first beer you ever brewed?

[tripplehazzard]

My first beer I brewed was a saison from an extract kit I ordered from Williams brewing... what was yours?

 

[Nightshade]

All grain Amber ale

 

[Coupleathree]

Moose drool extract clone from Northern Brewer. Made me never look back. AG now, but I still loved that first brew! :rockin:

 

[MaxStout]

Trappist ale extract kit from Midwest. It took a while to start tasting good, but after several months in bottles it was very tasty.

I would brew an AG version of that.

 

[Billy-Klubb]

it was an American Stout. I flocced up all over the place, being a cocky 20 y/o. it was downright nasty. 14 years later, I'm a bit better. hahahhahaaha!!!!

 

[unionrdr]

The Cooper's OS Lager kit that came with my Microbrew fermenter kit. Traded all my Cooper's PET bottles to a member in WY for his 6G BB. Still using the Microbrew FV & have spare parts as well. It's a great fermenter.
Here's a pic of that first brew,Jan '11;
http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PA1_zpsa8362465.jpg.html] [/URL]

 

[tripplehazzard]

Moose drool extract clone from Northern Brewer. Made me never look back. AG now, but I still loved that first brew! :rockin:

I still remember. That first brew tasted the best!!

 

[unionrdr]

Even my wife beamed a great smile as we sat in front of the comp to watch videos & drink some homebrews. I was perk as a ruttin buck that it came out good. She actually liked it! She def seemed to like a bit maltier beers rather than bitter/hoppy.

 

[DubBrew]

A Brewers Best Wit Beer that my wife bought me (along with a starter kit). I someone managed to kill the yeast and had to repitch some more. The beer was awful. My next beer (American Amber) was way better.:rockin:

 

[littletommy]

I did the American Wheat extract kit from Northern Brewer. It was amazing, and I've brewed the same kit 2 more times since then, both with great results. I'd rather drink that particular beer more than just about any other commercial or craft brew.

 

[Coupleathree]

I'd rather drink that particular beer more than just about any other commercial or craft brew.

I definitely agree with this. Especially with IPA's and whatnot, you know how fresh the brews you made are! The taste of those beers, IMO, are extraordinary. Don't get me wrong, I love drinking commercial brews here and there, but nothing compares to something I've made.

 

[krackin]

Jan. or Feb. 1973.

2 cans Blue Ribbon malt extract, 5 lbs. cane sugar and 2 Fleishman's yeast cakes with 5 gallons of water, no boil. Aeration was done trying to dissolve the fermentables in cold water. Cost, almost 5 bucks. A case of Bud was $5.10 back then, or 1.35 a rack. A pack of Camels was .35. I gave up the Bud and Camels long, long ago. I don't recall what gas was. 7 bone chuck was .19 a lb. Anyway....

Our fermenter was a 6 gallon crock with a wooden cover. Ferment temp was scientifically controlled in a cold closet seldom over 60* (cracking the door if needed) to the best of our knowledge but probably got over that.

We skimmed the krausen back then. Bottled at two weeks, no priming and hoped for the best. Never a bottle bomb but a few gushers. We learned how to open 'em in short order. Bottles were long neck returnables we got from a local beer joint.

 

[Trox]

An amber ale kit that came with my starter kit; think it was a true Brew or something like that.

 

[Brewmex41]

A pale ale kit that came with my Mr beer kit. My first post Mr beer kit was a clone of Widmer Drop Top amber ale. I rushed the crap out of it and it faintly resembled the original lol.

 

[jonmohno]

Ive answered this question a few times before and Ill answer it again. I brewed an extract/ patial mash amber with willamette hops some crystal 20 or 60, 1 gal batch with 04 dry yeast I think, I fermented way too high and it remided me of wine, my 2 gallon bucket wreaked of fruit- I thought that was bad at the time, and I really think now that it was yeast esters mostly. Any way I was disapointed with the beer, I do think I had old extract as well, but it aged ok into a mediocre ok beer after about a year. My second beer wasnt that good either but it was twice better than my first. That was an amarillo wheat beer which maybe was better than I think it was then. After that the beers kept getting better the more I learned although Ive still made plenty of mistakes (and still do) along the way. Writing your whole process down really helps though. I would say though- through my few years of brewing Ive made ok-great beers just like you find commercially and that is really through trial and error of ingredients and personal preference really.

 

[Hackwood]

Brewer's Best American Amber. It was very very very good.

 

[scutly]

true brew irish stout that tasted absolutely delicious and got me hooked on brewing

 

[danielofthedale]

Extract w/Steeping Grains Newcastle Brown Ale clone from the LHBS. Outside of the cleaning and sanitizing I don't think I did a dang thing right. The beer came out tasting fairly awful. However the fact that is was a colossal disaster only made me want to brew a batch that much more and fix the problems. Now its one of my favorites things do!

 

[m3n00b]

Mr Beer West Coast Pale Ale. The most flavorless beer I ever tasted. Now I make awesome IPAs with too much flavor.

 

[roastquake]

For my wedding gift, my FIL gave me a starter kit and an IPA extract kit and the Everything Homebrewing book from the closest HBS to us. BetMar Liquid Hobby Shop in Columbia, SC. I was so incredibly excited about it, I read the book a couple of times so I didn't screw up at all, and it turned out awesome! Sucks I can't replicate the recipe, the shop is secretive about the recipe (they don't give finishing hops or specialty malt blend) and they are pretty expensive. Oh well, I know how to make good IPAs now!

 

[Pugnax88]

Brewer's Best American Amber. It was very very very good.

Same for me, I think it came out pretty good. Still got a couple kicking around.

 

[LLBeanJ]

All-grain amber ale. I was going for something along the lines of Fat Tire. In the end, it wasn't even close to Fat Tire, but it was still pretty tasty. I received a lot of compliments on that brew.

 

[Hello]

A hefeweizen. Figuring I'd be overwhelmed, I asked for the easiest beer I could brew. That was it. It didn't go badly but it fermented hot so it was extra citrusy.

 

[tankmech]

First brew I did was a ref ale from brewers best. Turned out really good. But getting better the longer it sits in bottles.

 

[h-bar]

My LHBS sells their own kits. I chose a dunkelweizen. It turned out great, and it got a few of my friends drunk!

 

[dyqik]

In this incarnation of brewing, an Edgar Allen Porter extract+steeping grains kit from my LHBS. recipe

In the previous brewing incarnation, on another continent (i.e. in the UK), an all grain bitter of some kind at my friends house, using a bucket in a bucket mash tun, a tea urn as a HLT and an electric keggle. Got to love having >3kW available from any socket in the house...

 

[TimelessCynic]

First beer i made was from this instructable below. I owe the author a heavy dose of gratitude because it was soo easy to make with his instructions. And got me started on a great hobby. It was not a kit so i didnt get stuck using kit equipment and kept on building new stuff.

http://m.instructables.com/id/Make-Beer/

 

[peterj]

For my wedding gift, my FIL gave me a starter kit and an IPA extract kit and the Everything Homebrewing book from the closest HBS to us. BetMar Liquid Hobby Shop in Columbia, SC. I was so incredibly excited about it, I read the book a couple of times so I didn't screw up at all, and it turned out awesome! Sucks I can't replicate the recipe, the shop is secretive about the recipe (they don't give finishing hops or specialty malt blend) and they are pretty expensive. Oh well, I know how to make good IPAs now!

They don't tell you the recipe even after you buy it? So you never know what's in the beer you made? They sound like jerks!

My first was a Brewer's Best extract Smoked Porter kit. I didn't know anything about fermentation temperature so it probably got way hotter than it should have. Had some weird esters going on in that one. I actually think I might still have a bottle of it buried in my closet. I'll have to give it another try. Maybe years of conditioning has made it awesome! Probably not though...

 

[bhanson]

1984. Brewed from a kit a friend's uncle gave him. In a trashcan lined with a clean bag. Bottled in Coke twist offs. Bad, but it was beer.

 

[firestem4]

A partial mash American style Hefe w/ Orange peel. Oh that was a good beer

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

1990, a Bock made from a kit (manufacturer is now long forgotten, at least by me). It wasn't a bad setup, as it happens; the kit included both unhopped LME and specialty malts, making it unusual for the time, and the hop pellets were reasonable quality. Mind you, I'd been reading about homebrewing for at least a year and a half at that point, having found and readily devoured a copy of CJHB, 2nd ed., in early 1989. Curiously, I had had little interest in beer or drinking until I found that book, which appealed to me as much from a Biology standpoint as anything else.

While I had done some all-grain brewing by 1993, I was out of the hobby (mostly) for fifteen years, though I kept up with reading about it the whole time. When I got back into it, I used a Brewer's Best Brown Ale kit to test things out before jumping back into designing my own recipes. In retrospect, I pushed my way back into AG a bit too quickly; had I thought it through, I would have built a fermentation chamber and gotten my yeast starter equipment first, and I would have used a 10 gallon cooler for my MLT from the start rather than trying to use a 5 gallon cooler.

 

[Dmlsys23]

An oatmeal stout. Tried boiling 6 gallons of water on a stovetop, wound up with 4 gallons of wort when the boil ended 3 hours later. Had the lid blow off of my fermenter and then bottled without the wand because I didn't know what it did. Still tasted good to me but I'm betting it was oxidized and overly boozy. Aaah, good times!

 

[dpatrickv]

Coconut black IPA all grain recipe that I created myself.

 

[Blueflint]

Paradise Brewing Flat Tire...Fat Tire clone.

 

[ChuBru]

a partial mash amber ale..had no clue about temp control..it was horrible..hot alcohols and harsh..still drank the bastards though