Flukinicehole
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- May 29, 2004
- Messages
- 365
I did a search and came up empty on this subject so figured I would start one. Anyone here besides me brew? My obsession started about 4 years ago. When I moved from NY to NC I lost my great beer connection. I had lived across the river from Blue Point Brewery on Long Island so I had very easy access to great beer. Seeing how I lived right on the water fishing took up most of my time (to the wardens dismay). We moved to NC 6 years ago and I lost my beer connection and fishing time. After having some real crappy local beer (there were 2 breweries with bad beer) I decided to give brewing a shot. Craft beer is expensive and I really like craft beer so I started reading. This went on for about a year before I bought the equipment to make my first batch. I did 2 extract batches before going to all grain and have expanded operations (again to the wardens dismay). I now brew about twice a month and do 10 gallon batches. I can do up to 20 but don't want to fill my fermenter, conditioning fridge and keezer. I have a 4 tap keezer and another 4 taps that I can run at any one time. I even get the kids and my grand daughter involved in crushing the grains and such. It has become a fun hobby and I have met some other great brewers and made some good friends through this hobby. Since then the Craft Beer scene has really taken off and within 50 miles of me there are over 25 breweries open or opening this year. They will not all make is as the market is getting flooded and most have pretty bad beer. The guys in my club can brew better then most of the local breweries and that's sad (cuz our beer sucks) lol. I do get to do some of the local beer events for Blue Point so I have not lost the connection there and they are now available here so all is good. In fact I just did the World Beer event in Durham yesterday and had a great time talking beer and meeting new people. There is a lot of great beer out there and I'm glad the craft beer scene is really taking off. So does anyone else brew?