What Was Your Very First Brew?

[Brewtus]

I have been thinking about this for a while. It would be good to know where each brewer started, just to see how far people have come. Please also tell what reason you started, who influenced you, who if anyone taught you and how good was your first brew. They say if you first experience of something is good, you are more likely to stay with it. Is this true for brewing?

I will start. I never really thought I would ever take up home brewing even though I have loved beer for years. I have traveled a bit and tried beer all over the world, including Belgium, Germany and Britain. In 2005 we where building a house and the cash was a little tight. My wife was keen to cut lunches and cut costs where ever we could so we could spend it on the house. She said, once, why don't you look at home brewing, it must be cheaper. I was a little skeptical that I could make anything half decent and did not want to get stuck with tonnes of crappy beer I felt obliged to drink. I thought, as it is her idea, if it didn't work, I could give it away without loosing face.
I started asking some friends at work who I knew brewed their own and they where positive about it. I asked one friend what was the best starter kit and what would I need. He said, as he was soon to move overseas for a few years, he did not what to take or store his home brew kit so he sold it to me for $25. This was for the fermenter, bottle tree, 40 PET bottles, hydrometer, bench capper, Tooheys draft kit + enhancer, spoon, sugar hopper and detergent. Absolute bargain!
As we where renting at the time and the new house was not far off and it was summer, I did not start for a few months. in easter 06 we moved into the new home and I started brewing straight away. I made a tooheys draft that was past its use-by date with brew enhancer. Straight K&K. Of course I took lots of samples and tried out the hydrometer, tasted it and watched it like a new baby. I bottled it after about 5 days and tasted it 2 weeks lated. It tasted 'green' which I thought would go away with time but it didn't survive that long and probably never could. I now know it was due to the old kit primed with sugar and is known as 'twang'. Soon after I started looking on the internet to learn how to do it better and discover the wealth of knowledge available here. Never looked back. I can make beer better and cheaper that the mega swill my budget liked but still can't create, and with kits may never, create the great beers I have drunk in my life.

Who's next?

 

[schooey]

First ever brew was a Brewiser K&K kit that the wife bought me for Fathers day in 1990. Me and the brother in law decided we'd go in cahoots and make beer. Straight up can of goo, a kilo of white sugar and fermented at 28C with a fish tank warmer buried deep in it. We managed to let it condition in the bttle for 6 weeks before we tried it and I can still remember one of me mates coming over for dinner and saying "Wow, that's great, thats up there at Crowny standard..."... :lol: dear oh dear

First Partial was a wheat fermented with WB-06 that was rather urrrgh... First AG was a NS Summer Ale that put in the HAG Xmas swap. Next weekend will see the huge milestone of AG number 20

 

[kook]

Morgans Blue Mountain Lager with 1kg of Dextrose.

I simply wanted to make cheap beer - at the time I was drinking Hollandia ($15/carton on special IIRC).

How times have changed... I found Coopers, then not long after my first Belgian (Forbidden Fruit). I still kept making terrible kit beer for a while (poor sanitation and high percentage adjunct usage) till I found extract brewing and the West Coast Brewers.

Now I'm thousands of dollars out of pocket, have a garage full of crazy gadgets, have tasted in excess of 2500 different beers and have visited breweries on several continents. Terrible hobby isn't it? :lol:

 

[Doc]

Starter Kit for Xmas from the Mother in Law with a kit of Gold Rush Bitter from memory.
All distant memories
It was good and drinkable and I was over the moon with it. Had a long way to come though >P

Doc

 

[Adamt]

Ahhhh... Coopers HB Kit. I brewed a Coopers Lager of sorts, I called it "Adam's Vintage" because it was fruity, spicy and tasted alcoholic, just like coopers vintage. Though now I know that esters, phenolics and fusels have no place in a lager...

 

[Zwickel]

once, maybe 10 years ago, I visited relatives of mine in Mackay. Stood in front of a homebrewing shelf in Woolworth and was wondering how you Aussies are going to brew your own beer. Concluded, if the Aussies can do, I might be able to do as well. Grabbed a can of Coopers Lawn Mower and took it with me back home to Germany. But I couldnt get started, didnt know how to.
Next visit in Mackay, the same happened again, took another can of Coopers and a description how to do it.
Fortunately a couple of days later, a neighbor, was a homebrewer, invited me to assist him brewing his homebrew.

Back home, now I had two cans of Coopers, I started immediately and the result was positiv. The first positive impression kept me going.

What more should I say, I started searching the internet for like-minded people and voil, landed here and got infected.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[clean brewer]

My first brew was just the Coopers Lager that comes in the Micro Kit with the Brewing Sugar etc etc, IMHO it came out quite good actually and was much better than a couple of the ones I have done since.

This is my Story
My Step-dad brewed when I was quite young, not for long though as he reckoned the beer gave him bad head aches(by the sound of it alot of people had head aches from home brew back then, it seems to have come a long way now).

Anyhow, I didnt come across home brew again until I worked at a Restaurant and my Chef brewed his own beer and we would go over and try a whole lot of different varieties which I found very interesting but at the same stage, I was only 19-20 years old and thought xxxx was the ducks nuts. It ended there once we both left the Restaurant and I moved a distance away.

So, it was only this year at the start of March, I was at the local dumps recycling centre having a look around at the shit they had there and in the corner of my eye I spotted this massive pile of Tallie bottles(most were twist tops) and BINGO, I went home and said to my partner "Im getting a Home Brew Kit", I went back to the Recycling Centre the next time they were open and bought 120 Crown Seal Tallies for $12 bucks, next day, bought a Coopers kit from big w for $87 and was on my way.

GOOGLED Home Brewing and came across Oliver and Jeffs Forum and then this one and just started reading, 3rd brew was a fresh wort kit AG, once I tasted that, I was hooked on that flavour of the grain.

Since Mid March ive done 13 Brews, the last 4 have been Full Boil All Extract with Spec Grain, Hops etc and Small stove top boils Kits and they by far have been the best yet..
I have just put a hold on brewing at the moment as I have a stockpile of about 180 Tallies of beer, so in the meantime I have got the blessing to get a keg set-up and have been researching AG a bit and that will be my next step(just made my mash tun)..

Thats my story and Im proud to be making the step to Keg and do AG within say 9 months of brewing...

Cheers

 

[bconnery]

I moved to England for a few years and was determined to at least try the 'flat warm beer' as I didn't mind a brew.
One sip of a pint, Wadworth 6X as it happens, and I thought, 'bloody hell, this is nice'.
I spent three years trying all the different beers I could, enjoying beers from the UK, Europe etc., travelling to some great places and experiences...
Coming back my wife brought me a brew kit, the intention being that I could make the sort of beers, or at least attempt to, I had been enjoying, without the expense of buying them here in Aus...

The first brew was the Coopers Lager that came with the kit. No temp control or anything, luckily it was May. Probably was pretty bad but all I could taste was 'I made this'.
From there I was reading heaps, started adding hops and steeped grains etc.
Moved from there to extract and mini-mashes just from reading sites and books and was making some pretty good beer this way.
I was always a reader about beer styles and trying different beers so I was expirementing and making different beers right from early on.
From very early on I was caught by the process of creating the beers so AG was probably inevitable, the equipment just took a while to get going. the process didn't scare me, but the equipment did as I am not exactly super handy...

My wife got sick of hearing me talk about hops and yeast and searched around for a club and found this site and Babbs and it was all downhill from there.
The move to AG was mainly driven by the club and this site, as I saw various setups and saw that the equipment wasn't as scary as I thought.
Now here I am, 5 odd years since the first kit, 30 odd AG brews and quite a few kits and extracts under the belt.

I know my wife sometimes regrets it ever so slightly, or at least pretends too

Influences?
My wife. Bought me the first kit.
My wife. Found this site and Babbs...
Anyone who's posted a pic of their brew system...
My wife. Organised my first keg setup after I inherited a keg fridge...(Thanks for paying it forward there Jye!)
Honourable mentions to all the guys at Babbs and the swaps. Always great to hang out and drink beer with people who share and understand the obsession
Ross at craftbrewer. Before his store I just thought that some varities of hops were brown, such was the storage at my LHBS...
This site in general but I'll make special mention of goatherder for his brilliant step by step detailed instructions for setting up a kettle etc. with a tap. Even a relatively unhandy person was able to setup their own brew system following them

 

[Simon W]

My 1st was a Wander Premium Draught, came with the Wander kit I bought as an 18th birthday present to myself.
Brewday was ?
Bottling day was 10/4/93.
OG = ?
FG = 1004
I got 22x 750ml Kingies and 7x 375 stubbies.

2nd brewday was Wander Premium Lager on 10/4/93..... Bottling day for above, Jeez I was keen.
3rd brewday, Coopers Real Ale, 17/5/93.
4th brewday, IHS Emu Export clone :huh:.... what the hell was I thinking?!, date unknown.

Only 11 years later, I had idea's to try again after having a few Little Creatures Pale Ales, but, a mate handed me a stubby of his IPA he did at one of those Brew-On-Premises places, that was it, I was hooked.... again:

Somewhere around this time I joined Grumpy's and visited AHB forums.
5th brewday, Coopers Stout, 3/12/04
6th, Coopers Original Pale Ale, 10/1/05
7th, Coopers Stout + Steeped grain + DME, 21/10/05
8th, 1st AG, Oktoberfest/Mrzen, Saf 34/70 Lager yeast, 9/12/05
etc etc....
Jan '06, joined AHB, left Grumpy's

Can remember a few of those first brews were shockers, but when you're 18 and partying, who cares?, cheap piss!

 

[Offline]

My mother bought my then step father a home brew kit for a gift, I cant remember the occasion.
Anyway he never used it. So almost a year later, at age 16, I thinks it cant be that hard Ill use it (with mums permission of course).
So it was a, at least, 12 month old Draft kit. Im not even sure what brand it was, but I think it was like Coles or similar, and it came in a bag not a can (anyone remember the bags).
Add some table sugar and off you go. I cant remember how it tasted, I was not a fan of beer back then (come to think of it Im still not a fan of the beers that were available back then, my step father was a VB man and probably still is).

Anyway Im still brewing so it mustnt have been all bad.

Offline

 

[warra48]

My daughter and son bought me a BrewCraft setup for my birthday. These were among my first few brews.
1. Munich lager with 1 kg of No. 15, S23 yeast at 28C with a hallertauer tea bag. Wasn't real good. Lesson was temperature control.
2. JS amber ale clone. S04 yeast and cluster teabag. This one actually turned out very nice, and not dissimilar to the real thing tasted next to it.
3. LCPA clone with a Muntons kit, S04 and Cascade teabag. This also was quite drinkable, but nothing like LCPA.
4. A strong porter, English Bitter kit, Muntons Gold yeast, Fuggles and Goldings teabags. Drank nicely over about a year.
5. A stout. Turned out too sweet, and I didn't really enjoy it. Lesson, don't use 500 gr dry corn syrup.
8. Was a disaster using all dry malt extract, POR flowers, and recultured Coopers yeast.

Eventually I moved into brewing with extract and buying quality hops from Ross. The quality of the beers improved.

Made the move into AG last year, and haven't looked back since. I've learned heaps on this and other forums, although I think we need to pick and choose what information we take on board.

 

[peas_and_corn]

I got a gift certificate of $50 for my 18th birthday, and I decided to get a HB kit. I had been considering it for a while at that point- I enjoy beer, several people I knew were doing it (this has really been cut down to one due mainly to indifference- and that bloke brews AG with me ) and I thought 'what the hey'. So I bought the kit- with fermenter, coopers pale ale can, spoon, hydrometer, the PET bottles, and that *wonderful* video with AHB's Mercs Own on it. My first batch was just awful- most likely infected (I didn't know what infections tasted like, but I think it was) and tasting just horrible. Must be the 28C fermentation temperatures didn't help too much either

So I became disheartened. I didn't brew for three years, my kit firmly sitting at the bottom of my cupboard. Christmas before my 21st birthday, however, I got a capper from my mother. I'm not sure why she bought it- well, I know one reason is that it was on special, but there were a few times when she was encouraging me to get back into the beer making. So I did, and I did some research into everything. I went to my LHBS and asked a thousand questions- the usual noob questions that everyone has to ask when they start. I learned about sanitation, fermentation temperatures, and the like. I found this forum, which has taught me a lot about brewing.

Brew two (this was a reboot of sorts but I didn't want to use the number 1 again ) was another pale ale. This one was drinkable, which made me happy. I also bottled in glass, after scrounging around at friends' places to get enough stubbies. The quality improved from then on, going from K&K to extract to partials and finally AG. Today I will make batch 50, no small credit given to the people here and the help all you guys have given me *cue family comedy AWWWWW*

 

[Whistlingjack]

There used to be a store on William St in Perth called "Hopper's". Next door to the old Ginger's night club. (Doesn't anyone remember?)

I went there with my best mate who had been brewing for a few months and stocked up on malt extract, crushed grain and hop flowers, enough for a Munich dunkel.

On the day, my mate came over with several bottles of his latest and set about educating me on the brewing process. I remember a boil-over, a blood nose from too much sodium metabisulphate and a very nice beer in the end.

I made a few more beers this way, before discovering the ease of Cooper's cans.

WJ

 

[Dave86]

In first year of uni, I'm not sure how it came up, the guys I moved in with in second year and I decided we should give it a go. One of my mates borrowed his old mans brew gear, complete with heat box and we put down a coopers pale ale with be2 followed by a brigalow cider kit. Both were a bit ordinary so we started using the fermenter to mix up big batches of punch for parties and gave up on it.

12 months later I bought a tooheys dark ale kit at k-mart on special thinking "wow, nine bucks, who cares how it tastes" When I went to get the homebrew gear my mate said he'd taken it back to his dad :angry: "shit, what am I gonna do with this? I suppose I'll fork out the sixty bucks for a homebrew kit form big-w" Luckily my house mates were very supportive of the idea of me homebrewing, so much so that we paid for all the ingredients with our communal money. The first brew was murky brown, no detectable hops, not very flavoursome, but drinkable, especially to five uni students! I think I learnt more about beer and brewing (mostly thanks to AHB) in the second semester of uni than I did about pharmaceutics, genetics and microbiology! nine brews in the space of four months went from drinkable K&K to fairly tasty partials. (with a few well learned lessons along the way)

My mates liked the partials but wanted to know why the beer was costing more, so that arrangement ended. Come third year of uni I went AG, bought kegs, bought more fermenters, brewed a shitload of beer and now I can't wait to finish uni this year so I can afford to upgrade the kegs, the brewery and most of all the quality of the beer

Thanks to everyone here for all the advice and pilfered recipes and australia post for never losing my precious orders from all the site sponsors (and some who aren't....)

Cheers

Edit:grammar

 

[braufrau]

i decided that we had to save money so I told HWMBO that there would be no more premium beers, put SWMBO in the pusher and went to the local woollies and told my 2 y.old to choose a kit! Coopers pale ale I think and a bag of BE. $13 I seem to recall was the total.
HWMBO showed me how to warm the kit so I could pour it into the fermenter! Sophisticated stuff.
He also dutifully drank it. Fortunately for him I wasn't satisfied with the result.

 

[Weizguy]

My first brew was a K&K Coopers Real Ale, brewed with a (then) mate, who needed someone to help with the bottling.
We made a few batches, of which he drank most...didn't appeal that much to me.

After he shot through, subsequent to some dirty dealings with both me and his employer, I kept the brew gear but did not brew for about a year. I made a few batches, but they didn't make much of an impression on me, and the brew kit was relegated again. Had a bit of time out, in between houses (between rental and buying) and didn't brew while staying at my parent's house with my young family.

After moving to the current Teninch Brewery on God's Own Swamp, I settled in and started brewing again for real.
First one was a Goldrush Wheat beer with 1 kg of dextrose. Not what I was really after, but quite nice enough.

With the assistance of some quality literature (Ausbeer magazine, All About beer, Malt Advocate - in order of preference) and a local brew shop in Hunter Street (long gone), I started to experiment with extract beers, liquid yeasts and types of extract.

Without rabbiting on too much beyond the scope of this topic, I got a prize at a brew comp, my lhbs closed and I discovered a new lhbs, renewed enthusiasm, tried new kits and bits (as well as continuing the great extract beers I was making), moved to AG within a year of finding AHB, and I'm now a very happy brewer. [Edit: due to a lot of continuing encouragement and support from the lhbs. Cheers, Mark for the Jagermeister when I won the BoS at the 2006 NSW comp].

BTW, I still get slack and make an occasional infected beer, but now most of the infections are deliberate (and tasty).

Oh yeah, and I still like to spruik beer here and elsewhere, and do the beer evangelist thing. Testify! :beerbang:

 

[Jazzafish]

It all started with a Coopers beer kit on sale in Kmart. Mixed a tin of goo with the kilo of dextrose that came with it... Following Merc's Own instructions on the video that also came with it!!! Out of date yeast fermented at ambient 20 to 30*C!!!

Tasted like a beer flavoured soda water. So i went to a local home brew store and after a sales pitch I tried a few steeped grain recipes with better yeast... which improved the beer but still nothing special.

Found www.howtobrew.com and this forum... then dove into the deep end with AG brewing. My first AG brew (real brew h34r: ) was a flawless fluke! Hit all temps and target gravities. Smooth sparge, and controlled healthy ferment. Beer quality was exactly what I was after. I was thinking "How easy is this! What are all these blokes on about with all the things that can go wrong!" However... in the next few brews I learnt a few of the issues a brewer can face... missed temps, boil overs, stuck sparges and recipes that should have had more or less hops/specialty malt etc. Took me back to earth but a great learning curve.

 

[0M39A]

First brew was a coopers lager can and 1kg of dextrose. fermented during summer, no idea how hot it got. i loved it though, thats for sure.

coopers homebrew kit

got into brewing because i was a poor uni student, and i wanted to make cheap beer. same story as so many other people

next brew after that was a coopers stout, with brew enhancer no. 2 i remember that being much better (probably just due to the dark beer masking the off flavours)

did plenty of kits and kilos this way. i remember i never used to steralize bottles after each batch, just give them a rinse in hot water, they'll be right! every second batch with sodium metabisulphate will do it! lol.

was using pet bottles, but i dont recall ever having an infected bottle or overcarbonated or anything. guess i just got lucky.

my how things change.

 

[mika]

A Coopers Brewmaster Pilsner kit, with a Safale yeast I'm pretty sure. Still have fond memories of that one.

When I first moved to the big smoke I stayed with my cousin and her fiance. He was a homebrewer, KnK, and I loved the smell of the bubbling fermentor and the cheap drinkable beer as a poor Uni student.
It was many years later before I decided to buy my own, had been meaning to for ages as my consumption of Hahn Ice and Tooheys New was at best, excessive And brewing in a one bedroom apartment seemed like too much hassle. So met the missus, we moved out into a rental house and I visted the local Homebrewing store. $125 later I had a fermentor, capper, and all the usual crap as well as that first tin. It fortunately fermented at a relatively cool 22-24degs.
The next couple of kits were OK, but I wanted better beer, so started surfing the net (another new thing at home for me) and found plenty of american sites talking about grain, wtf ?, Why would you go to all that hassle when you can make it from a can ?, so refined my search to something a little more Australian to learn more about the can. It's been a downwards spiral since then

 

[Muggus]

Ah yes of course...like alot of others I started off with a KMart bought Coopers brewing kit in 2003, fresh out of high school. Started brewing the Lager that came with a mate and followed Merc's Own video intently...still have tape! The lager turned out typically watery and skunky, all bottled in 750ml PET bottles. I decided to keep one for 'extended aging'. 9 months down the track I drank the bottle, and it tasted like floor polish! :icon_vomit:

Anyway, my mate and I continued intently following instructions that came with various kits for the next few years. We branched out and used "body brew" instead of dextrose, and then DME.
Eventually we end up branching out as far as beer consupmption goes, discovering the likes of LCPA and Belgian ales, and it occured to me "We can make something like that!"
So our next brew was a Morgans Blue Mountain lager with 1kg of Morgans Caramalt extract and a Cascade hop teabag. Turned out reasonably decent, yet I was still not satisfied.

By about brew 10 we were finally made a beer of note! A Chimay Bleu-style strong dark ale, using WLP 500 yeast. Simple recipe, but the yeast made this beer fantastic!
From then on, I've totally disregarding any 'instructions' that came with kits, then worked my way up to extracts and partials, trying as many different yeasts, hops, malts I can possibly get my hands on...and here I am making beers I never thought were possible. :icon_cheers: