Scared to brew

[Brew_Dude41]

Like a lot of others have said, don't do NEIPA as your first brew.

Personally, when I jumped to all grain, I did some really simple SMaSH brews back to back to back just to figure out what I was doing with my equipment and my space. It is a cheap option to dial in your process and equipment before you take a hack at that more complex NEIPA. Not to mention you will get some brew in the pipeline quickly that way. And you can figure out a little about your ingredients.

Take notes and focus on a few key points: did you calculate the strike water volume and temp properly to hit your target mash temp? The other point would be what is my pre-boil volume and gravity vs my expected?

The sooner you are able to consistently predict and hit those numbers, the sooner you are ready to start worrying about chemistry, water profile, and all of the other fun details that are out there.

Also you can test your water a bit to see how you want to handle it. Assuming that you do some back to back SMaSH, you can see how your untreated water tastes vs filtered, spring, or RO water. Just use different water and the results.

Anyway, best of luck and have fun!

 

[Jayjay1976]

I jumped in to AG brewing on my very first batch, and I also either made up all my own recipes or based them on something I read online or in a magazine. If I had it to do all over again I would have started with ingredient kits to produce good beers right away, or at least diligently follow a published recipes. My decision to take on learning both brewing and recipe building at the same time was foolish and has lead to lots and lots of 'meh' beers.

If you want to learn to brew a style, NEIPA or otherwise, start with a kit or a proven recipe and don't make changes willy-nilly. I'm coming up on 30 batches under my belt and I'm about to start brewing from kits to try and learn some of the things I've missed.

 

[RM-MN]

I jumped in to AG brewing on my very first batch, and I also either made up all my own recipes or based them on something I read online or in a magazine. If I had it to do all over again I would have started with ingredient kits to produce good beers right away, or at least diligently follow a published recipes. My decision to take on learning both brewing and recipe building at the same time was foolish and has lead to lots and lots of 'meh' beers.

This is a good reason to start slowly and carefully so you avoid those beers that just didn't quite hit the mark. It is also a good reason to start with small batches. Its a lot easier to choke down a 6 pack of bad beer than 2 cases.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Its a lot easier to choke down a 6 pack of bad beer than 2 cases.

It's also easier to dump five bottles of bad beer (one a month for five months) than 47 (one a month for four long years) .

 

[kh54s10]

If you are careful, don't go crazy with strange beers there shouldn't be much risk in making bad beers. I dumped 2 in the last 7 3/4 years. Both were extreme experiments. One was a very high gravity beer of 5 gallons. I did use half of it cooking. The other was a highly hopped 3 gallon batch. After 2 months it was pea soup green. It might have been good? I didn't even taste it.

I did start with kits and then proven recipes before experimenting. I would hate to do small batches just for the fear of making something bad - create a really good beer - and have only 6 - 12 bottles.....

Also those 2 bad ones were in year 4 and year 6.