What I can remember

So, I've been brewing beer for almost a month now. During this time I should have been documenting as I went along, but I didn't. So, for a while, I will be blogging what I can remember. Let's begin!!!

So, I figure we'd start with a little about me. My name is Shane Avery. As of today I am 32 years old. I think. I've noticed as I get older I get asked less and less how old I am. It's not like when I was a little whipper snapper and I got asked every week or so how old I was and thus the answer was on the tip of my tongue. These days, I've got to think about it if I get asked. Next time I get asked I'm going to say, I was born in 1978, you figure it out. But I digress. I live in Ridgecrest CA. I have for most of my life. Went to college at Cal Poly SLO and lived in San Jose for a short time. I am married to my college sweetheart named Ellie. We have two dogs. I am employed as a computer engineer. And I enjoy beer. I also enjoy Whiskey. But I guess that's for another blog.

Now let's move on. For some time now I have found the beer making process fascinating. I think it's a combination of the science involved along with patience (need to wait for the beer to age) and nurturing (yeast needs to be coddled). I mean you need to take care of this yeast. You give it food (sugar) and it gives you alcohol and CO2. So when Christmas came around this year I asked my secret Santa for a beer kit. I also asked for an ass calendar. I got that too. My secret Santa was my dad. He understands. He likes asses too.

So here's what came. It was a premium beer kit from Mr. Beer. Their website is mrbeer.com. What came in the kit was a 2.5 gallon fermenter, 8 bottles (1 Liter each), a no rinse sanitizer, a measuring scooper thingy for priming, two hopped malt extracts (HME), a t-shirt, a hat, and some literature. Some stickers too. Oh and a temperature strip to stick on the fermenter. Maybe there was something else but that's all I remember. Next post we'll talk about my first brewing experience.