How did YOU get into brewing?

[Tuco]

Sorry if this topic has been discussed before, but i'm very interested in this.

How did you get into homebrewing/winemaking etc, Were your parents into it? Did your friends introduce you to it? What did you start off making and how did you progress? I'd especially like to hear from some of the older heads, like Bob, Karl, Rich etc, also some of the girls, did you get into it by yourself? Or did a partner or parent introduce you to it???



I'll just start off, I watched a video on youtube called Super Simple Winemaking, I made a few real simple batches using fruit juice + champagne yeast and a balloon as an airlock, I made about 5 litres using this method, then I found this wonderful site and read the Beginners section, got a bucket, airlocks, just the basic equipment Bob suggests, and I have to admit, it's an addictive hobby, I'm always looking in the supermarkets for juices and fruits and online for new recipes I'm growing in knowledge all the time

So thanks to Bob & Winesathome, Lets here your stories....
Go easy guys

[Rich]

I got into it when the father in law gave me a few demijons he had found in the attic.

A quick visit to Brewgenie to get a 6 bottle kit and lots of other stuff I didn't realise I needed and I was off. Then I found this site and within a few months had picked up 15 gallons with of grapes at grapefest '07.

Had a fair bit of time on my hands then at the later part of 07 and most of 08 some went fermenting crazy. It can be an all consuming hobby. Just try to remember it is only a hobby!

[Mamgiowl]

As revealed on another thread, a glut of marrows was my downfall.

And us ladies are really quite grown up and liberated these days, so I did it all by myself, with no-one to help me. In fact my other half is not interested in the process, only the end product, so takes no part in it all.

So there

[cpfan]

I went out to pick up a pizza for dinner. I guess it was either a different pizza place or I usually parked to the left of the pizza place. Anyway this time I parked to the right, in front of a Home Brew Shop with a big sign in the window and their www address. Well I picked up the pizza, and a couple of days later checked out their web-site. A couple of months later we started our first kit.

Steve

[NorthernWiner]

I'd especially like to hear from some of the older heads...

I'm right around the half century mark. Is that old enough?

I got the bug after a stay in Sicily in 1991. My then wife and I worked in a civilian capacity with the US Department of Defense. The military base we worked at didn't have any accommodations available (end of the gulf war, so lots of people coming and going) so they put us up at a furnished apartment in the nearby town. The couple who owned the building lived in the first floor apartment. They grew grapes in their tiny little yard and made wine in the cellar. Pretty decent wine too, considering how dilapidated and rusty most of his equipment looked.

After that, I had it in my head I wanted to do that someday. It wasn't until 2000 that I finally bought a wine kit. I make mostly wine from fresh grapes these days, some of it grown myself, some of it trucked in from California.

[lockwood1956]

I got the bug when I moved into my current house, the garden is full of fruit trees, and there are vines in the greenhouse, and I couldn't eat all of the fruit, so I started to ferment it.....



the rest as they say.....is history

[Mel]

I wish I could remember , it was some 32 years ago though (as a teenager) ! My parents never did home brew, hmm maybe because my Grandpa did I seem to remember him having demijohns in the cellar, but I'm really not sure ! I'm sure he must have done it before the 60s though....

[Duffbeer]

Just had a bonus from work and happened to be passing a homebrew stall in Barnsley market and thought "ooo money saving idea, make my own beer".
My sister was with me at the time who is a wine drinker and convinced me to do a Cantina 5 day white kit. All turned out well and I got the homebrew bug, found a few forums on the net, met Bob, joined wines at home, then Pontefract wine circle and the bug just got worse, so here I am with an obsessive hobby dissorder

[Aid]

When I was growing up, my dad used to make wine - I never tried it, but I heard him saying how terrible it was. He took it to a homebrew shop in Taunton once, and they told him he didn't rinse the cleansing fluid out enough. Yuk! When I grew up, I went to Liverpool Uni in 92, I had a dabble at homebrew then. I tried 2 or 3 beer kits and they came out rubbish. In the end, I used the barrel I'd bought to bring scrumpy back from Somerset (where my family lived) to uni, every time I went home. Scrumpy destroys people not used to it
It'd stayed in the back of my mind since I was a kid, and in 07, when I had my own place (after renting for too long), and no active hobbies, I found a couple of cheap country wine kits in Morrisons. They didn't sell wine making stuff, but nevertheless, on the reduced shelf were a couple of kits... I took the plunge and started making wine-style booze, badly. I quickly joined homewinemaking.co.uk and then this site. With the excellent advice from the jedi master-brewers here, I've managed to make some very reasonable booze. I'm not dedicated but I'm very happy on the shoulders of these wine-making giants.

[hoodlum]

i remember as a youngster my dad doing a homebrew in the 70s - it was gash. A mate did a home brew kit at university in the very early 90s, and that too was gash. So homebrew was crossed off the list of things to try at home that would result in reasonable returns on time and money invested.

Next thing I remember on the HB front was trundling through a Wilkinsons in Andover seeing the homebrew shelves and thinking, blimey - that's cheap - £20 for sufiicient kit to make 40 pints of stuff. I bought it in August/Nov but never got round to doing it till after Christmas. I went to a Homebrew shop between times to see about getting some brewers sugar, whereupon the lovely lady behind the counter (Salisbury) answered all my bone questions about the various wine kits on the shelf - never knew you could make wine yourself....

Left the shop with a DJ and a kit, which I didn't do till now, then thought a bit about the process and started lobbing stuff into DJs with juice, sugar and yeast. I'm at the point where some of it is almost ready bar the law of patience getting in the way - patience demonstrated is invertionaly propoportional to the patience required. I'm busting to get amongst it.

The beer I brewed is fantastic despite the budget origins of it, and the wines I have yet to sample.

[Aid]

...bone questions...

[rjb222]

My grand father was a grain farmer. He always made shine. My dad brewed beer of a type. I brewed beer from grain for many years. I started making fruit wines along the way and progression being how it is now own and operate a bop.

[Aid]

what does bop stand for? please tell me in a way that doesn't make me look stupid.

[rjb222]

BOP. Abreviated Brew On Premise. I am sorry I didn't know how to break it to you any other way.

[hoodlum]

what does bop stand for? please tell me in a way that doesn't make me look stupid.

I'm glad you asked that - I was thinking he danced his way into homebrew.....