Intro

I started homebrewing in May of 2014: I saw how some of my co-workers enjoyed it, tasted a few of their brews, listened to what they had to say, and decided "Yeah, I can try that." So I bought a starter equipment kit and and extract recipe kit online and brewed it as soon as it arrived at my door.  As soon as that batch was in the bottle, I brewed a second kit.  Once I had bottled that one, I brewed the third, and the rest is history as they say.  Needless to say, I was hooked. Now, almost 2 years and 39 (and counting) batches later, I'm looking back at my brew journal, trying to figure out what I've learned. My engineer's chicken scratch handwriting doesn't help.

I've been kicking around the idea of starting a homebrewing blog for a little while now, but I've been apprehensive. There are several websites, blogs, books, forums, etc. already out there, many of which are written by experts.  I am not an expert.  I consider myself a novice at best.  My equipment is cobbled together and my techniques are unrefined. But my friends and family and I think I make some darn good beer, and I truly enjoy the process.  So I've decided to give this a shot, coming at the blog from a perspective of "For novices by a novice."  I intend to try to recap the past 2 years of brewing, sharing recipes and brewing notes, reviews of equipment I've used or still use, as well as descriptions of the changes I've made to my brew process and set-up.  Once I get caught up - and that may take a little while - I plan to keep the blog current with my ongoing brewing.

What I brew:
A little of everything.  I usually prefer IPAs, as do most of my friends and family, so generally speaking, every other brew is an IPA.  I'm sure this blog will make a liar out of me on that point.  However - I like to try new things.  At a restaurant I can't order the same meal twice in a row, and at a bar or taproom, I can't order the same beer twice in a row.  For this reason, my beer list looks nearly completely random.  I've tried making a variety of wheat beers, Belgian abbey ales, porters, stouts, sours, pumpkin beer, winter warmers, etc.  There are very few repeats, and even those are not quite identical.  Lets call that "recipe development."  I like to keep one foot in uncharted territory at all times.