New to Brew!

[LINK]

Hi everyone, my name's Mike and I'm new to the forums here as of today. I'm a 22 year old living in Cincinnati. I love beer and my dream is to one day own my brewery. I haven't had much direction with what I want to do with my life and over the past few months I've realized that my heart is somewhere in the beer industry. Legally speaking, I should only have been drinking beer for a year now, but I have a good few years under my belt and my pallet has expanded more than I would have ever thought. I started out drinking exclusively Keystone light in highschool, and now I try a new beer every chance I get and I'd like to have my own label someday. My most recent favorite is Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, easily my favorite beer now, and a lot of my inspiration. I have a million ideas going through my head and I couldn't be more excited to start brewing my own blend. Anyway, I've decided that I need to start somewhere, so for all the pros out there, would you suggest getting a home brewing kit pre-assembled, or finding a recipe and doing it from scratch? All help will be greatly appreciated and I look forward to the brewing adventures that await me. Thanks for everyone's time and help in advance!
-Mike

 

[Qeelin]

I'd suggest starting simple and going with an extract kit. No sense in over complicating things in the beginning. You can brew some outstanding beers with those kits and a lot of the hard work is done for you. Get the process down and learn how different beers are constructed before jumping into recipe creation. And welcome, I wish I had started homebrewing when I was 22.

BTW, I'm no "pro", just an avid fan of beer and brewing...

Qeelin

 

[jotakah]

If you really think you're passionate about it, I would only get a "kit" in regards to equipment to set you off on the right track, but don't get a pre-made recipe "kit". Look around at recipes here and on google and on Hopville . the free online community for homebrewers and get ideas there (say you want to brew a porter; I would like at 5-10 porter recipes and see what they all have in common. When do they add hops? What kinds of hops? How much malt/extract and what specialty malts? What yeast?). You'll likely want to start off doing extract batches before moving to all-grain.

Welcome to the obsession my friend!