First Brew

First of all I think that I should tell you that I'm currently brewing a batch of beer with a friend. I got this recipe form another friend who has some experience with homebrew. He says this is the one to start out with, it's easy (we shall see), tastes great, and has a quick turnaround time. This is key because my friend that I am brewing with is very impatient and wanted to have it ready for Christmas. I did an ample amount of research on the brewing process, or so I thought. As soon as I thought I knew enough about it, and we had the ingredients, we started brewing. Well as soon as we started I realized that I already had no clue what I was doing and that this may not turn out so well. But like anything, experience is the best teacher and I know it's the best way to learn.

We started brewing on December 6th, the first thing I learned is that brewing on a Tuesday is not a good idea. It was just too much rushing around, in the future I'll be doing this part of the process on either a Friday night or a Saturday. Plus you want to have a couple beers while you’re doing this and enjoy yourself.  I mean that’s the point of a hobby, right? I am not saying I didn’t have fun during this part but, it could have been better. Anyway the first step of the brewing process is (other than clean and sanitize, clean and sanitize, clean and sanitize) to boil all of the ingredients. I am just going to leave it at that. It is not that simple you have to boil the extract for so long, add hops, boil, add hops, boil, add hops, ect. If anyone would like me to go into more depth just let me know and we can do a step by step.