That dumb hobby

I bottled my sixth batch of homebrew beer tonight...as hobbies go, homebrewing isn't really as much fun as I imagined it would be. Everything I made from kits tasted kind of the same, so I ordered some non-kit ingredients and started tinkering. First I substituted a yeast I'd purchased for the kit-yeast, figuring the kit-yeasts were lending some weird and distinctive flavor to everything I made. Then I substituted some malt for a kit that came with this sugary stuff that's really not very good.

The batch I bottled tonight took the actual plunge. No kit, all ingredients I bought separately and plugged in to a recipe program to determine how much of whatever to put in. (It's still considered newbie level because I used malt instead of grains...but I still hopped it myself.)

I take a little taste before I bottle (it's raw and flat, but you're supposed to determine it does taste remotely like beer before you continue.) It did taste remotely like beer. It was a lot paler than I thought it would be. I guess we'll see what I've got in a few weeks.

Honestly, homebrewing seems like 95% sterilizing things, 4% watching things boil and 1% fun at this point. I think the thing I liked most is reading about ingredients.