Although I only started brewing in January 2019, it had been on the cards for a good while before that. Things have changed more than a little since my first foray, which saw a 15 year old me foolishly think that I could hide a 40 pint kit I’d picked up from Boots for a tenner fermenting away behind my bedroom door without my parents noticing. Remarkably the old man let me bottle it and drink some of it. It wasn’t very nice.
Fast forward 25 years (eeek) and my old pal Matt was getting back into the hobby and making some high quality produce. At the time I was living in a flat in the centre of Leeds that I thought wouldn’t be suitable due to how hot it got in there during the summer and consequently I therefore wouldn’t be able to control fermentation temperature sufficiently. Had I known that people convert fridges for fermentation, I would definitely have got involved sooner!
Following my move to the sticks and a tonne of peer pressure from Matt, I bit the bullet last January and bought a Northern Brewer kit. The first couple of kit brews I put out were nothing to write home about, and it wasn’t until I made their wheat beer kit that I really felt I was starting to get somewhere. Some more capex later, I made the transition to all grain brewing and to be honest am really happy with the quality of beer I’ve been making over the last 12 months. Unless they’re sparing my feelings, family and friends seem to be in agreement with that!
I get some of the science, but I’m not going to drive myself nuts over minutiae. As long as my processes are sound and my gear is clean, I just want to enjoy making delicious beer. As Matt put it, “you make the beer you want to drink”.