Well hello there, BrewTalk.

[RhoadsRunner]

Hey everyone,

I'm new. Been brewing for about a year and a half now and just started to think seriously about really getting into it. I'm a Civil Engineering PhD student who loves beer. Until recently, my main tango with beer was mainly in the consumption department, but my friend gave me a mag (How to Homebrew, maybe?) and I became much more interested.

I've only done extract brewing so far (I live in a townhouse, am living on graduate student wages, and don't have the knowledge to go grain only). Started, probably as many of you did, with a couple of kits. Then I imitated the kits with my own ingredients bought from Stan, the local brew man. And now I'm "cloning" beers with my new buddy Smith, BeerSmith.

I've been reading the forum for a while now, and finally pulled the trigger on joining to up my knowledge. I'm looking to upgrade my setup to get some ash recirc action for a continuous splarge (saw this online the other day and about passed out: http://www.jackieboybrewing.com/), but I'll have to upgrade my living quarters and budget before anything like that happens!

Anyway, feels great to be part of the community. Hope to talk to you soon,

WjR

 

[fall-line]

Welcome to the forums! I suspect you'll be building all kinds of beer brewing awesomeness with that engineering mind of yours.

 

[Odin_Brews]

If worrying about your budget, you could take all that money you'll be throwing into extract and use it now to go all grain, in the long run you'll save!

Im also an engineer, beer gives me a home outlet to be a mad scientist! gotta love it!

 

[jerrodm]

Cheers mate, welcome to the party. And as for going AG, here are a few thoughts:

- If you've been brewing for a year and a half, you probably do know "enough" to go AG, although there is always more to learn. Don't let fear of the unknown keep you from giving it a go.
- But before you do, make sure you understand and have good control over your kettle-to-bottle process, by which I mean, among other things: yeast starters and pitching, aeration, fermentation period and temps (VERY important), secondary or not, cold crashing, racking and bottling or kegging. There are many different methods that people use for these, the important thing is to make sure that you have one that you're comfortable with and get good results from.

Once you've got those aspects of the process to a point where you're confident you can do them well and repeatably, AG is a great way to enrich your brewing experience and add some flexibility to what you brew. Plus, it's way cheaper than extract brewing, which will be easier on the grad student budget. And the amount of additional supplies it requires is, at least to get started, really quite minimal (search "BIAB" on these forums).

Glad you're here, and happy brewing!

 

[brewmastercontrols]

I started off as a student in an engineering school. Junior design project was a nano, senior design project was a revision to the nano brewery, then 15 years later I am still brewing. I just launched www.brewmastercontrols.com producing ready to brew out of the box HERMS and RIMS controllers.

Fun stuff... you post reminds me of myself 14 years ago...

 

[HawksBrewer]

am living on graduate student wages

Been there done that. It gets much better when the paychecks start coming in.

 

[RhoadsRunner]

Thanks for the nice comments, everyone. Getting ready to upgrade my bottling operation to kegging (what originally inspired me to join the forum).

Check it out here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/need-suggestions-frigidaire-2-keg-kegerator-diy-build-370120/

WjR