Sharing Nostalgia with the Beginners: What Was The First Beer Your Brewed?

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NSMikeD

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I can remember it vividly. It was the early 90's when craft beer was still not readily available on shelves. My best friend work buddy and I would visit most the new brew pubs popping up in Manhattan and since he was a home brewer, he was my Mr Miyagi when it came to experiencing beer that wasn't bud.

Not long after buying a home near his (my wife back then grew up in the town which pretty much sealed that fate) he peaked my interest and one Saturday off the the LHBS we went to get my starter kit, Charlie Papazian's book and the ingredients to brew a Sam Adams Boston Ale clone (not the lager).

A few dates later, when the wife went out for girls night, we took over my kitchen with malt extract, crystal malt, a steeping bag, flower hops and a smack pack of yeast. And yes, we had a boil over.

He returned a week later for racking day (back then we all thought you had to get the beer off the yeast cake, lest you wanted off flavors) and then another week later for bottling day.

Two weeks later I brought over 2 pints of my Boston Ale and he took out a few bottles of his home brews, sat down on his new enclosed porch with views of the harbor and enjoyed our brews.

Sam Adams no longer brews their Boston Ale which is too bad as it has a special place in my heart. Walking down memory lane I might just look up a recipe and brew a batch this year.

Incredible that after all these years, I still have strong memories to that experience, I wonder if other home brewers have similar stories you want to share and give a glimpse to the beginners on what they are embarking so they take a second to soak it in.

I'd love to hear from you.
 
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My sister knew I liked creating new recipes and "tangling with the kitchen ", as I called it. She got me a Mr Beer kit for Christmas... Canadian Pale Ale... After trying it, I was hooked. I was always a fan of more flavorful beers. Fosters, Killians Red, Guiness, Bass Pale Ale, Amstel (the original), all in the 80's were good stuff. Guiness/Bass Black and Tan...
 
Mine was a summer blond.
Not that long ago. Maybe 4-5 years.
I bought an all grain kit for 8 litres of beer and bucket, airlock etc.
I made quite a mess of it and lots of mistakes but enjoyed it. It was like having 2 left hands ;)
The result was very drinkable, although not very evenly carbed.

Still making small batches, but did evolve somewhat
 
Brewers best kit here, extract red ale it was. Over 10 years ago my sister got my brother in law the kit for Christmas, they were living with me at the time while they were building a new house. So I helped my brother in law brew the kit, end result was good, better then I anticipated honestly. So I went I bought my own kit and quickly got addicted/obsessed. My first solo kit was an ipa kit also brewers best ad that's what my lhbs carries. That brewday went well however it was messy, I was a single dad at the the time and used brewing to occupy myself when my daughter was with her mother. The kitchen was always a mess when I got done but it is worth it. It wasnt long before the switch to all grain and more and more and more brewing stuff.
 
My first brew was in ‘92. An extract kit from William’s that I boiled on the stove in an enameled steel canning pot and fermented in a plastic bucket in the storage shed in Georgia (no temp control) bottled in Grolsh-style ‘flippies’. I made every mistake in the book. It was the best beer I ever drank. 😂 I brewed using William’s kits many yrs.

When I began brewing all grain, I researched various ways to brew. I found some guys doing videos on YouTube: first the guys from Northern Brewer (Michael Dawson, Jake Keeler, and Chip Walton) who ‘introduced’ me to Don Osborn (donosborn.com) who said he used a Cheap and Easy method called batch sparging and cited some guy named Denny Conn. I needed low entry cost so I checked it out. I found Denny’s site (dennybrew) and worked my way back to a guy named Ken Schwartz (https://www.bayareamashers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/nbsparge.pdf). I gravitated towards batch sparging fairly quickly because I figured I could do what I saw Don O doing on YouTube.

The basis of my current system is still underneath that original entry level batch sparge system. I started very small and worked up. Over the years I’ve added a pump, HERMS, induction heat, etc but basically it’s just mashing, and if I Sparge — batch sparging in an insulated container, drawing of the wort, boiling, fermenting, packaging and serving.
 
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1981 start here. A friend came home with a paper back book on how the make homebrew and a few brewing tools. We got a couple cans of some kind of LME, some steeping grains and whole hops. I remember the book recommended adding sugar because it made more alcohol, and that’s why we are doing this, right?

Brewing was in a 20 quart pot on the stove top. I remember thinking that the addition of hops at different times in the boil seemed silly. Hops taste like hops, right? We fermented in a plastic garbage pail we bought for just that purpose and cleaned it really well with Clorox solution. A package labeled Ale Yeast was pitched and the fermenter got covered with plastic to keep the bad things out.

After the foam died down the beer was racked into a glass Alhambra water bottle to avoid the infamous off flavors from dead yeast in the primary fermenter. Later in was bottled in empty Anchor Steam beer bottles that were cleaned in the bathtub using TSP.

When the bottles were eventually opened we were pleasantly surprised that it tasted like beer and the quest was on to see if “better beer” could be achieved. I still use that glass 5 gallon Alhambra water bottle and haven’t severed any arteries yet.

Blue Ribbon malt extract syrup from the grocery store was purchased in large quantities . . .
 
1671129081698.jpeg
 
1971 ... baking aisle of local grocery ... can of Blue Ribbon malt, 5# bag of sugar and pack of bread yeast. Fermented in a pickle crock with towel over top. Bottled in pint Pepsi returnables with caps and capper from a farm auction. I was probably making Belgian-style beers before I even knew there were Belgians.
 
Mr Beer kit for me, I think it was their IPA, back in January 2016. Had been sitting in a friend's garage for a few years, so of course the yeast was way expired. And I was way too impatient. Bottled it in 1 liter water bottles, and it wasn't great but wasn't horrible either; probably because my brain was screaming YOU MADE BEER!! THIS IS AWESOME!!! Now that I kinda know what I'm doing, tasting one of those today would probably make me spit it out.
 
seatazzz said:
YOU MADE BEER!! THIS IS AWESOME!!!
Click to expand...

There has to be a singlet term for this feeling - which I assume is very common for first time homebrewers and occasionally experienced ones who are sitting on their deck, soaking in the surroundings, sipping a home brew and they are reminded of the miracle of nature that is in their glass.
 
NSMikeD said:
There has to be a singlet term for this feeling - which I assume is very common for first time homebrewers and occasionally experienced ones who are sitting on their deck, soaking in the surroundings, sipping a home brew and they are reminded of the miracle of nature that is in their glass.
Click to expand...
Shhhh. This is the unspoken goal of the HBT Cabal of Getting Other People to Like This Hobby, thus keeping more LHBS in business, and giving many of us purpose in life; i.e. telling other people how we screwed up our beers, then fixed the problem. Our secret is out!!!!
 
rallenhall said:
I was probably making Belgian-style beers before I even knew there were Belgians.
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I really don’t like the phenolic flavors in Belgian beers. Having made a crude start at home brewing in the early 1980s and not understanding yeast flavors (or was it contamination?) I made too many batches with those flavors. It caused me to quit until a few years ago when my wife bought me a 1 gallon kit for Christmas. It was a Centennial SMaSH IPA with US-05 yeast that turned out great. Sometimes I think she may regret having given me that gift.
 
NSMikeD said:
There has to be a singlet term for this feeling
Click to expand...

transcendence? with the way people either worship, OR fear drugs....here comes little old you doing neither.....


When i was ~18 back in 96' my mom let me get a Mr Beer kit....then she bought me a turkey fryer, then she bought me a kegging kit....i bought my own first used fridge though!

i was mashing in a bucket with a paint bag.....good ol' mom! and to think she was a straight edge!
 
I had been tempted for quite a while to do it, but in my head I kept saying, hell they already do it for you and it is more expensive to do it yourself. LOL. Finally made the jump with a Northern Brewer Starter Kit and one of their IPA Extract recipes. 5 gallon pot on the stove in the kitchen, and I made a huge mess. No boil over thankfully, just a lot of cleanup needed after. I think I went straight to kegging and put it in my newly purchased mini fridge converted kegerator. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was cool. That was about a year and a half to two years ago I think. Now, my brother and I make a day of it. He brews his on the stove and I have moved on to BIAB. I still think it is probably cheaper to buy it, but making it is fun and what the heck, gotta have a hobby when I retire, right? LOL.
 
1993. With Papazians book in hand, some malt in a can. Dry yeast attached to the bottom. Some grain for steeping crushed with a rolling pin and some hops. Was supposed to be a stout. Did a few brews with the Zap Pap Lauter tun and then life got in the way. Blew the dust off the carboy about 10 years ago and read up on BIAB and have been at it ever since.
 
Mr Beer kit in '11. I don't remember which one, but I remember my first non Mr. Beer kits, a pumpkin ale and a maple red. They turned out alright, I drank them. It was more of the process and the fact that I was making beer that got me hooked. I'm all grain now, but still making a mess of my wife's kitchen.
 
I remember the first Home Brew we made was a Cooper's British Bitter Extract Kit. I had lived in England in the late 70s and got quite the taste for British beers.

You can buy some beers in the USA that are British, but they are not the same. You simply cannot find a decent Bitter to this day. A friend of mine had brewed beer before and said we should try it and bought a 10 gal Blichmann kettle. He also said bottling was a pain so we also got a Corney Key and CO2 hookup.


In 2008:

Went to the LHBS and saw the Cooper's kit. I said we need to try that one. We bought extra yeast and went home to brew the next day. We borrowed a turkey fryer and started our brew. It was a cold blustery day and we were doing this outside on a concrete pad. We had to fabricate a quick wind shield for the burner out of some flashing. We boiled and then moved the entire kettle to a horse trough for cooling. We cooled, we took the kettle and washed it good and transferred to a Carboy. Added the Yeast and in a couple of weeks kegged the beer. After a few days to carbonate, we all got together for the Big Taste Day.

It was the best Bitter I had in the USA. I was sold.

We brewed Extract, moved to Partial Grain, and finally went All Grain.

Do to the cooling method, we were very lucky to not have an infection. It would have saved me a ton of money.
 
In the early 70's there was no internet, no legal homebrewing, and no one to answer questions (except a few older fellows who had brewed during Prohibition ... and gave as much bad advice as good.) The only book I could find on the topic was this one, c. 1965. Obviously a British author, with references to ingredients such as treacle and nettle.
Book.jpg
 
Dec-1997
A kit from Brewers Coop (led to the birth of Two Brothers brewing.
"The coops All-malt Stout Kit"
A combination of extract and steeped grains.
I actually took notes back then to record key events.
My taste impression: "OK, too-much hop aroma, not enough roasty"
 
I think it was 1982 but might have been '83. A can of Blue Ribbon hopped malt extract, some sugar, and a bunch (probably a pound) of black patent malt. 😂 No idea what kind of yeast I used, probably some generic beer yeast. The beer was awful, of course. So I decided rather than waste it, I would try to distill it. The smart (?) thing to have done is used my pressure cooker for the boiler. Instead I tried using a gallon glass jug sitting in a large pot of chicken grease as kind of a double boiler. I heated it too fast and you can imagine what happened. (for those of you who don't have an imagination, the jug broke, the hot beer poured out into and went under the hot chicken grease and sort of exploded.) Took me hours to clean up the mess. I'm lucky I wasn't hurt.

I don't remember many details about the first time I made beer for real. That would have been in the late 1990's, with a copy of Papazian's New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. I do remember that the Barkshack Ginger Mead that I made from that book turned out well and my dad talked about how good it was for *years*.
 
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Easy to remember because it was only June of this year! Made an IPA from a kit. I didn’t know anything about temperature control and got a very active fermentation for the first day or so. Afterward, I did some research and got it under control. The first time I tasted the beer, I knew I was hooked on home brewing. It not that the kit beer was awesome (it was good, but I’ve had better). It was just the fact that there were endless possibilities of what could be brewed that made we want to keep experimenting with new brews and dialing in the ones I liked.
 
Julius clone extract kit from my local homebrew shop, which is now unfortunately out of business. I wish I could time travel and taste it now. Couldn't have been too bad, because here I am 6 years later hook, line and sinker!
 
rallenhall said:
In the early 70's there was no internet, no legal homebrewing, and no one to answer questions (except a few older fellows who had brewed during Prohibition ... and gave as much bad advice as good.) The only book I could find on the topic was this one, c. 1965. Obviously a British author, with references to ingredients such as treacle and nettle.
Click to expand...




rallenhall said:
View attachment 808069
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at least it was cheap!
 
Fall 1994, just before I got married (for the second time) my bride gave me a homebrewing kit and my choice of ingredients for the first brew. It was an English bitter extract kit (all in one can). Bitter is still my favorite beer style after all these years. By the way, the girl that bought me the kit is still my bride.
 
Good thread.
In 2001 or 2002, my older brother acquired a fermenter, bottling bucket, capper and a bunch of empty returnables and said, "hey, do you want to try to brew some beer?" ... I said, "sure." I'm pretty sure it was a Brewer's Best kit - Amber Ale I think. I don't recall it being particularly good, but I was hooked a short while later.
 
I used to make an intermittent habit of going into local breweries, talking with the brewer, making requests for beers I'd like to try. Sometimes the requests were honored; other times not. Eventually I figured it was just easier to try brewing what I wanted, myself. Got a Northern Brewer Block Party Amber kit that turned out pretty well. Due to my equipment sizes, moved to 4 gal BIAB AG shortly thereafter. I'm brewing what I like, and for the most part, it's turning out OK.
 
Oh, I remember quite vividly. It was 1987. My daughter was a High School senior and we were planning a college road-trip to Florida State where she had 2 cousins attending. The trip would coincide with the Thanksgiving break, so we (traveling from Metro DC) would spend the holiday with my sister in Atlanta, and the extended family would gather there.

Now I’d been a wine maker for at least 8~10 years at the time, but had never brewed beer. My LHBS (still in business, BTW) held brew-on-premises classes, so I signed up and within a few weeks had brewed and bottled my first (of MANY, I might add) home brewed beers, an Irish Red Ale.

It was a big hit with all the men, and even a few of the ladies, at the reunion. Appropriately I named it Seminole Wind. Even better, FSU beat rival Florida Gators that weekend. And even better, my daughter eventually graduated Cum Laude and earned her M.A. from Florida State. Even better, met a guy there, and they gave us the most adorable set of twins EVER. And best of all, we now have a place to stay when the Great White North (Maryland) turns cold this time of year,

I blame it all on water, malt, hops and yeast.

Who says beer isn’t great?
 
Brooothru said:
Oh, I remember quite vividly. It was 1987. My daughter was a High School senior and we were planning a college road-trip to Florida State where she had 2 cousins attending. The trip would coincide with the Thanksgiving break, so we (traveling from Metro DC) would spend the holiday with my sister in Atlanta, and the extended family would gather there.

Now I’d been a wine maker for at least 8~10 years at the time, but had never brewed beer. My LHBS (still in business, BTW) held brew-on-premises classes, so I signed up and within a few weeks had brewed and bottled my first (of MANY, I might add) home brewed beers, an Irish Red Ale.

It was a big hit with all the men, and even a few of the ladies, at the reunion. Appropriately I named it Seminole Wind. Even better, FSU beat rival Florida Gators that weekend. And even better, my daughter eventually graduated Cum Laude and earned her M.A. from Florida State. Even better, met a guy there, and they gave us the most adorable set of twins EVER. And best of all, we now have a place to stay when the Great White North (Maryland) turns cold this time of year,

I blame it all on water, malt, hops and yeast.

Who says beer isn’t great?
Click to expand...
My son went to Tampa where he met his girlfriend. He got a job there with an agricultural company doing accounting and she’s up in Gainesville attending law school which means he’s there every weekend which makes us Gators. He hasn’t broken his mothers side of the family addiction to Bud Light. Although he is getting into red wines so there is hope his tastes will mature. And since they seem to have no desire to move back north,I see sail fin fishing trips in the future.
 
Mine was a Northern Brewer Irish Red extract, sometime in early 2015. The 5 gallon brew pot wouldn't come to a boil on a flat electric stove. I used a solution of 1 ounce Saniclean to 1 gallon of water and fermented in a basement too cool for an Ale (~56 degrees).
 
NSMikeD said:
My son went to Tampa where he met his girlfriend. He got a job there with an agricultural company doing accounting and she’s up in Gainesville attending law school which means he’s there every weekend which makes us Gators. He hasn’t broken his mothers side of the family addiction to Bud Light. Although he is getting into red wines so there is hope his tastes will mature. And since they seem to have no desire to move back north,I see sail fin fishing trips in the future.
Click to expand...
Much as the Gators are treated with friendly derision by our side of the family, one of her cousins attending FSU Law became her ‘Big Brother’ there and helped her transition to living so far from home. As life would have it, his daughter now attends Florida. None of them appear ready to leave the state any time soon.
 
franknbeans said:
July 2020, extract Boont Amber Ale kit from Austin Homebrew. Used an older beginner setup from Northern Brewer acquired from a fella' nearby on craigslist that I've become friends with since and trade brews often.
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Is that a clone of the Anderson Valley Boont Amber?
 

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