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

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Brooothru said:
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.
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Well, of course, because it's awesome! (minus the mosquito's). My youngest boy is both a Gator (graduated from UF) and a Seminole (will be finishing med school FSU in March).
 
Early 90s. My wife bought me a "brew-in-a-bag" kit. Not a BIAB system, but a one gallon bladder in a burlap sack with I guess hopped malt extract. Add water and yeast, and hang the bag up for a week or so. I don't remember what it used as an airlock. It was terrible, but piqued my interest. Not long after, a LHBS opened in town and a coworker got interested and pulled me in. Made some terrible extract beers. This was in Las Vegas, and I had nowhere reasonably cool to ferment in. But I had fun, bought Papazian's book, and made a few more batches. Then life kicked in; had kids, moved back east, got my career going, other hobbies and interests got in the way. Luckily there was a great LHBS nearby (just closed this year...). I would brew the occasional batch and started dabbling in kegging then all-grain brewing. Still only once in a rare while.

Then the college I work for started a brewing certificate program a couple of years ago. Basically free tuition for me and that's all she wrote (plus finally at a point in my career where I have a little more disposable income to spend on hobbies). I'm in hot and heavy now. That one gallon bag hanging on the back of door is now a 3-vessel HERMS system, plus fermentation fridge and a keezer keeping me occupied.
 
I jumped into this hobby with both feet. My first beer I brewed was an all grain IPA from a recipe I created.

I live in cz so I wanted all the ingredients to be sourced locally. So it was an IPA with Czech hops. It had a few small flaws but generally it was really good. I was instantly hooked. Still have a pic of it:
DSC_0646.JPG
 
Velnerj said:
I jumped into this hobby with both feet. My first beer I brewed was an all grain IPA from a recipe I created.

I live in cz so I wanted all the ingredients to be sourced locally. So it was an IPA with Czech hops. It had a few small flaws but generally it was really good. I was instantly hooked. Still have a pic of it:View attachment 808266
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My first IPA had green bits floating in it, and it was actually yellowish green. You did quite well I'd say.
 
Mine was a Brewer's Best cream ale extract kit in 2010. When I poured the first bottle and drank it, it felt like I did magic. I've made much better beer since then, but probably never enjoyed a glass of beer as much as that one.
 
Mine would be sometime in the early eighties probably 82 and it was a malt extract kit that was ready hopped all you needed to do was add water boil for ten mins and the top up to 23L with cold water and ferment out... very easy to make and to be honest just about as good as I could buy in most of the pubs around me at that time .
 
jambop said:
Mine would be sometime in the early eighties probably 82 and it was a malt extract kit that was ready hopped all you needed to do was add water boil for ten mins and the top up to 23L with cold water and ferment out... very easy to make and to be honest just about as good as I could buy in most of the pubs around me at that time .
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as far as i know that's the way BMC survived during the 'dry' weather.....
 
What a bunch of dinosaurs. I thought I was going to wow everyone by saying I started in '03. Guess I can forget about that.

My first beer was sort of like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I took a clone recipe and modified it before even trying it as it was. I added fresh ginger, of all things. It turned out really good, and then I moved on to other beers.

As far as I can recall, I never brewed a real clone. I know I never brewed to a style. I have never used extract. I jumped in headfirst and did whatever I wanted.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
What a bunch of dinosaurs. I thought I was going to wow everyone by saying I started in '03. Guess I can forget about that.

My first beer was sort of like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I took a clone recipe and modified it before even trying it as it was. I added fresh ginger, of all things. It turned out really good, and then I moved on to other beers.

As far as I can recall, I never brewed a real clone. I know I never brewed to a style. I have never used extract. I jumped in headfirst and did whatever I wanted.
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That was my SECOND home brew. At the time I was doing a lot of coast-to-coast non-stop flights. Nearing the West Coast arriving in San Francisco, we’d begin descent just east of Yosemite, into the setting sun. At the end of the flight I knew there was a SNPA waiting for me at the hotel bar. I named my home brewed version Sierra Sunset. It was pretty good, too.
 
Brooothru said:
That was my SECOND home brew. At the time I was doing a lot of coast-to-coast non-stop flights. Nearing the West Coast arriving in San Francisco, we’d begin descent just east of Yosemite, into the setting sun. At the end of the flight I knew there was a SNPA waiting for me at the hotel bar. I named my home brewed version Sierra Sunset. It was pretty good, too.
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I'm afraid to ask what year that was.

I came here hoping to impress all the younguns, but I'm surrounded with people who started when I was still drinking Shirley Temples.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
I'm afraid to ask what year that was.

I came here hoping to impress all the younguns, but I'm surrounded with people who started when I was still drinking Shirley Temples.
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About the time I was drinking WITH Shirley Temple, when she was a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives 😉.
 
I brewed my first "beer" from a mail order kit back in the mid 70s before a wealth of information, resources, and the internet.
They have a word to describe the results Scheisse.
It's been a long continuing learning curve/journey but I have to say it never gets old.
 
Control Freak said:
I brewed my first "beer" from a mail order kit back in the mid 70s before a wealth of information, resources, and the internet.
They have a word to describe the results Scheisse.
It's been a long continuing learning curve/journey but I have to say it never gets old.
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We’ve all brewed our share of Scheisse. What a long, strange journey it’s been.
 
My first would have been a pale ale of sorts from my LHBS at the time, with the beginner kit - couple buckets, racking cane, hoses etc. Came out decent, as I recall. Knowing what I know now, it ws likely oxidised and somewhat light struck, but drinkable.
this would have been about 15 years ago. I don't keep track of numbers of times I've brewed, but just yesterday I did an oatmeal stout. Went a bit higher volume than usual, so it's a lower gravity (that's OK though,) I'm going to toss some coffee into the extra gallon for fun once primary is done.
 
2013
Came home from an Inside Passage cruise, and they had Juno's Alaskan Brewery Alaskan Amber.
My wife had been saying for months that I really needed a hobby.

She rues the day. She does not like beer or the heavenly aromas of brewing beer. Yes, we're still married.

I've made the amber 3 dozen times now, slightly modified (it's a hobby damnit).



Still, she rues the day.



Rues it, I tell ya.
 
I think it was an ESB with LME and other ingredients and recipe from FH Steinbart in Portland around 1978. It got used as slug bait. Tried again in 1990 at a U-Brew place. Did a Porter with DME. It sucked. Started all grain in 2017 with a Dead Guy clone and got hooked. My advice to beginners: join a brew club, enter competitions, hang out with commercial brewers, keep it simple.
 
My first was an uneducated attempt at making beer from a grocery store malt extract back in the late 80s. It was not very good but the smells and processes hooked me straight away. Growing up my father was a southern moonshiner. I had watched him make a "home brew" using hog feed called shorts. It was awful but it produced alcohol so he and friends drank it. It wasn't until 92 that I found a hardware store that sold homebrew ingredients and equipment. My very next batch turned out drinkable and the rest is history. I was fortunate, at the time I lived in the suburbs of Chicago and one day I stumbled into Berghoff brewery downtown while a homebrew club was holding a meeting and discussing techniques. I joined that club, Chicago Beer Society and I learned a ton about brewing from the members. An experience I relish still today. My first award winning homebrew was a SNPA Clone recipe that I worked up with the help of another CBS member back in 95.
 
Why, I'll sue!

I wonder when they came up with that.

Maybe I'll change the name to make it more accurate. "Strong belch." "Strong gut."

I remember being really nervous about that sanitized arm, but it worked. I bottled that ale, too. Taught me I never wanted to bottle again.

Google says I did that brew in November of '02. Man, I'm old.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
Today I remembered why I named my first beer "Strong-Arm Ale." I dropped something or other in the fermenting bucket, and I had to get it out. My answer to the problem was to spray my whole arm with BTF solution and reach in and fish for it.
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Lmao, I had a very similar incident once while making a Red Ale. I had built a 3 vessel tower system with some parts painted red and the rest were black. While the boil was getting going I accidentally let a red nut fall into the boil kettle while disassembling the mash tun. I immediately turned off the burner, cleaned an extendable magnet and fished the red nut out. The beer turned out to be a very good red ale. I called that beer Red Nut Ale and it got me a 1st place ribbon in a local competition. A brewmaster friend liked it so much that he copied the recipe and named it Lincoln Red. On tap at tap rooms in the greater Chicago area and back at his brewery.
 
My first brew was in August 2011 (thank god for embarrassing FB posts or else I wouldn't have much records of those first few brews). It was AIH's "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown ale," which I purchased after reading How to Brew online a few times through. I had assembled my equipment as cheaply as possible: old feta buckets from my job at a local market for fermenters, borrowing a speckled enamel pot from my in-laws for boiling, ice bath in the kitchen sink, using old bottles. I probably used bleach those first few times to sanitize.

Still, I know I had a much easier time than my dad who gave the hobby a try for a few years in the early 90s. Ingredients were actually fresh, the process was much more refined, the internet provided a wealth of knowledge. Heck, those first few brews were extract with steeping grains, properly packaged hops, and unexpired dry yeast, so I'll never know the experiences he went through.

It wasn't the best beer, but like others have said it was my beer and I was too excited about the end result to give up. Less than a year later I had hobbled together a way to make all-grain batches, and the rest is history.
 
Here's a pic of my miserable first all-grain. All the containers are an attempt to get the stuck HOT wort out of the kludged mash tun / lautering thing made of two buckets there. That wort would have been so infected, probably, with all the panicked crap I was doing that night. Complete loss there.



p2020003-50879.jpg
 
passedpawn said:
For those who are familiar with him, here's a post regarding John Palmer's first brew. I always get a chuckle out of this post. Demonstrates that every journey must begin with the first step.

http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/1192.html#1192-6
View attachment 809311
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That is simply amazing, thank you for sharing! I especially enjoy the flashback to missing out on recording episodes of my favorite shows on VHS. Glad that media and homebrewing have evolved greatly over the last 30 years!
 
passedpawn said:
Here's a pic of my miserable first all-grain. All the containers are an attempt to get the stuck HOT wort out of the kludged mash tun / lautering thing made of two buckets there. That wort would have been so infected, probably, with all the panicked crap I was doing that night. Complete loss there.
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I have an idea. Whenever something like this happens, ferment it anyway and tell people it's Belgian.
 

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