Hello

Hey all I'm, Aaron.

Been looking through this site and man I wish I would have found it sooner. I have been a extract brewer for about 3 years now. I hope to break into partial mashes soon. When I first started I bought a MR.BEER kit. It taught me some basic things but I have since got rid of it and my uncle was kind enough to give me all his brew stuff. Heh too bad I was a bit late on his kegs. He cut them up for scrap, doh! Oh well. One day I'll get them. I'm getting ready to brew a Christmas beer very soon. Going to post it here and see what you all think and maybe get some advise too. Talk to you all later.

Welcome!  My 2cents are skip partial mashing.  Unless you have some legit reason like storage space or inability to get a outdoor burner and 7-8gal pot and mashtun, then just jump to all grain. 

I made 8 partail (steep) batches before I moved up, now I understand recipee mastery, bulk ingredients, yeast culturing and feel I can knock out a great brew pretty cheaply.

Heh well you hit the nail right on the head. I don't have any of the things you said including room. For now I am happy with extract. I just wanted to try something new with beer without going all gain. But who knows. I would love to try all grain one day.

I completely understand. A grain bag takes no room and gives you a fresh/unique taste. 
I had good luck with partial mashing that way.

Welcome to the forum. Glad to have you with us.

Cheers
Preston

I would definitely go to partial first. And while your doing partial, be reading up on all grain. Anyone who makes doing all grain sound simple doesn't understand it as well as they think, IMHO. Go to howtobrew.com and either read there or order the book. there are times when John Palmer takes brewing a little too seriously (like when he talks about working with astrophysicists to study the effects of different lautering techniques!), but all in all, he knows his stuff. I feel it really helps to understand all the things that are going on from a scientific perspective. Understand what happens when grain is malted, the process, the mash and what is going on there and how it relates to malting, etc.... It is fascinating to think that people were so into beer that they learned all this over time!

All Grain doesn't have to be difficult, it can be, as can extract brewing.
All Grain can be as simple as holding the temp in a cooler at 150+/-F for about an hour (BeerSmith will help with the water temp),
Draining the wort to collect 6 to 6.5 gallons
Boiling the wort for an hour while adding the hops at the appropiate times.
Fermenting the beer and finally bottling it.

Now if you want me to make it complicated,  I assure you that I can do that.

Fred