dandw12786
Well-Known Member
I joined here back in 2011 after my brother and I bought a kit and tried a couple batches. I stuck with it, and he didn't, aside from the odd brew day here and there. I got really into it, went all-grain, got a kegging setup, and was making some halfway decent (some of my friends said "damn good") beer.
Toward the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 I was getting a bit discouraged. Stuff wasn't turning out like I wanted and I was getting frustrated. Then we had a kid in 2015, and any brew day was rushed through, and nothing was really turning out well. I gave up, sold my kegging setup and a few other things, and what I kept went up on a shelf in the garage, thinking that while the setup that I sold got me a good amount of money, there wasn't enough money in selling what I had left, so maybe I'd keep it and come back one day.
It's been a couple years, and we had another kid in 2017, so free time seemed like a thing of the past, and yet, I'd had an itching to maybe give this another go, and as the kids get more independent, I think maybe free time isn't quite gone... My friends kept constantly prodding me about doing it again, but I laughed it off and gave them **** for just wanting free beer. Then my brother texted me saying we should think about giving it another go sometime.
Then my wife decided our small chest freezers were pissing her off because she hated digging for stuff. So she bought a huge upright freezer. So we had an extra chest freezer. She was thinking about giving it to her mom, and I said "hey, can we maybe not do that quite yet?" "Why?" "Well... I was thinking..." and the knowing smile crept across her face.
So I thought well, I've got a few things in place, maybe I should start thinking about giving this another shot.
So last week, a fairly big portion of my city does rummage sales. It's crazy, people come from out of state for this damn thing. So I'm wandering around looking for cheap clothes for the kids, and what do I see in a driveway?
Six cornys, a converted keggle, and a blichmann boilermaker. I asked the lady there what she wanted for all the stuff there, and she said "hold on, it's my boyfriend's, he's at work." She grabs the post-it he left her, and everything seemed reasonable, she even showed me his bottom line for everything (bad move, lady). I walked away with the converted keggle with thermometer, sightglass and ball valve, and four kegs for $200 (I wanted that blichmann so bad, but even the incredibly reasonable $250 he wanted was just more than I could stomach.
So there I sat in my garage with four kegs, a nice keggle, and my mishmash of crap that I didn't end up selling and was happy as hell, aside from the extra $400 I need to put back in to get back where I want.
Put an order in for a couple fermonsters, an immersion chiller, and a mill. That should get me brewing and fermenting by next week. Then I can focus on the keezer, which is going to be another couple hundred for the kegging setup. I'm so quickly reminded about how quickly this hobby sucked up my money, feels so familiar.
Now to try to find all of my beersmith stuff. It's somewhere on an old computer, hopefully it isn't trashed.
I guess a big question would be where are we now in this hobby software-wise? When I got out I was using beersmith, but didn't upgrade to the next iteration, and now I'm wondering if that's still good or if I should look into a different one? What are y'all using now?
Anyway, feels good to be back here, even though I haven't even cleaned my new stuff yet. Looking forward to getting sucked back into this crazy hobby!
Toward the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 I was getting a bit discouraged. Stuff wasn't turning out like I wanted and I was getting frustrated. Then we had a kid in 2015, and any brew day was rushed through, and nothing was really turning out well. I gave up, sold my kegging setup and a few other things, and what I kept went up on a shelf in the garage, thinking that while the setup that I sold got me a good amount of money, there wasn't enough money in selling what I had left, so maybe I'd keep it and come back one day.
It's been a couple years, and we had another kid in 2017, so free time seemed like a thing of the past, and yet, I'd had an itching to maybe give this another go, and as the kids get more independent, I think maybe free time isn't quite gone... My friends kept constantly prodding me about doing it again, but I laughed it off and gave them **** for just wanting free beer. Then my brother texted me saying we should think about giving it another go sometime.
Then my wife decided our small chest freezers were pissing her off because she hated digging for stuff. So she bought a huge upright freezer. So we had an extra chest freezer. She was thinking about giving it to her mom, and I said "hey, can we maybe not do that quite yet?" "Why?" "Well... I was thinking..." and the knowing smile crept across her face.
So I thought well, I've got a few things in place, maybe I should start thinking about giving this another shot.
So last week, a fairly big portion of my city does rummage sales. It's crazy, people come from out of state for this damn thing. So I'm wandering around looking for cheap clothes for the kids, and what do I see in a driveway?
Six cornys, a converted keggle, and a blichmann boilermaker. I asked the lady there what she wanted for all the stuff there, and she said "hold on, it's my boyfriend's, he's at work." She grabs the post-it he left her, and everything seemed reasonable, she even showed me his bottom line for everything (bad move, lady). I walked away with the converted keggle with thermometer, sightglass and ball valve, and four kegs for $200 (I wanted that blichmann so bad, but even the incredibly reasonable $250 he wanted was just more than I could stomach.
So there I sat in my garage with four kegs, a nice keggle, and my mishmash of crap that I didn't end up selling and was happy as hell, aside from the extra $400 I need to put back in to get back where I want.
Put an order in for a couple fermonsters, an immersion chiller, and a mill. That should get me brewing and fermenting by next week. Then I can focus on the keezer, which is going to be another couple hundred for the kegging setup. I'm so quickly reminded about how quickly this hobby sucked up my money, feels so familiar.
Now to try to find all of my beersmith stuff. It's somewhere on an old computer, hopefully it isn't trashed.
I guess a big question would be where are we now in this hobby software-wise? When I got out I was using beersmith, but didn't upgrade to the next iteration, and now I'm wondering if that's still good or if I should look into a different one? What are y'all using now?
Anyway, feels good to be back here, even though I haven't even cleaned my new stuff yet. Looking forward to getting sucked back into this crazy hobby!