New Guy Checking In

[xaugievike]

Howdy all -

New guy from Illinois (southwest burbs) checking in. Been lurking on here for a solid month now.

I've had a basic homebrew kit for 5 or so years and brewed a few extract batches here and there, but hardly regularly....but man were those brews pretty good. bottling was alwasy sort of a PITA though. Over the holiday season this year I decided to get a bit more dedicated. I've since added a fridge that now holds two cornies (room for at least a third) - they currently contain an english bitters thats ready to go, and an IPA that needs to sit a bit longer. I have a stout doing its thing in the fermenter now as well.

One of the things that got me over the hump and deeper into this hobby was stumbling onto this forum....so much to learn, and I'm having a blast doing it.

Cheers all!

 

[forstmeister]

Welcome to the group. If you start doing all grain you should check out the next Chicago group buy. We get all our grains and hops at amazing prices by buying in bulk.

 

[wickman6]

Welcome! Always great to have some new faces around here.

 

[cosmatics]

Welcome, there is a wealth of knowledge here, as well as some entertaining threads. Be careful though, before you know it you'll be making koolaid into wine. Don't ask me how I know that, lol. Cheers.

 

[davekippen]

Sounds like you have the pipeline rolling now! Keep it up

 

[xaugievike]

Sounds like you have the pipeline rolling now! Keep it up

Establishing the pipeline was my primary objective. It's hard as can be to be patient, but now that the kegs are ready it's a lot easier to let the newer batches take their time.

I'm going to stick with extract kits for a while just to form a baseline. Then maybe piece together my own recipes to see if I can adapt things to my tastes successfully. All grain definitely intrigues me....but I need to learn a lot more before diving into that.

 

[davekippen]

I took a similar path. I did about 10 extract batches of all sorts over a 6 month period. Most were good. I then decided to try a BIAB, did one of those, then made my own round cooler tun and never looked back! I got bored with extract really fast. I think I needed the challenge of all grain. I love it!