My interest in brewing is probably born from my love of beer. In 2017, my dad and I started tossing around the idea of brewing beer ourselves. We had a family friend that had the equipment and he was willing to show us the ropes. We brewed an all grain recipe for a “red pilsner”.

There was a definite learning curve for us. I think that starting out with an all grain recipe was not exactly the best move. There is a lot of science behind brewing and in all-grain brewing you really have to be hitting the correct temperatures to encourage enzymes in your mash to convert starch into fermentable sugars. I am not sure if we hit all the marks we needed to be hitting, and we definitely didn’t understand enough about the process.

The beer came out drinkable, but I definitely wouldn’t have called it good. Being new, we hadn’t started the practice of taking notes and we didn’t have a good idea of where we had gone wrong. It was disheartening, but we decided that we would carry on. Thus began my journey into brewing.

-AJS