A quick history up to this point.

On black Friday 2013 I was browsing the subreddit /r/beer and one of the submissions pointed me to Northern Brewer's Essential Starter Kit which was one of their deals for the day. I quickly told my wife this is what I wanted for Christmas and ordered it. Part of their deal at the time included the Dead Ringer IPA and Irish Red Ale extract kits.  I had never home brewed before but I decided it sounded fun. I also have a friend who was pretty serious about the hobby and I had sampled his homebrew on several occasions and loved it.

I received the kit a week or so later and immediately went to work. I started with the Irish Red Ale. After steeping my grains for the recommended amount of time my kitchen started to smell amazing. Even my wife commented on it, which surprised me because she isn't much of a beer drinker herself.  Things went well enough and a few days later my airlock was bubbling rapidly. The next weekend I went to my local homebrew shop and purchased another fermenting bucket just so I could start my next batch of beer. I was too excited to wait for my first batch to finish.  When it came time to bottle I was surprised to see how many bottles it takes to hold 5 gallons of beer. I now had quite a supply of beer to drink, but that didn't stop me from wanting to brew more. I gave a way a few bottles, drank a few, and even dumped a few. A month or so after bottle conditioning, my Irish Red went downhill quickly. It developed a terrible aftertaste. I have come to learn this is commonly known as "home brew twang" and is relatively common with extract kits.

The next beer I brewed was from Austin Home Brew and is called Greenbelt Double IPA. DIPAs are my goto beer so I though I should try one out. I just put this into bottles last night, after trying to clear is with gelatin and cold crashing for the first time. I tasted it before priming it with corn sugar for bottle conditioning and was really pleased. It was bitter, but not overly so, and had pleasant hop aroma. I hope after a few weeks in bottles it tastes just as good. I will add another blog post in a month or so with the results.

Thanks for reading. I hope to continually update this with each new brew and brewing related event I experience. If you are a reading this and have a homebrew blog of your own please drop me a line and let me know where it's at. I am trying to read and learn as much as I can.