What got you in to homebrew?

[LeeH]

My parents making wine when I was young. I started on wine then a Geordie beer kit in a pressure barrel. Then things got a bit out of hand.

 

[RichK]

Got given a Wilko starter kit (20 pint real ale type one) as a "joke" Christmas present a couple of years ago. Realised that making something drinkable (& ultimately a little bit different) isn't really that difficult.

 

[prog99]

Folks made wine in the 80s as we used to have loads of fruit trees and dad did plenty of kits. When I got my own place in the mid 90s and a few months out of work I started up on boots kits. Surprisingly I don't remember anything too bad about my early efforts.
And then the usual slippery slope of malt extract recipes and one dat I got shown how much easier than I realised a full mash was.

 

[Mavroz]

Was talked into it / challenged to try doing it by friends....

200+ bottles later, they have realised I don't do things by halves.

 

[Graz]

My Dad did home brew since I could remember and probably quite a bit before that. I'm sure he did some AG at some stages, remember he had a Burco boiler, but in the later years he was mainly kit brewing beer as well as some wine. I took an interest and helped him with some of it as well as drinking it.

When I went off to Uni in an effort to save cash I bought a Boots starter kit which was later added to with a few bits my Dad had spare such as a pressure barrel. The beer was okay and fine for us students to get a bit p*ssed on before heading out somewhere for the evening. Kind of kept it going from then on though I've probably gone for stints of several years not making any. In the last few years I've been keeping a steady supply going and invested in some additional equipment like brew fridges etc. Also done a bit of wine and cider which I'd never bothered with before.

I'll start making AG one of these days but at the moment time is constrained by the kids, wife and work.

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
I tried a Boots cider kit many moons ago, and that was enough to convince me that home brew was not going to produce a decent product.
A couple of years ago a lot of homebrew equipment and kits appeared at a local auction; no-one was bidding, so, on a whim, I got them for a song.
Each week, more kits and equipment appeared, so I snapped them up. My first brew was awesome, and I was hooked.
Later I was seduced by the Dark Side, and I've been in its thrall ever since.

 

[cushyno]

35 years ago my Father and Grandfather used to regularly brew the Geordie bitter kits and do bottle swaps (for what it was worth, I guess they all tasted pretty much the same). My Grandfather also produced a few decent bottles of wine from what I was told.

In my late 20's early 30's I rediscovered my parents tattered copy of C.J.J.Berry's 'First Steps In Winemaking' and became enthused by hedgerow wines - blackberry, elderberry, elderflower, apple, dandelion, most of which tasted poor, but there was an occasional decent one (a ginger wine and a sultana sherry came out well). Anyway, apart from sporadic opportunistic brews (one notable binge drinking period followed a bountiful harvest from my in-laws small orchard and the 30l of apple wine it produced), I all but gave up. The appeal of making something from nothing and using natures resources was hampered (as I now look back) by no temperature control, using basic yeasts and relying heavily on bags of caster sugar for upping the gravity, so the wines never got any better.

Roll forward about 12 years... A colleague of mine got into extract brewing briefly and so I began to collect my used beer bottles for him. The bottles mounted up in my garage as aforementioned colleague moved house and couldn't take them off my hands. As the bottle collection grew it reached tipping point earlier this year - bin 'em or use 'em. I decided to put the bottles and old wine making kit to good use with the purchase of a couple of decent kits as an experiment.

The kits were an amazing success. I was astonished that real beer could be produced at home that was not just drinkable, but almost pleasant!

This site being a treasure trove of info when I researched which kits to buy, I decided to read on....

The rest is history. I now have 5 all grain brews under my belt and so far (fingers crossed) each has tasted better than the last. A new chapter has begun...

 

[MickDundee]

I went on a few brewery tours and was interested by the process and thought I fancied a go. There was a massive home brewing thread on a football forum I post on (@Wilfy and @DoctorMick were both regulars on it) and reading that persuaded me to give it a go. I asked my parents for a Wherry starter kit for my birthday in 2015. My first brew was ready to drink the night my son was born!

After 3 kit brews a stumbled across an ad on Gumtree for BIAB equipment. It turned out the woman selling’s husband had died 18 months earlier and she wanted his stuff to go to someone who would appreciate it. I managed to get a boiler, bags, chiller, some 2 year old grain and a load of bottles in crates for £25.

I’ve never looked back, although the boiler blew up a halfway through my 3rd brew (was replaced by an Ace boiler for my birthday a couple of months later) and my chiller pipe snapped after 18 months of use but it was perfect for sending me down the rabbit hole.

I move house in (hopefully) a fortnight and will have a utility room (so no more taking up the whole kitchen on brewday) and a garage (Giving me the ability to have a brewfridge), neither of which we have at the moment, so it can only be a matter of time before I move on to corney kegs.

 

[Bigcol49]

it can only be a matter of time before I move on to corney kegs.

Hi!
Once you are seduced by the Dark Side, you get sucked in deeper and deeper.
When you get cornies you'll soon be researching fermenting under pressure and shelling out on a fermentasaurus.

 

[MickDundee]

Hi!
Once you are seduced by the Dark Side, you get sucked in deeper and deeper.
When you get cornies you'll soon be researching fermenting under pressure and shelling out on a fermentasaurus.

I fancied a Fermentasaurus with my birthday money from a yeast harvesting perspective but at the time it was too tall for my brew cupboard and I bought one of the Spiedel 2 handled ones with the massive airlock instead along with a grain mill.

Ironically 2 weeks later we came into some inheritance and part-exchanged our house for a new build and I haven’t had a chance to use either. If I’d held off I maybe would have bought a Fermentasaurus instead when I got a brew fridge. The mill will come in handy though so I can’t say I regret my decision (yet).

 

[jceg316]

I got into homebrew because it's good to have a skill which will keep me alive in prison.

 

[Wilfy]

I went on a few brewery tours and was interested by the process and thought I fancied a go. There was a massive home brewing thread on a football forum I post on (@Wilfy and @DoctorMick were both regulars on it) and reading that persuaded me to give it a go. I asked my parents for a Wherry starter kit for my birthday in 2015. My first brew was ready to drink the night my son was born!

After 3 kit brews a stumbled across an ad on Gumtree for BIAB equipment. It turned out the woman selling’s husband had died 18 months earlier and she wanted his stuff to go to someone who would appreciate it. I managed to get a boiler, bags, chiller, some 2 year old grain and a load of bottles in crates for £25.

I’ve never looked back, although the boiler blew up a halfway through my 3rd brew (was replaced by an Ace boiler for my birthday a couple of months later) and my chiller pipe snapped after 18 months of use but it was perfect for sending me down the rabbit hole.

I move house in (hopefully) a fortnight and will have a utility room (so no more taking up the whole kitchen on brewday) and a garage (Giving me the ability to have a brewfridge), neither of which we have at the moment, so it can only be a matter of time before I move on to corney kegs.

Salad dodger has a few plonkies to his name!