Brewing NooB

Just wanted to say hello and introduce myself. I am from Houston and I just popped the cap on my first home brew batch last night [English Pale Ale] and it was awesome. It was only a single stage but very good none the less. I can't wait to start my next batch. My question is: Should I stick with kits for the first few batches or would it be worth jumping in and putting together my own recipes and/or try some recipes from BeerSmith? I did make the decision to purchase BeerSmith2 and it's a great program.

Cheers!

Rob

The nice thing about kits is that you don't have any leftover ingredients.

When you start designing your own recipes, you're not going to buy the exact amount you're going to use.  Say the recipe calls for an ounce of Roasted Barley, but they only sell it by the pound.  Now you have fifteen ounces left over.  Before long you've got a junk drawer filling with odd ingredients.    That can be a good thing in that you don't need to buy that specialty grain because you've got it in the drawer. On the other hand it might go stale by the time you need it again.

Personally, the only kit I ever used was given to me as a gift.  It was an extract kit with some steeping grains, and whole hops instead of pellets.  An Irish red, and it came out better than anything I'd come up at that time with book recipes.  That was probably fifteen years ago when I'd just started with the hobby. 

I say go with a few more kits.  This way you don't have extraneous ingredients, you're learning the process, learning what styles you prefer, and you know the recipes are good.

It's kinda like cooking. Once you know the principles and how the flavors interact, you don't  need a recipe to make something good. Except that unlike cooking, there's a much longer time lag between when you start it and when it's done.

I agree.  Learn the process inside and out first with the kits.  You'll know you're ready to make the jump to you're own recipes, when you see a kit and think to yourself, "I'd like this kit better if it had more of this and less of that in it."

However, there is something to be said about making "SMaSH" beers.  These aren't kits.  They are a single malt and a single hop.  SMaSH = Single Malt and Single Hop.  You'll learn the flavors of the base malts and the flavors of the different hops this way.  This is an uncomplicate way to get into recipe design, while still keeping it simple.

You can even make a SMaSH to some styles.  Such as Pilsner (all kinds), Vienna Lager, Saison, Munich Dunkel, Wild Ales, IPAs and even Barleywines.  That last sentence was quoted from Brad Smiths blog here on BeerSmith forums on SMaSH brewing.

Once you understand the way the different base malts and hops taste and work in a simple recipe, you can then build from there by adding different specialty malts or adding two or more hop types for bittering, flavor and aroma.

If I were to start over, I would have started out kit brewing to learn the process and then went to SMaSH brewing next.  I've made two SMaSH beers so far and they were as good or better tasting than just about anything else I've made.

I'm going back to basics soon and will be doing a series of SMaSH brews this spring and summer to increase my knowledge of flavors.  I'm starting with one base malt (NW Pale) by Great Western Malting and I'm going to do some single hop experiments.  If I can get enough fermentors freed up, I'll mash a 22 gallon batch and then boil four 5.5 gallon batches, each with a different hop variety.

So, you have options.  No matter what direction you take, I'm sure you'll enjoy it and you will have great beers to enjoy and share with your friends and family.

Good luck and keep us in the loop on how your proceed and on your progress.

Thanks guys! Very good information.

I am going out this weekend to get my next recipe. Thinking about brewing the English Pale Ale again just to see if it comes out the same as the first, indicating that I am doing something right. I am also thinking about getting a carboy so I can do it as a 2 stage. Thanks again!

Cheers,
Rob

marshall13 said:

Thanks guys! Very good information.

I am going out this weekend to get my next recipe. Thinking about brewing the English Pale Ale again just to see if it comes out the same as the first, indicating that I am doing something right. I am also thinking about getting a carboy so I can do it as a 2 stage. Thanks again!

Cheers,
Rob

Click to expand...

No need to bother with 2-stage, waste of time and space.  Don't get glass.  If you want a bottle shaped container get a better bottle---PET plastic, similar O2 permeability to glass, and it won't break into giant razor sharp shards WHEN you drop it. 

There are two types of glass carboy users: Those who have dropped one, and those who WILL.  When they break they create seriously dangerous fragments.  They are sharp and they are heavy.  People have ended up in the hospital from carboy lacerations.  JUST SAY NO.

I've got about 12 carboys in 3 different sizes.  Each with handles.  I don't use a single one.  They sit in a back room gathering dust, while I try and figure out how to get rid of them.  I hate the idea of selling them to a fellow homebrewer, because I'm just so against them.  But, crap....they go for $30 each on craigslist every day. 

FWIW I use ale-pale's with spigots for everything.  I ferment up to 4 beers at a time, and have 8 or 10 kegs for long term storage.  I NEVER secondary my beers.  They all sit in the primary for 2-4 weeks, and then go straight to a keg.  The only exception to that is a true secondary fermentation where I'm adding a new ingredient, or a new family of micro-organisms.