Your First Batch

[TmC]

Interested to see how many people had a decent first brew? What they used and how they got into brewing etc.

TmC

 

[donburke]

Interested to see how many people had a decent first brew? What they used and how they got into brewing etc.

TmC

my first brew was put on in the heat of summer without any temp control,

i was inspired to brew my own after returning to sydney from a tassie holiday that included a tour of the cascade and boag breweries

the brew was a k&k brewcraft munich lager with some proprietary blend of dex, maltodextrine and dried malt with the kit yeast

this was supposed to be a heineken style

tasted like absolute crap

it took me 6 brews to finally get a brew that was drinkable

 

[TmC]

Hmm sounds a bit like the one im about to bottle. Any tips?

 

[donburke]

Hmm sounds a bit like the one im about to bottle. Any tips?

keep at it, read, learn what improves your brewing;

temp control, sanitation, yeast choice, ingredients choice

 

[chrisherberte]

1st brew Coopers Lager with the Brewing kit, 1kg sucrose. Don't remember much but was not impressed. 2nd brew however was Coopers Stout K&K as mate suggested and was shit hot. I've not done a Cooper's Stout since but can still taste it (or remember the taste) Pretty hard to stuff it up. That was around 15 years ago, really don't remember how it all came about, I'll be thinking about that one.

 

[O'Henry]

My first brew was pretty good. Haven't bottled it yet. It was a mead.

My first beer was undrinkable rubbish, never drank a whole one, still 'aging' it now. Will ditch next time I am home...

 

[TmC]

I was going to give a coopers stout a go next with 1kg dextrose and maybe some hops, try and keep it at 20c for primary as i think my first two have been too hot.

 

[ekul]

All my knk's were barely drinkable, made these on and off for a few years. Most of the time i would drink a few goons and then start on the homebrew if we were going to have a big night. A year ago i found this website somehow and decided to put one down after reading about temp control and the like. They weren't that great and if i had stayed at this level i probably would have stopped brewing by now.

After doing a few knk's with the appropriate procedure i decided to try extract to see if i could make something a little better. My first extract (neill's centarillo) was amazing to me because it was so much better than the knks and actually nearly tasted like beer. The difference between knk and extract was what made me want to try ag.

My first AG was andrewqld's cpa clone ( a beer i have made many times since) and i was amazed that i could make actual beer at home that tasted like beer. It wasn't the best beer but it was definitely drinkable. This batch gave the inspiration to really give homebrew a go and i haven't looked back since. I won't be spending any considerable sums on beer in the near future, thats for sure.

To the OP, if you're just starting and not entirely happy with your beer keep trying. I used to think that all the people on here talking about how great their beer is had just gotten used to subpar homebrew, that is until i made a drinkable batch. And then i started tasting other brewres beers and i started to think there was something in it!

 

[TmC]

What do i need to do for a malt extract beer, ingredients, or has someone made a topic that might be of use to a rookie using extract?

 

[ashley_leask]

I did about 4 kit brews pre temperature control, the 3 were OK, people drank it with me, including my brother who's not inclined to spare my ego if he thought it was bad. The 4th went down the sink, it was bad. Must have got to about 30C in early Jan.

There's been a big difference in my and others perception of the quality has definitely gone up since I've been able to manage fermentation temperature though.

 

[philw]

Coopers Pale Ale kit was my first, very happy with it

 

[Florian]

My first batch was a coopers european lager with 500g LDME and BE2, also one of those Hallertau tea bags, and Aldi spring water. It started off in an 50L esky standing sideways, which just fitted the fermenter and a few ice packs.

A few days in I scored a cheap fridge on ebay, but didn't know yet that temp controllers existed, so I left the door slightly open, trying to get a decent temp.

A few more days and I was in hospital for a 'routine' operation, but out the same day.

Three days on I got rushed back in and had to stay two whole weeks. During that time I must have read close to every single thread that existed on AHB at that time.
Once back home I started bottling, but after eight bottles the pains kicked in and had to stop. Continued a few days later. First eight bottles carbed up allright, all the others got terribly infected, pics are floating around somewhere on AHB. But still, the first bottle tasted quite bad, had one every month, and kept the very first one I ever bottled until today.

After that day I did an extract which turned out allright and then went straight to all grain.

 

[Bribie G]

I read AHB extensively before I made my first beer of my current incarnation (I brewed around 30 years ago and even ran a LHBS for a couple of years in the late 70s) but things had changed enormously.
My first brew - 2008 - was a Morgans Queensland Lager with a can of Morgans Light Malt Extract, kit yeast and a cluster teabag. It was winter so probably went at around 18 degrees (hadn't bought a thermometer) and it was bloody lovely to my tastebuds at the time.

:icon_cheers:

 

[pdilley]

1st brew was a mead in my young tyke school days. Had a hundred percent passion and no tools or experience so homemade fermenter out of a large water bottle and wild guessing on amounts of ingredients. I made quite a good wax stripper for kitchen floors if I recall but I was chuffed and quite proud of myself at the time. First beer was DME, did not do liquid extracts until back in Oz but went AG after only one batch of LME.

 

[Pennywise]

First brew I can't remember what it was exactly, it was a kit of some sort with a kg of dex. Got it from a brew shop in Smithfield, NSW with my starter set-up. I used the bottling wand as an air lock Nuff said....

 

[InCider]

Brigalow cider fermented in the shed in SE Qld in February without any temp control!

Not the worst brew I have ever tasted - but once you notice the aspartame in that kit, it's pretty rank.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Brigalow beer kit on special at big w.

I'm born in July, so I turned 18, bought my first 6 pack, realised that a poor uni student in a single parent household (hence having to pay my way) couldn't afford beer, so I made the kit.

I thought it was good at the time. It tasted vaguely like beer, and the fact that I brewed in winter helped. But having said that I didn't mind Carlton Mid (though I still hated VB) at the time, so poor uni student with poor tastes. Still preferred Guinness though.

My 2nd beer was a K&K stout, which was a massive increase in quality. I used the International Something or other kit from the LHBS at the time, and added grains, brown sugar, the kitchen sink. No idea what I was doing (I realise that now) but it turned out fantastic in spite of the brewer. Stuck to Darker beers, as I seemed to have a technique that worked (despite not understanding why it worked)

Got out of uni, upgraded to Euro brewed Heineken, and didn't bother for a little while. Went back and forth to homebrewing for the fun of it. Made a lot of decent extract brews, mostly brown ales, dark ales and the like.

Wish AHB had been around then - I would have AG'd quicker. My first decent Pale coloured beer was AG.

Goomba

 

[pimpsqueak]

My first kit was a birthday present as a teenager. (dunno what my father was thinking.. was 17 at the time)
Had no internet back then, so I just went off the back of the can. Fermented the living shit out of it and bottled it in tallies I found under the house. Over primed and failed to properly clean the bottles so every one of them spewed a non stop gusher of foam and the beer itself had an aftertaste like you had just chewed on a steel wool scrubbing pad.
Still drunk the bastards though. :icon_vomit:

Took me a while to get my act together after that...

 

[TmC]

:lol:

 

[ekul]

Wish AHB had been around then - I would have AG'd quicker. My first decent Pale coloured beer was AG.

Goomba

I brewed on and off for 10 years making terrible beer (i did my first one when i was 15 . It wasn't until i stumbled across this site that my beer became drinkable, and then finally tasty when i went to ag.

There are so many kits on ebay from people fermenting one brew at 25C++, tasting it and then selling up. They'd only need to change one line on the can. I spent years fermenting at above 25C, at one point i even had an aquarium heater in there! If the can had just told me to ferment at 17-20C i would have been making drinkable homebrew years ago.