How long have you been brewing for?

[Clint]

Done a bit when I was about 15...mainly Boots and Tom Caxton kits. Then didn't bother til about 4 years ago..I think!

 

[Obadiah Boondoggle]

Yeah, I can do this!

1, 2, 3, 4, ... 37, 38 ... em, okay this is getting a bit hard. I'll come back later.

You are getting hard counting numbers? What does your psychiatrist say about this? Have you forgotten to take the bromide?

 

[Obadiah Boondoggle]

OB
You're probably younger than me

Best not to go there

 

[ppsmith]

6 years for me. Started with a dozen kits before switching to all grain in late 2014. Since then the logs say I’ve done 45 brews, with a big chunk of those being in the last year. Think I might be starting to get the hang of it now.

 

[Redgrave_3]

6 years for me. Started with a dozen kits before switching to all grain in late 2014. Since then the logs say I’ve done 45 brews, with a big chunk of those being in the last year. Think I might be starting to get the hang of it now.

Yeah I feel like I’m qualified to repeat a lot of the same advice I’ve read over the past five years but how much is folklore idk. @strange-steve water treatment thread(s) make sense and I’m only now starting to implement.

 

[fury_tea]

I had to estimate on the odd one but up to now I count 560 years experience between us! Talk about showing your age you lot!

 

[Theoriginalrich]

Apart from a couple of false starts a few years ago I started during lockdown#1. Steadily getting better and finally brewing stuff I can give to friends and neighbours and feel good about it.

 

[MrRook]

My first batch was in 1998. My first published article was in 2014.

 

[damienair]

I’m a newbie, started my first kit brew on the 7th of December, so just a few weeks ago. My first kit came with my starter set up, I loved the process, enjoyed it and now I’m drinking my first brew. It turned out great. My second brew is conditioning in the garage since yesterday. A Coopers Wheat kit. I’ll be bottling a Pinot Grigio wine kit on Tuesday. And I have 2 kits ready to go after that. I don’t know where my brewing journey will go. I’ll pimp some kits for a while. But so far so good. Learning a lot from this forum.

 

[Gerryjo]

Brewed beer and wine from kits for a couple of years 89/90 then stopped only returning about 4 1/2 years ago going straight to AG with a stovetop kit though have brewed some kits along the way and some concoctions as well.

 

[foxy]

Either 11 or 12 years, brewing seriously about 3 or 4 years. I think that is the most important time scale. Taking a real interest in brewing the best beer you possibly can. Is this possible, no, the next beer is going to be the best, which goes on infinitely. The best beer will always be the next, like a dog chasing its tail. Satisfaction in ones own endeavors for perfection will never be achieved. Fortunately a human trait which has driven us to where we are today

 

[Torshon]

Started in 2016 did directors, then moved straight to AG, been doing that since, got a GF this year and 2 fridges, took me 3 yrs to discover Campden tablets!

 

[RockTKaz]

First brewer kits about 8 years ago for 2 years or so, grew a little bored of the range at the time. About 18 months ago moved to a house with a bit more space and tried kits again, after about 3 goes started reading about extract and AG decided on AG and have been going for about a year

 

[Graz]

On and off for a bit over 30 years. Kicked off in my second year at Uni when we had a rented house with a Boots starter kit for some cheap booze before going out. Before that I had helped my Dad with the odd brew just to learn what to do and drank a fair bit of his home brew

 

[fury_tea]

I forgot to mention. I had a flutter with homebrew 10 or so years ago. I made cider from apples I gathered from my allotment, plum wine from plums from the allotment and ginger ale that I put about 20 lemons in, thinking it would taste lemonade with ginger. All were augmented by lashings of white sugar and all about 8-15% and tasted like the infamous 'rocket fuel' that everyone imagines when they hear you are involved with homebrew.

If you mixed it with lemonade and took big gulps with your eyes closed you could usually get it down without being sick.

 

[ChrisT]

Started with Boots kits in the 80s, beer and wine. Made some wine from fruits and flowers from the Boots brewing book (which I just found on the book shelf), which were with hindsight disgusting. Found a local wine circle and received advice that pointed me in the right direction for making country/hedgerow wines.

Then for reasons we can't explain I took a 20 year sabatical and returned to wine making just over a year ago just before anyone had heard of Coronavirus, after browsing for ESP8266 projects and found the iSpindel. Now regreting the lost time, as are the rest of the family!

So overall about 20 years.


Chris

 

[CD]

All hail the Coffin Dodger you must have some genuine Victorian recipes

I don’t think you’d try the recipe for making beer that my Dad was given, and which I copied. As far as I can recall the ingredients to make 5 gallons were:- 3 jars of Boots Malt Extract (without cod liver oil), 1 tin of Tate & Lyles Golden Syrup, 1 tin of Black Treacle (optional), 4 bags of Granulated Sugar, 4 oz Hops (unspecified) and 2oz Baker’s Yeast! The hops were sold by Boots for making Hop Tea, an aid for insomnia.

 

[Cwrw666]

I don’t think you’d try the recipe for making beer that my Dad was given, and which I copied. As far as I can recall the ingredients to make 5 gallons were:- 3 jars of Boots Malt Extract (without cod liver oil), 1 tin of Tate & Lyles Golden Syrup, 1 tin of Black Treacle (optional), 4 bags of Granulated Sugar, 4 oz Hops (unspecified) and 2oz Baker’s Yeast! The hops were sold by Boots for making Hop Tea, an aid for insomnia.

It's easy to shake ones head in wonder at some of these old recipes, but just imagine what our own brews would be like if there were no homebrew suppliers. No kits, no malt, no proper hops, no yeast other than bakers etc. etc.

 

[Mick_Brews]

Only been brewing around 3 months, jumped straight in with AG with a Peco kettle. 3 batches up to now, but going to have a try with adjusting the water profile on the next batch and see if I can improve the beer quality

 

[CD]

It's easy to shake ones head in wonder at some of these old recipes, but just imagine what our own brews would be like if there were no homebrew suppliers. No kits, no malt, no proper hops, no yeast other than bakers etc. etc.

And that's exactly how it was before the 1963 budget. Believe me - I was there!