RBV,
Sorry to hear about your recent disasters. Nothing will fill that void, but I agree brewing beer is a worthy distraction.
I also used to brew in the late '80's into the early 90's. I started saving bombers last year for a friend who brews and he never came to pick them up so I figured I'd get back into it myself. I'm going to tell you some of the mistakes I made with my first brew back so you don't make them too.
1. I have to cook inside on an electric range. My pot was not quite 4 gallons. Figured a 3 gallon boil was sensible. Once I got to a good boil, I hastily dumped 10 pounds of extract in, plus some hops (shooting for a 2IPA). Instant and MASSIVE boilover! Horrible mess.
2. Not enough ice... Chilled the wort in the kitchen sink. Too lazy to go buy a 20lb bag of ice, figured I had almost 10 lbs already plus a few lunch ice packs. WRONG! The wort chilled so slow I was going into a slow-mo panic. After a few hours and probably an ulcer, I went and bought more ice.
3. Fermented too warm... Tried the "wrap the bucket in a damp towel, put a fan on it" trick. Not good enough in Florida and probably not going to work so well in NC this time of year unless you have a basement. Now I have an old fridge and set a frozen water bottle in it each morning. Keeps it right where I want it, no problem.
4. Here's the best one. Back in the day, the buckets I used did NOT have a spigot at the bottom. I also never transferred the beer to a second chamber before bottling. Instead of reading up on things I rushed in and fermented the beer in the bucket that had the spigot. No big deal, right? Except when the time came to bottle the beer, I eased the bucket from the closet and set it on the carpet (on wood floor) in my office. Evidently, I bumped the spigot into my cigar humidor. When I came in a couple hours later to check the temp, I almost fell over when I picked it up because it was almost empty. about 3.5 gallons of fermented wort was soaked into the rug, and various things I had brought home and stacked on the floor in the office! The Humanity...
I did bottle the remaining beer, which was about 9 bombers. The next day I started over with the same recipe (a 2 Hearted clone) and it was simply amazing!
I wish could say "If only I knew about this site before I brewed that first batch..." but truth is, I probably would have rushed into it anyhow. In the end, I learned a great deal and it really only cost me a carpet that I didn't like anyhow. But learn from my very stupid, juvenile mistakes!
Good luck, post your results.
Brett
