Home Brewers- How did you start?

[Fosgate]

I always had an interest in it and loved the beer when I was stationed in Germany. When I was in college for Business Management and Public Health the college deemed I had to take what they call a Capstone course. Basically it was supposed to be a crossover course outside of your field and extra cash for the school. Science of Brewing was available to business and science students. Thought it would be fun and easy but turned out to not be easy. I busted my ass in accelerated mathmatics courses, Calculus, stats etc and none were as hard as the brewing class that had five professors specializing in history, psychology, chemisty, physics and two in biochem. Couple pre med students did fine but one girl that was working to be a teacher and another in business both showed up for class in tears on a regular basis. I can easily rank it as one of my top classes if not the top in terms of difficulty.

On the bright side I have made some awesome beers from the getgo with one of my favorites being Hefeweizen which is meant to be enjoyed fresh yet hard to find a fresh one on the sleves here.

Since getting into beer I have also gotten into making wines, mead, wine coolers (Skeeter pee). Though I will still drink a big name commercial beer, I have a hard time choking them down without discust at a watered down homoginized product.

How did you get your start?

[Newkarian]

I too got interested while in school (premed). The science and combo of making booze was too hard to resist for my geek side. Started out with easy partial mash recipes and now have been doing all grain for about 7 years. Hope to build myself a 20 gallon electric rig soon. Have brewed on a 100 bbl system a few times with friends in the business and man that is work but very rewarding. Right now I have a Bourbon breakfast stout on tap that is amazing and will be my Thanksgiving beer. Also started into the BJCP program and love to judge competitions. Its just like the cigar hobby once you get in you can never get enough. I like to call the big name beers corporate mega swill lol. Yes they are truly disgusting.

[canadianbeaver]

When we were in Sicily, after every dinner, they always brought bottles of aperitif to the table. They were different flavors like lemoncello, fennel, and bay leaf... plus others but those were the main ones. We were fascinated by these, especially the fennel and bay leaf. Simon (Strada) here on FOH had sent us a bottle of lemoncello, so we knew about that one.

Over the last three weeks, we have been making our own. It is very easy and pretty nice. Recipes are easy to find on the internet. The main issue we had is plain alcool is no longer available in Canada. We found out if you take an inexpensive vodka and run it through a Brita filter a few times, you basically get the same thing.

[Habana Mike]

A friend/coworker was a homebrewer and I mentioned I'd like to give it a try sometime, so my wife purchased a basic kit as a Christmas present for me back in 1997. Came with a couple of 5 gallon buckets, 2 cases of bottles, caps, ingredients for a batch and the standard accessories (siphon, bottle filler, capper, etc.)

Brewed it up and was pretty good so I went a got another kit (the homebrew shop would package up malt extract/DME, hops, yeast, etc. along with a recipe for different kinds of beer). Brewed that one and was pretty much hooked.

Got a couple of glass carboys to move away from plastic and began developing my own recipes.

Wife decided I'd found a hobby I liked and proceeded to purchase various equipment for me as gifts over the next couple of years. 6 gallon brew pot, high-powered propane burner, conical fermenter, Cornelius keg setup, and so on.

My favorite to brew currently is in the Trappist Abbey Ale style, last was a Westvleteren clone.

Always brew up a Dry Stout and an Irish Ale for the annual St. Patricks Day party.

Became fairly accomplished to the point I had a Dopplebock place third in the Peach State Brew-Off and one of my Porters placed second in the southeast regionals for the AHA National Homebrew competition, going on to the main event - didn't place there but at least I got good tasting notes and advice from the BJCP judges.

Reminds me it's time to brew something up for this year's competition. Submissions due March 17th!