With great sadness, I sold my mash tun and fermentation chamber today. Both were projects, especially the chiller, which took my father and I two weekends to complete. It was a glorious chamber and the guy who bought it got it for less than the cost of materials. Surely he will pass it on to another aspiring brewer some day. My reasons have been multifactorial:
1. Moving to a small apt and all my gear takes up half a garage
2. Pretty hard on my back
3. Led to too much drinking
4. Takes a ton of time
5. The output:investment is decent, but when you factor in the time, it's not frugal by any means
6. For some reason, despite having 3-4 years of experience and many amazing beers, both in esoteric and common recipes, I had a series of really oxidized batches that puzzled me and stunted my ambition
7. Fridge space, conditioning space, brewing space
8. Nowadays, there is SO much good beer on the market, with new brewpubs opening constantly
9. Other interests to pursue. While I tried to keep things simple, ultimately I found pressure to pitch on this day or bottle on that day, or rotate this and that and the other, and it just became too consuming. I think I can explore 2 or 3 new hobbies with the time freed up from no longer brewing.
My biggest downsides and bummer-inducers about quitting:
1. I doubt I'll ever see a brewery large or small making Mosher's Maple Buckwheat beer, which was fantastic and fun to produce
2. Grabbing beers before heading to a party and impressing everybody with no preplanned effort
3. The satisfaction of the process
4. Not making ALL those recipes I'd wanted to make
Whenever I finally buy a house, I suspect I will make a return, or at least think really really hard about it. For now, I can look back happily knowing that brewing opened a whole new world to me that led to club participation, endless chatting with other brewers and beer nerds, awesome inspiring books, visits to London, Belgium, Portland, and 19 breweries on a recent CA/OR road trip, a true love for sours, an excitement when I see a new small brewery opening up and fulfilling a brewer's dream and benefitting the community, an understanding of different grains I would never think about (spelt? kasha?) using in brewing or cooking, and the satisfaction of finally popping a top or cap and having a first taste of a new batch and thinking "Wow! This is so good! And I made it."
Happy brewing out there guys, and thanks for all the knowledge.