Greeting from Spain! I rushed to ask questions amazed by the knowledge and I forgot to say hi. Seems like a nice place you have here.
You can skip the next part. It's just a little story of failing and beer.
Background:
I've started with this hobby at age 18, made 5 all-grain batches and stoped because I lacked time/moved to study at college.
That was 2006, when there were like 2-3 suppliers for homebrewers in Spain, and prices where high. I didn't know English back then so information was lackluster too. When I had more time again, my father lost interest and I didn't wanted to make all the process alone, so all the buckets ramained forggoten in the cellar.
Now some friends who got interested bought a kit to make beer, and wanted me to supervise the process just in case. That motivated me again.
Now there are cheapper suppliers here and this forum has more information than I ever dreamed. The fire burns again.
Learning the hard way:
Starting without much information and making my own recipes wasn't a road of flowers.
To make you an idea of how bad it was, to calculate IBUs I was told 0.25% usage in 90min boil, and 0.15% in 30min and negligible at 10min. No density involved, no other times specified.
I primed adding raw suggar table in bottles. Thats 2-3g per bottle, calculated in my kitchen scale with 2g deviation. What could go wrong?
batch #1 Lacked gas like if it was left overnight open. Need more gas.
batch #2 Got more gas. Ended up throwing the bottle-bombs. Not that much gas is needed.
batch #3 First one that is really good. I could make them hoppier however.
batch #4 Tasted like boiled hops with a bit of wort. Like sucking a lemon.
batch #5 Fine again. Thats 2/5, without big flaws, not that bad.
From those 5 batches I still have some bottles of the third and following batches, that makes 8 years conditioning, and they are still pretty good (the hoppy one still hoppy).
And now seems like I didn't give up with going from extreme to extreme, because from the belgian golden strong i'm making wich isn't even bottled, I've already learned that not more suggar is better.
But at least I now know English, that gives me acces to this forum where I can read others people **** ups too.
You can skip the next part. It's just a little story of failing and beer.
Background:
I've started with this hobby at age 18, made 5 all-grain batches and stoped because I lacked time/moved to study at college.
That was 2006, when there were like 2-3 suppliers for homebrewers in Spain, and prices where high. I didn't know English back then so information was lackluster too. When I had more time again, my father lost interest and I didn't wanted to make all the process alone, so all the buckets ramained forggoten in the cellar.
Now some friends who got interested bought a kit to make beer, and wanted me to supervise the process just in case. That motivated me again.
Now there are cheapper suppliers here and this forum has more information than I ever dreamed. The fire burns again.
Learning the hard way:
Starting without much information and making my own recipes wasn't a road of flowers.
To make you an idea of how bad it was, to calculate IBUs I was told 0.25% usage in 90min boil, and 0.15% in 30min and negligible at 10min. No density involved, no other times specified.
I primed adding raw suggar table in bottles. Thats 2-3g per bottle, calculated in my kitchen scale with 2g deviation. What could go wrong?
batch #1 Lacked gas like if it was left overnight open. Need more gas.
batch #2 Got more gas. Ended up throwing the bottle-bombs. Not that much gas is needed.
batch #3 First one that is really good. I could make them hoppier however.
batch #4 Tasted like boiled hops with a bit of wort. Like sucking a lemon.
batch #5 Fine again. Thats 2/5, without big flaws, not that bad.
From those 5 batches I still have some bottles of the third and following batches, that makes 8 years conditioning, and they are still pretty good (the hoppy one still hoppy).
And now seems like I didn't give up with going from extreme to extreme, because from the belgian golden strong i'm making wich isn't even bottled, I've already learned that not more suggar is better.
But at least I now know English, that gives me acces to this forum where I can read others people **** ups too.
