Man, I brewed the Dogbolter a couple times - blast from the past ! My LHBS sold it for awhile back then. I actually remember it (for the time) being pretty good for a hopped LME beer.
EDIT - I remember being excited when I bought it because it said on the label that it was concentrated wort form a British brewery.
Yeah, good story. Kudos on all the great work down there.
A good friend of mine’s dad (who was like a father to me) homebrewed back in the 90’s, right when I was in college and just getting into craft beer. There was also a local brew-on-premises place in the early 2000’s that I went to a few times. So homebrewing was always on my radar, but I never actually picked it up.
A few years back another friend of mine started homebrewing with his wife. That really lit the fire for me. I sat in on a brewday, saw how easy it was, and decided to jump in. It was also right after my son was born, and I was looking for a new hobby that I could do at home, so it was just the right timing (finally). My wife got me a kit for Christmas that year, and I found this forum before I even brewed my first batch.
Even though there were a few other times where I almost picked up the hobby, I’m actually glad it happened a bit later. Homebrewing has really come a long way in recent years. Within a few months I was brewing beers that I was really happy with. Back in my younger years, I don’t know if I would have stuck with the hobby that long. Especially if my beers were so-so, while there was a ton of good craft beers that I had easy access to. Right now, it’s the perfect hobby for my current situation and I make beer that is just as good (if not better) than a lot of the breweries that are flooding the market right now.
I suck with dates but it was sometime after I got married in 1995, my wife and I were at the Vermont Brewer’s Festival and the VT Homebrew Supply had a booth. They had 1 homebrew kit left, which my wife bought for me (so it’s her fault). I had been thinking about getting into homebrewing for a few years after I bought a homebrew kit for a friend of mine for his bachelor party.
I found one of the only homebrew shops in NH at the time and got my ingredients for my first recipe, a dry stout. The beer was horrible…tasted like ass with a little footbath water mixed in. Discouraged by these results, I took a couple years off from brewing. I then decided to give it another try and found The Brewing Network online. This was somewhere around 2006. A few decent extract batches and in 2008, went all grain and have been doing it every since.
Now my beer has less a$$ and foot character ;D
In 2007 I met my girlfriend. Many of our first “dates” were me doing the heavy lifting to help her make 20-25 gallon batches of mead, which she has been doing since the mid nineties. We got to know each other staying up late doing things like cleaning crates of cranberries and bottling while drinking her great melomels. It didn’t hurt that at any given time she had (and we still have) 20-30 carboys of mead in various stages.
After a couple years of making mead and me expressing an interest in making beer, she got me a kit, some books, and put some hops rhizomes on order for Valentine’s day 2010 I believe. I think it was my next birthday that she bought me a pre-made mash tun, a cylindrical cooler with false bottom, thermometer, and sparge set up. After a few frustratingly long brew days using the sparge set up I learned about batch sparging. And this year for my birthday she got me my AHA membership. So now I am a homebrewer and a meadmaker’s assistant.
:D Good stuff.
In 2009 I was visiting a married couple who were friends of my wife (then girlfriend) who had moved to Branson, MO from Dallas. He homebrewed and had learned from his father in law. He had done a few batches and his beers were much better than what I expected. Like most people I had the idea that homebrewing kits were a lot like the root beer kit I had tried as a teen in the 90s and it was going to suck. We talked about how easy brewing was, especially extract brewing, and I decided I could do it too. So shortly after we got back home I bought the typical starter kit and a boxed Belgian ale extract kit.
My first brew was on my wife’s birthday very late at night. We had been out all day and into the evening doing things for her birthday but I really wanted to brew. She agreed that we could brew and then she fell asleep before I had even started the boil. That began a tradition of her falling asleep any time I brew in the house while she is home. The beer turned out okay for what it was: stale extract in a beer fermented almost too hot for Belgian yeast. Nevertheless, I was hooked and quickly absorbed knowledge and jumped into all grain after a handful of extract recipes.
Hey, I made a Dogbolter kit, too! But it wasn’t my first. My first brew was in 1998 from a kit of ingredients and equipment my wife bought at Costco for my birthday. almost didn’t happen. She had gone there to get the kit and they were out of stock. Just as she was leaving someone returned one. She grabbed it and the rest is history…
Watching Alton Brown’s Good Eats episode in which he make a beer at home sparked my interest. Circa 2003. I was a broke college kid at the time so I had no money to buy the kit, but I got lucky and a couple weeks after I watched the show I ended up coming in 2nd place at a poker tournament. I walked away with a couple hundred bucks. I took part of this money and bought my beer kit and I have been brewing ever since.
Another Geezer here.
I got a fairly deluxe kit (for those days) for Christmas in about 1992 and brewed a 4-5 extract batches before my wife kicked me out of the kitchen. I joined the local homebrew club the next year and started brewing all grain and kegging.
Although I enjoy the process, the flexibility making what I want and the end product, one of the reason I love to brew is for therapy. After dealing with the public and employees all week, it’s like taking a mini vacation for a few hours.
The best reward is that I’ve met a lot of great friends through homebrewing and enjoying a craft beer.
Bruce
Awesome story Bruce. I really like the release brewing gives me as well
I remember clearly as a kid my dad making homebrew using hopped extract kits. This was around 1983.
I went to University in 1990 and tried 3 or 4 kits that turned out terrible before losing interest.
2008 I had a ‘brainwave’ and tried brewing another kit beer. It was okay…then I went on the internet to look for more information and joined a brew forum here in the UK.
Within a week of joining the forum I was in my car and on the way to pick up some second hand all-grain equipment from a guy who had recently upgraded his set up. The rest, as they say, is history.
Hi, my name’s Jeff, and I’m a Geezer.
Started brewing in the fall of 1992, so been at this for 22 years. What got me going was that several coworkers were starting to brew, so I said “I think I can do that”. It turns out that they started to have kids and stopped. With no kids, I kept at it. Except there was the time I didn’t brew for 1.5 years. That was while living in a flat in Germany on a work assignment. Much “research” was done on lagers and Belgian beers while living in Europe.
Being retired has allowed me the time to really get into brewing science. The equipment expands to fill the available space. I can tinker, which makes the engineer in me happy. Complicated recipes happen, but often simple old favorites get brewed. As Bill Pfeiffer used to say “Man, I love this hobby”.
The hobby has turned into an integral part of our lives. When we travel, good times are had, new friends are made along with new memories. Often I am asked for my card, but I don’t have one (might have to fix that). Some of our best friends are in out club, or we have met through other ways in the hobby. I can’t envision stopping brewing. There may be a day I can’t any longer, but damn that will be a said day.
Yeah, it has become a lifestyle.
The seed was planted when a roommate bought a kit from Midwest in 2005 or 2006. I just hung out while he brewed and helped bottle a couple weeks later. I didn’t start brewing myself until fall of 2008. Not sure what sparked the idea, but I got a kit from Midwest as well. I brewed extract for 4 batches and switched to 3 gallon all grain batches for a bit, then did 5 gallon partial mash batches, then full 5 gallon all grain. I started creating my own recipes after my 3rd batch of extract, the 4th was a dark hoppy beer. I’d never heard of such a thing, as it was before the black IPA craze,and it sounded good; and it was great. I enjoyed creating recipes and the process as much, if not more, than the final product. So since then, brewing has been pretty much all I think about and spend my time on, which is good and bad as it has taken away from some of my other hobbies. It’s all about balance I guess.
Cool thread.
Love seeing how everyone got into the craft!
Like many of you, my brewing history has more than one start.
My first start was in 1995 when my dad bought my wife (now ex) and me a homebrew kit - it was a bit of a dig at her, as she didn’t like any beer other than Coors Light. The kit, from Liberty Malt Supply (Pike Brewing) came with Randy Moser’s first book - I forget the title - but it’s the one with all the forms and graphs. When I made my first batch of beer, I pretty much did everything wrong, and was rewarded with, well, crap. Infected, got worse over time, eventually poured it all out. Started over, got Charlie’s book, and tried again. Started brewing decent extract/specialty grain beers, mostly the bolder styles - Russian Imperial Stout, Barleywine.
At the time I didn’t have internet service, but did get the Home Brew Digest via my local BBS and Fidonet, and got more and more interested. Eventually joined a brew club, got more and more into it, finally went to all-grain, expanded my styles, started designing beers (thank you Ray Daniels), had my 3 tier system, corney kegs & CO2, an oxygen bottle, ProMash, fermentation temperature control. Loving life!
Then the divorce happened. 2007 was my last batch of my first go-round. Life got mondo crazy, sold off nearly all my brewing stuff, keeping just enough to make mead. Didn’t make a single fermented beverage in 2008. Made meads in 2009, 2010, married my beautiful new wife who LOVES beer (and wine and mead), and she talked me into making a batch for an upcoming beer party we were having. That was 2011. At that point I built my built my boil keggle, and started making extract/grains, apfelwein, hard lemonade and wine while I started re-building my system, but with so many more resources to draw from (here, HBT, Brewing Network) I took my time and built my system gradually over a year and a half. Now I typically brew twice a month, 5-10 gallon batches, most of which I share with friends and neighbors, as I can’t drink as much as I like to brew!
ex’s and bad batch of beer…ironic; we can make mistakes and move on to something better (been there done that on both fronts) :
Fun topic and some great stories!
For me it was around October 2011 and I just started getting into craft brew earlier that year…even though I had been living in the Denver area since 2005 (late bloomer?). Earlier that summer, I was at a crawfish boil thrown by some of my rajun’ cajun friends and someone had brought over a couple growlers from Dry Dock brewing, which I then discovered was really close by to our house. So later that summer my wife and I visited Dry Dock and discovered they had a homebrew shop connected to the brewery (the homebrew shop actually came first, so maybe a homebrew shop w/ a brewery connected to it?). It took a few visits before I decided to take the leap into homebrewing and it’s been an obsession ever since.
I brewed a couple of extract batches before moving to all grain and in my search for knowledge and guidance for moving to all grain, I stumbled upon the AHA site and this forum. It is because of this great site and forum members, my beers continue to improve, my passion for the craft continues to grow and I’ve gotten friends and neighbors into the “hobby.” Now I bring 9 -12 gallons of homebrew to that same yearly crawfish boil which set in action the chain of events that began my homebrewing adventure.
Ain’t that the truth! Couldn’t have said…or typed it any better.
Started in 1996 when I was in college. A friend of mine homebrewed and after helping with a couple of batches, I was hooked. Before that, I didn’t even know homebrewing was possible. My first batch was some kind of lager kit. Yeah, I know, starting with a lager was pretty silly, but I didn’t know better that time. Of course I fermented it in my closet, in Alabama, in the summer, at a nice cool temperature of 72F. :P Everything actually went pretty well. I thought the beer tasted great (probably didn’t) and kept with it. I brewed a few times a year and then took a few years off when I got married the first time. After getting divorced a few years later, I rekindled my interest and then got serious in 2008. I switched to all grain, bought all sorts of equipment and books, built a keggerator, joined the AHA, turned a bedroom into a storage/barrel room/temp control chamber, and the rest is history! Oh, and two years ago I was fortunate enough to marry a woman who not only tolerates this addiction, but supports and encourages me as well! Now that I’m a “beer nerd” as she likes to call me, we spend a lot of times in pubs and breweries during our travels. Doesn’t get much better than that!
Started almost two years ago with a lme pre hopped kit and a packet of “yeast”. It ended up terribly as it had sat in a customers basement for over 5 years. This was not enough to stop me from many trips to the lhbs. Now running a 3 tier gravity capable of 15 gal batches. Still no beer I would call amazing, but some of them are getting pretty good.