I don't even think about it anymore, just part of the fun. Just tell yourself you're getting your next brewday prepped.