Not too long after we moved into our house, our friend Nick asked if he could store a bunch of homebrew equipment in our basement. We said OK, but he had to let us use it (and show us how).

We started off with brew kits. Here’s what we made in 2015:

• April 2015, first night of brewing ever: “Mediocre Milliard” American Wheat Beer & Honey Kölsch 
  • Milliard original gravity 1.028 / didn’t measure FG
  • Kölsh OG 1.048 / didn’t measure FG
• Summer 2015: “Jubilee” Cream Ale
• Fall 2015: “The Wit” Witbier
• Fall 2015: “Ol Smokey” Imperial Smoked Chipotle Porter
  • OG: 60 (??) / FG: 20 (??) / I don’t think we understood the hydrometer
• Fall 2015: “The Pump” Pumpkin Ale
• Winter 2015: “Brewdolph the Red Nosed Reinbeer” Holiday Red & Saison de Noel
  • Brewdolph OG 1.062 / FG 1.03
  • Saison OG 1.06 / didn’t measure FG

These were all extract kits that yielded around 5 gallons. We bottled all of these.

Brewdolph and Saison de Noel were tolerable enough to give out as gifts for Christmas that year!

I’m writing this in January 2019, and we still have a few bottles of “The Pump” downstairs. Turns out 5 gallons of pumpkin beer is about 4.75 too many gallons of pumpkin beer for autumn, but that one actually seems to be getting better with age (so far anyways).