This is the story of how I went from buying my beer at the beer store to all-grain brewing in less than two years.

We have a crab apple tree in front of my our house that pumps out small bitter crabs that nothing will eat. After many years of having rotten crab apples tracked through our house, I decided to try to make something from them. Wine seemed like the answer. I headed over to the local wine and beer making store and started asking questions. The people working in these stores love what they do, and are very willing to help novices get started. The guy at the store warned me that the crab apples wouldn't make very good wine, but I decided to try it anyway. He sold me the basic startup kit. The wine did indeed turn out bad.

Determined not to let my equipment investment go to waste, I picked up a Morgan's beer kit in a can. The beer turned out not bad. It wasn't great, but not bad, and it sure beat paying liquor store prices (and taxes).

I continued doing the kit in a can thing for almost a year. I noticed that the beer was good, but not really like a commercial beer. I was considering trying all-grain brewing, and was looking around for a shop that sold grains. I stumbled on a shop where the owner knew lots about beer brewing (many of these stores specialize in wine, and know little or nothing about beer). When I told the owner that I was using can kits he took it upon himself to straighten me out. He recommended the wort concentrate in a box kit instead. He also recommended that if I had cans left, to use two to a batch instead of one. Using two cans per batch eliminates the need for added sugar. This made a big difference. It also doubled the hops in the batch (this is when my love of the hop really started).

After using some of my remaining cans, I tried a couple of the wort concentrate kits. These were much better. There was actually a slightly fresh taste to the beer. Around this same time I discovered howtobrew , John Palmer's web site. A great site that explains everything about brewing in a way that beginners can understand. After reading his site, I tried an extract and specialty grain batch. I steeped some malted grain for twenty minutes or so and used another old can kit that I still had. I was surprized at the fresh grain taste that I got from the little bit of grain I used.

I then started collecting and making equipment for the next step: all-grain. I bought a couple of large pots and a new cooler, and made a wort chiller and a wort collection manifold. I also started asking around town for places that sold malted grains, hops and liquid yeasts. This turned out to be the hard part. I live in a town of almost 1 million people, and so far I have found one store that stocks this kind of thing.

I have now abandoned kits altogether and stick to all-grain.

My advise to anyone considering starting to brew beer is to skip the cans, and do a few of the wort extract boxes to start with. If you enjoy brewing, read Palmer's web site. Palmer's site leads you through different ways to easily start adding grains, hops and liquid yeasts to your brew. Also, find a good local suppler who can give good advise. My local supplier handles 90% of what I want. For the rest I depend on Paddockwood. Paddockwood is the best mail order supplier I've seen.

I still have most of the crab apple wine I made. It really doesn't make sense to drink bad wine, when I've got so much great beer kicking around, but maybe I'll try another bottle of it some day.