For Christmas last year my little brother bought me a Mr. Beer home brew kit that came with the ingredients needed to make a 2 gallon batch of pale ale from extract. I don't like pale ales, but I had always thought it would be cool to brew my own beer, so I used it as an opportunity to start reading about the science of home brewing, and of beer making in general.

I made the pale ale from the kit while reading everything I could find, and started working on a recipe for a chocolate oatmeal stout. Since then I've built three 5gal. fermenters and one 6gal. fermenter, bought two 5gal. cornelius kegs, a 10 lb CO2 tank with a regulator, and a ton of other equipment. I currently have a 5gal. batch of Czech pilsner lagering from a recipe I came up with and named Hardly Pilsner (due to the addition of some Crystal malt specialty grains, which make it darker than traditional pilsners should be). I have a 6gal. batch of an Irish red ale conditioning in a secondary fermenter. Then I have an imperial-ish, hoppy brown ale that's currently fermenting in the 2 1/2gal. fermenter that will get bottled.

I've tried all of them, and every one of them, save for the imperial chocolate stout, are just great beers. I'm still surprised at how simple it all is once you know the chemistry and how everything works with everything else, and what the ingredients will add to the finished beer. It's also really cheap when you compare the cost of 5 gallons of premium beer to the cost of store bought beers of the same style.

My main goal is to adjust my European pilsner recipe, batch by batch, until I have the perfect beer. After that I can keep it on tap in my condo at all times, along with a second keg of different ales and lagers, just to keep the hobby interesting, and to continue learning and experimenting. I'm working on a 2-keg kegorator that will use multiple piezo- thermo-electric cooling units with a Herpstat thermostat in cooling mode and on/off mode, and bar style taps. I can't wait until it's finished and I have both kegs filled and chilled on gas.

So, does anyone else brew their own beer at home?