My first homebrew attempt in 1996 was exceedingly bad. It was a “beer in a bag” kit, supposed to ferment and carbonate in the same plastic bag. It was a birthday present from my mother-in-law. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d not fermented it at 80 degrees. (We were living in Phoenix at the time.) Can’t believe I tried another batch it was so bad. Now I much prefer my homemade brew to most commercial ones and find myself uber-critical of some of the craft crap that’s being produced these days.
I friend of mine recently brewed a batch of beer from some kit that he got from Cost Plus. He gave me some and it didn’t taste good, but he was so proud and so amazed that he actually made beer, to him, it was some of the best beer on earth. I thought that was pretty cool.
I helped a buddy brew an Irish Red, then he gave me TCJOHB by Papazian and I read through it before choosing a recipe to try. I went with his “Elbro Nerkte Brown Ale” (LME + specialty grains) and had a decent base of knowledge going into it. That first batch was actually pretty awesome. Many people remarked how smooth it was - and I saved and sampled some over the next couple years and it held up well.
I worked through many of the common mistakes during that first year and a half of brewing, but I remember it as a time when I was just learning so much, and immediately implementing new knowledge into the process. My poor wife had to listen to mini “brewing lectures” as I explained things to her to help internalize it. She doesn’t brew or drink, but knows a heck of a lot about brewing! Good memories 
Not then, but a similar effort today would be dumped.
My first brew was all-grain, a red ale. I was split minded about it. On the one hand I was pleased that it wasn’t a dumper, but disappointed that it wasn’t stellar.
I’ve never had a dumper to date, and only a few that turned out just right.
My 1st batch of beer was a Scotch Ale kit.
Lots of careful work cooking, watching it ferment robustly, bottling, carbonating, and finally drinking.
Opened 10 bottles in a row to taste before tossing the entire batch down the drain.
Sour.
I guess I missed something.
I just want to know if you drank all 10 bottles : )
My first time was with a Mr. Beer 1 gallon kit that I got for Christmas 2015. I didn’t really understand some of the instructions and had put the blow off tube down in the wort. The next morning half of it had emptied out of the little carboy, but I attempted to “save” it. Didn’t work out to well so I chunked it in the end. I wised up and just got a big 5 gallon kit and did a lot of reading. My first real batch after that was an India Black Ale and it was AMAZING! I keep that one on regular stock now.
No, was a pale ale and it turned out great. My second one, well, that stunk. Was an Irish Red Ale, a kit from Midwest. Had a beautiful day in June to brew, Upper 60’s, light breeze. Was about 65 in my basement where I stored my brew. Turned unbelievably hot the next day, low 90’s and could not keep the temp indoors below 75 even with the AC. Ended up with a lot of diacetyl flavors. So the lesson I learned is to keep an eye on the forecast, maybe not brew in the heat of summer unless doing something like a hefeweizen, which can tolerate the higher temps, or make sure you can control the temps better especially early in the fermentation process.
I first started brewing in 1984 [IIRC], unless you were into the addiction at that time you can’t even begin to understand how pre-stone age it was. For starters there was no internet, so any information that was available was extremely difficult to find, especially for those of us residing in the remotest hinterlands, and it was rudimentary and very limited in scope. Dave Line’s “Big Book of brewing” was considered the bible as far as I could tell, reading it may give you a feel for the times. The only source I could find for suppliers was whatever was what was listed in the backs of the few books I could find. No homebrew clubs or LHBS unless you lived in a large metropolitan area, most of the ingredients came across the pond so they were anything but fresh, and folks like me were completely on our own, flying blind with no one or place to go to seek help or answers to WTF all my beer tastes like crap.
I had been introduced to homebrew in about 1978 by a friend who lived in Denver, and at the time I thought his homebrew was the best damn beer I had ever drank, except of course for Tooth’s Sheaf Stout, which was about the only craft type beer I’d ever seen, and which I’d dearly love to have chance to try again today. So even though my efforts were a lot of fun to make and totally sucked to drink, I knew that it was possible to make drinkable beer at home. Looking back through the corrected lens of what I know now, most of the problems with what I tried to brew back then were 2nd rate, stale ingredients, my insistence on trying to brew lagers without temperature control, and of course incredible ignorance.
For the folks who weren’t alive and of drinking age back then, the current world of craft brews simply didn’t exist. Anchor Steam, Tooth’s KB Lager & Sheaf Stout, Foster’s Lager and Zonker stout were about the only non BMC beers we’d been exposed to, at least in this part of the world. If you’d asked my what I thought of IPA I would probably have asked which branch of government the IPA was in. And for the folks whose memories do not predate the interweb, I don’t think it is possible for you to grasp how fundamentally different every aspect of our lives were then, especially if you were an unrepentant DIYer. I’m no lover of the Webworld, but I’d be the last to deny it’s usefulness.
If you started brewing in the last 15 or 20 years, be glad that timing was on your side, if you started and stuck with it through the dark ages, my hat is off to you. I gave it up a couple years after first starting, not because of poor results or lack of willingness to continue trying, but because as with so many people, life got in the way for about 30 years. Now I have time and opportunity and am quite happy with the unbelievable improvements in all aspects of the pursuit, and with the fact that more often than not I make beer I like. I am also glad that I had my experience 30 some years ago, if for no other reason than that it makes me that much more grateful for the state of homebrewing today.
Cheers.