What is brewing to you?

[snowcapt]

I am curious as to how often everyone brews. How much and how often, or even stories about why you started and how you have progressed. Did you take the "take it easy" approach, or did you dive in, being completely absorbed by it? Ever thought about bottling or recipe formation while laying in bed, chompin at the bit to make room to get another batch done? I have. Often.
Since getting back into it this past December, I have brewed damn near 50 batches. I have 31 on hopville, alone. I began again by making an NB dry stout extract kit and then went all-grain. I now have 3 carboys and 6 bucket fermentors at my disposal. It didnt take long for me to get kegs, either, 5 of them. I kept them in my basement in garbage cans packed with snow, and used picnic taps, at first. I now have a chest freezer and an extra fridge down there with 2 perlick creamer faucets.
Whenever I pick up a new hobby, I completely dive into it. That's just my personality, I guess. I have brewed as much as 6 batches in a week, thats the most I have done. I have done a few double brew days, as well. I really like the partigyle method for this.
Being a stay-at-home dad and a full time student, really gives me alot of time to do this. Most often, I will do early morning brew sessions, but sometimes I will dough in a little while before I put the kids to bed.
Its almost like when I started skateboarding, playing drums, or cooking. They are my passions and I do them as much as possible. Thats who I am, the loving father,husband-skateboarding-chef-brewer-drummer guy. And it works.
?
Cheers, Army
Dano

[triple-oh-six]

I brewed my first beer in 2003.
My boss at the time got me interested.
I had very little to go on, and although many of my friends loved the first beer, it was a disappointment to me.
It was 2 more years until a friend got me to go to a brewclub meeting with him (i didn't even know they existed)
I joined the club and jumped back into brewing. After a few more extract batches I moved to AG.
We bought our first house last Dec. and I've spent a lot of time working on it, which cut my brewing time way down this year, but I also built a rims, and now have a 400 sq ft shop dedicated to brewing, complete with 2 standup fridge/freezers, and a converted chest freezer w/ collar, 8 taps total (not counting the picnic taps) (I really need to post pics so ya'lll can hate on me )

Today I am a second term VP for The Dead Yeast Society, and since 2006 we have increased membership by at least 7x.

My first child is about to enter this world, eta 11/29, so I'm assuming my brewing will take a bit of a hit for a while, but I have somewhat of a stockpile.

I love brewing, it's an incredible hobby, and I think I've enjoyed it more than I would have building plastic model airplanes or cosplay

and btw my /nick 0006, has absolutely nothing to do with James Bond

[BarefootLion]

I brew at least once a month, minus maybe a couple of months a year that I take off because I'm too busy on the weekends(although I just learned a new trick "mental health" monday) I have one fridge dedicated to keeping either 2 kegs tapped or 1 beer cold crashing and 1 tapped. I have a bunch of bottles on the door and top shelf of the fridge(commercial and homebrew) I have s small wine rack with a couple of bottles aging(that needs to be refilled) I am active in my local homebrew club for the last year and a half and am running for an officer role(2nd time I am running I was nominated last year but lost to a couple of long time members). My wife does the club stuff with me, she helps brew when she can and my little one is involved as much as a 5yr old can be, generally means she is cleaning Aside from brewing, its pretty normal to see a flask on the stove heating up some food for the small yeast ranch I have in the basement.

Brewing is a lifestyle to us, these things are normal.

[linuxelf]

I brew about once a month. I usually step it up a little around August-September so I can donate a few kegs to our club's Oktoberfest celebration without cutting into my personal beer supply. It's my downtime. I am often in a rush, but brewing forces me to slow down, and gives me time to relax. It's a lot cheaper than a vacation heh.

[scotchpine]

About 25 yrs ago, when I lived in Md, a guy at work who loved homebrewing talked a bunch of us there into giving it a try. He (Latney) helped us all with getting supplies and brewing our first batches. Well, some were ok and some not so much. I just felt at the time that it wasn't worth the time and effort since I could buy a case of Whitbread Ale every Friday from the store across the street when I left work. Fast fwd to 4 years ago this Thanksgiving. The oldest son of our very good friends came home from Clemson U. (where he got kicked out of his dorm room for brewing beer in the bathtub). Their family and ours had Thanksgiving dinner together where he told us of his newfound passion. I took him up to the attic and dug out all my once used brewing gear and gave it to him. He came back that Christmas for the holidays and called me to come over and brew a batch of IPA with him. I had an awsome time brewing with him even though when his parents (our friends) got home from shopping they could'nt believe how we'd stunk up their whole house (bad boilover). The beer was great and I was hooked! This kid is now pursuing a doctoral internship at University of Arkansas, rides his bike around cause he lost his license to DWI, bless his heart. I'm keeping the tradition for us by brewing once every 3 or 4 weeks. Latney passed away about 12 years ago, so now every time I brew and enjoy the fruits of my labor, I hoist a pint for him cause he really started it all for me. These are fond memories for me and just wanted to share. Testament to how all passionate homebrewers can be an encouraging infuence to all who are worthy to heed the call to the greatest pastime in the world, homebrewing! Prost!

[Bugeater]

My first attempt at brewing beer was back in 1972. I had been making decent wine for about a year and a half and thought making beer might be fun. I picked up a can of Blue Ribbon Malt, a bunch of sugar and Red Star bread yeast and followed the instructions on the can. I knew so little about brewing that I didn't even notice that it didn't even call for hops. Anyway, I brewed and bottled the stuff. However, my sanitation was apparently not up to snuff. The first bottle I opened turned into a gyser. Beer sprayed all over the ceiling and ran down the walls. I didn't brew again for 30 years.

In 2001, I worked with a guy who brewed his own beer but never got a chance to see his setup or brew with him. He did, however, get me interested in trying it again. I got on the internet and found http://www.hbd.org. There on the Homebrew Digest forum I ran into the likes of Denny Conn, Dan Listermann, and Tom Schmidling. They were all incredibly helpful with lots of good advice. I gathered stuff together and did an extract partial boil batch of brown ale as my first brew. From there I was hooked. I immediately ran out and bought a turkey fryer and a wort chiller so I could do full boils but I was still a little leery of going all grain because all that fly sparge stuff you had to deal with. Denny straightened me out by directing me to his website and got me hooked on batch sparging. I current system still looks pretty much like the same thing I first started all grain with back in 2002.

Wayne

[snowcapt]

[quote="triple-oh-sixMy first child is about to enter this world, eta 11/29, so I'm assuming my brewing will take a bit of a hit for a while, but I have somewhat of a stockpile.[/quote]
Congrtats on the lil' rugger! Welcome to the wonderful of sleep deprivation. You will be suprised at what you can accomplish on zero sleep! Just remember that the key to a happy wife after having a baby is: no dishes in the sink, change as many diapers as possible, flowers, and foot rubs. Especially the foot rubs! Trust me on that one. If you give her repeated foot rubs, she will soon let you do anything you want to!

[jlmcgrath]

Especially the foot rubs! Trust me on that one. If you give her repeated foot rubs, she will soon let you do anything you want to!

Well said Snowcapt +1