Lawrence Brewers Guild

vineyardbmw wrote:hey all! i'm back. Doc says I can drink beer again! So, i'm currently rebuilding my brewery from the ground up. I wish i could still come to meetings but lawrence is a heck of a drive from Golden. If anyone is coming up for GABF, look me up i'll buy.

A bunch of us are heading your way for the great party. Let me know contact info!

Hi everyone.

My name is Mike Conner and I'm a grad student in biology at KU. I've been interested in homebrewing for a few years and am finally ready to take the plunge. I hope to become an active member of the group while I'm still in Lawrence and would love to hear any and all advice you're willing to spew out. See you at the next meeting!

Welcome Mike!

connerm wrote:Hi everyone.

My name is Mike Conner and I'm a grad student in biology at KU. I've been interested in homebrewing for a few years and am finally ready to take the plunge. I hope to become an active member of the group while I'm still in Lawrence and would love to hear any and all advice you're willing to spew out. See you at the next meeting!

Welcome,
My wife is the accountant for Biology, first floor in Haworth. Drop by and say Hi sometime.
Just ask for the homebrewers wife and everyone will know who you are talking about...Lol

Hi, My name is Chris Kneidel. I am a pharmacist that works in Olathe and lives in Lawrence. I've been extract brewing for a couple years, but would really like to start all grain brewing. I was hoping to get involved and get as much advice as I can. I look forward to coming to my first meeting.

ChrisK wrote:Hi, My name is Chris Kneidel. I am a pharmacist that works in Olathe and lives in Lawrence. I've been extract brewing for a couple years, but would really like to start all grain brewing. I was hoping to get involved and get as much advice as I can. I look forward to coming to my first meeting.

Welcome, come to the meeting this Thursday it will be very helpful for starting into all grain. Also bring $20 to pay dues so you can get into the member section of the forums.

Hello everyone, I'm Justin. I went to my first meeting last night. I've been brewing for just over 5 months now. I started out doing extract kits, now I'm creating my own partial mash recipes. I live in Lawrence and work at the hospital here in town. I still have a ton to learn about brewing and look forward to the next meeting.

Hello,

My name is Allen Eastlund, I'm a grad student in Physics at KU. I've actually been to meetings for a half a year now but this is my first time posting on the website. Just got a kegging system for Xmas, I'm stoked!

Allen

Welcome to both of you! I hope you enjoyed the meeting!

Hey, all!

I attended the August 9th meeting, and joined the Guild, so I figured I'd introduce myself. My name is Dean Wilson. I've been in Lawrence since 1987, and currently work at Garmin in Olathe. (For those of you who know Kevin, I carpool with him, and joined the Guild at his suggestion - so he gets some of the credit/blame for your newest member. )

I've been brewing for the last 13 years, though (with the exception of the past couple weekends) I hadn't brewed in 3 years, so I'm just now getting back into it. The reason for my brewing hiatus was due to a (perhaps questionable) decision I made to not brew again until I had a dedicated space set up for brewing all-grain. In the meanwhile, life got in the way, and it took forever for me to finish my brewery. But I did finally get it mostly finished, and have spent the last couple weekends making my first couple all-grain batches - it's great to be back!

I look forward to meeting more of you at the meetings, and it sounds like BrewFest is a blast, so I'm planning on making it there as well!

See you then,
~Dean
(overdrive)

You can leave the hobby, but it seems the hobby never leaves you. Glad you are back on the horse. Sounds like you have been revitalized, and the LBG is a great way to fuel that interest. Welcome!

Hi,
I'm a new board member. My account on the forums was finally activated after several weeks. YAY!
I've just brewed 2 batches thus far. I bought my kit in June. I came to 1 LBG meeting to check it out.
I was going to join this month, but had the wrong date for the August meeting.
So, I will come to the September meeting, pay the membership dues and officially join then.

My first beer was a Cooper's Australian Ale "kool-aid kit" that the guy at the brew supply store in Lawrence gave me for free when I bought the beer kit. It was just a big can of extract that you pour in. It was an easy way to do a first batch. Flavor-wise, I wouldn't recommend that route though. I wasn't too crazy about the beer. It was both too sweet and too bitter (if that's possible).
The sweetness may have been partially due to the fact that I used household table sugar for the fermenting and priming sugar. I've been told since then, that corn sugar is a better choice for beer.

My second batch I got from Austin Homebrew Supply's site. http://www.austinhomebrew.com/
A friend introduced me to their site. They have the best selection I've seen yet. They have over 700 recipe kits.
It was a honey wheat. It turned out amazing!! It's as good as any wheat I've had at a brewery or from Boulevard!

My next batch I am going to keg the beer. My brother asked if I'd make a beer for their upcoming wedding reception.
I think I will do something similar to the wheat style, since there will be a lot of people with different tastes there. I didn't want to do anything that would knock the Koorz Light Drinkers on their butts! haha!
I'm thinking of doing a Hefeweizen or maybe a Honey Blonde. They're both pretty light and smooth.

See you guys at the next meeting!

I neglected to give my name on that last post.

My name is Randy. I was at the meeting last night.

See you guys at Brewfest! If anyone has an extra ticket, please let me know.
Thanks!

mushhawk wrote:I neglected to give my name on that last post.

My name is Randy. I was at the meeting last night.

See you guys at Brewfest! If anyone has an extra ticket, please let me know.
Thanks!

Welcome.

Throw your name on the brewfest ticket swapmeet thread!

After many water cooler and lunch conversations with a co-worker, I was finally convinced to give it a go. I ordered brewing equipment and an extract brew kit from northernbrewer.com.

After my first brew, I made the following notes:
1. brew kettle needed to be bigger
2. stove top didn't provide enough heat (oh, and the smell)
3. chilling in the sink with an ice bath take too long.
So, I picked up a turkey fryer, immersion chiller and another extract brew kit.

After a few more extract kits I decided on bigger bottles.

After a few more extract kits I switch to corny kegs.

It took me a while to step into all-grain. I found someone giving away a 10-gallon cooler mash tun and 10 gallon cooler sparge tank. Ok, he wasn't giving it away but it was cheap. He wanted cash for some hunting equipment. He even threw in a 1/2 barrel sanke he was making into a keggle. It was a hack job and needs re-cut.

And...my first all-grain is coming to brewfest.