Cracked My First Homebrew

(if you don't like tasty brews don't bother reading)

The first carbonated one at least. For the last two months I've had roughly 9 gallons of beer fermenting and getting all happy in one of my closets, and about 2-3 weeks ago Britton and I bottled it up.

My first batch was an IPA and the second a brown ale. Now the IPA was based off of someone else' recipe, but the brown ale was my own from scratch. I wanted to dive right into making my own. The way I see it, if you only brew off of others' recipes, it's like being in a band and only playing cover songs; it might sound good and have stage presence, but you ain't too original now is you?

Flavor wise, the brown ale is exactly what I was going for. The only change I'll make is to add a little more body and up the alcohol a little - it clocked in around 4.3%, just under what I wanted.

I've got another few gallons of a new pale ale in the closet, another recipe I came up with. I figure that within a few more batches, I'll be making world class tasty beverages.

The homebrewing community is a collection of many interesting people. Despite my limited experience, I've tried my best to narrow it down into three main categories:

1. The kind of guy who brews beer (and does whatever else he does) between rounds of world of warcraft.

2. 42-48 year old males who refer to their wives as 'the old lady.' They wear tshirts tucked into very light colored jeans, big sneakers, and are often named Larry or Barry.

3. 25-29 year old males who answer "right on" to just about anything you say to them.

Good people regardless of demographics and what they choose to do in their spare time. Not sure where I fall into the mix, but I don't really care. I just like learning how to do stuff. Right on.

On a side note, had an awesome Christmas--spent about a week and a half up in PA with the fam and Jensen came up for a few days as well. Heading to Carolina beach in the AM---supposed to be 67 on New Years day, and hopefully we'll get some waves..