BeerBorg

bpgreen wrote:

KTNbrew wrote:First forum for me. Started brewing five years ago with a Mr. Beer kit, and have been using it up until a couple of months ago when I bought the 3 gallon conical. Loving this thing, bought a second, and now picking up one of the little one gallon fermenters. Southeast Alaska here, small town without a brewshop, so everything is online orders. I primarily use DME because it is easy. I brewed up some of the kits from various places, and although they can be done well, I now prefer coming up with my own brand of poison. Of particular note is one I call my "Rooftop Ale". We are not on a water system here, so we use a cistern (Big tank of water outside the house, it collects rainwater from the roof of the house), ours is "open", meaning it is topless and open to whatever might fall, fly drop or jump into it. My rooftop ale turned out great, I'm afraid however that it is because of all the gunk in the cistern, pine needles, cedar cones, bird****, no critters though. I recently hooked up a new 4500 gallon water tank, all nice and clean inside, closed and more like something the civilized drink. Now I just need to figure out the right ratio of water to gunk, and I'll be set.

One thing I have noticed over the few years I have been mixing my own brews, there are a lot of people out there that are very particular about their home brew, all the respect and appreciation to them for their knowledge, experience and hard work in perfecting their craft. However, I have been told that I wasn't making "real" beer because I was using the kits, or extract. I looked at what I was doing, looked at the results of my efforts. My taste buds are just not sophisticated enough to get into water profiles and such, but what I make looks like beer, smells and taste like beer, and I get tipsy or better, must be real beer. Humans have been doing this for a very long time, best to keep it simple. Thanks to all here for your thoughtful advice and recommendations.

It seems like you already know this, but don't listen to the naysayers. I've been brewing for more than 10 years. I've made good batches that were based on prehopped extracts. I've also made good batches using only extracts, water, yeast, hops.

I'm now doing all grain batches, due to covid and the mash and boil.

Don't let anybody tell you that what you're doing isn't brewing.

Dpalmer004 wrote:Hello - trying home brewing seeing how they won’t let me drink in a pub.