Home Brew?

Try an amber ale. Something in between a pale & an ipa. I used to make some that was actually copper in color....all my buddies raved about it! But of course, when it came time to bottle, everyone disappeared. :-[

 

I brewed for a few years, I think I overdid it and burned myself out on it though. Too much hassle cleaning the bottles and didn't want to invest in a kegging system.
It's a great hobby though, I learned a lot. Also definitely be overly considerate of cleanliness and disinfecting everything. I never had a batch ruined by problems relating to cleanliness. I used one of the oxygen-based sanitizers, it worked great. Only needed a minute or two of contact time and contained no nasty chemicals that could ruin the beer if not rinsed properly.
Also, don't skimp on equipment, get nice glass carboys not the plastic buckets. Do your research and be clean and you'll be fine.

 

Home brewing has sadly surpassed my reefing hobby over the last few years.

Few words of advice. Go big. You will want to upgrade your setup later.

Keg your beer. Bottles are a pain in the butt and will drive you insane.

Go all grain as soon as you can. The beers end up more unique and don't have the extract twang that you will commonly get with malt extract.

HomeBrewTalk.com - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Community. for questions and tutorials. Great site.
How to Brew - By John Palmer for the overall process. Feel free to message me.

Great hobby if you have the patience.

 

Thanks for the insight and the links man - appreciated!

 

Great advise there. There is a local brewery that uses extract and all their beers have the same body and after-taste.

 

Good to know I want my beer to taste good, no funky aftertaste or anything! If you're going to do something, do it right - I've got lots of reading to do ;D

 

+1 best advice thus far

It can be overwhelming at first but just take it slow and get the processes down. Make sure you like homebrewing before you spring on major equipment. Brewing in essence is very simple. You can just take a can of hopped malt extract put it in a bucket with room temp water add yeast, mix and you will get beer; probably pretty good beer too. Dont try to start with some crazy belgian decotation at first, focus on learning the processes. Malt extract sucks but learn to brew with it then step up to all grain. Bottling sucks but start with that before you spring for a kegs and a serving system. A good starter beer is a something like a stout b/c there is already so much flavor that any kind of off flavors will be masked. And above all in the words of john palmer ( author of how to brew, linked above) "relax and have another homebrew".

A couple homebrewer tips:1) bring a mason jar to your local brewpub and ask a brewer for some yeast. We pour gallons of the stuff down the drain daily and are always happy to see it put to use. This way you wont have to prop up your yeast in a starter and you can save some money. 2) use a dishwasher to clean and sanitize your bottles, it should get hot enough to sanitize them and works as a great bottling rack.