Remembering The Early Years, Part 2

When you first turn 21, whether you step into it or not, a door to a wide world opens up and its name is Alcohol. The years following that event tend to shape a person's personality as much as finding your place socially did in High School. A certain confidence emerges when one is (generally) untethered by parental authority, and the wild-night-out carries its own energy that booze only intensifies. It was in this perspective and evolving reality that I became a homebrewer.
My newer friends, all of them older, had experience in this hobby/craft, and it was sharing (and enjoying) their homebrews that clued me into the local possibilities of making my own. First, I went down to the homebrew supply store, picked me up a copy of the "Homebrewer's Bible", and then I read that thing for days. Slowly, I began to assemble the equipment I would need (that was either cheaper than, or not available in the homebrew shop), such as a stainless steel pot from a drug store, a new plastic bucket/can for priming, and a clean turkey baster for drawing gravity samples. I bought the standard "Kit" from the homebrew shop, and with my basic inventory sitting on my kitchen counter, I set out to make beer.
June 1st, 1998. I took notes, and it seems it was a generally successful brew with only a few hitches. First, I hadn't bought a strainer yet, so all of the hops ended up in the carboy. Second, I didn't cool the wort enough, and it took five hours of sitting in the carboy before I could pitch the yeast. Still, the hops didn't clog the blowoff line and the yeast took off, making a .028 (7º P) change in gravity over 6 days. Not a bad first attempt.
The hunger kept growing after that. The very next week I started my second brew.

(part three coming, eventually)

s b