I started brewing in 1998 after graduating from college and finding myself with lots of free time to learn new things. Brewing has always fascinated me; something about the biology/chemistry/physics experiment aspect of it is really interesting. Watching the yeast moving around in a carboy during the first stages of fermentation and the CO2 blowing out the airlock was fascinating. I spend a lot of time watching the active part of the fermentation and a lot of time trying to forget it's there during the long secondary fermentations.
I started out brewing a batch of plum wine, simply because we had an explosion of plums on our trees that year. It was my first time fermenting anything and I made some mistakes, but learned a lot!
Then I got interested in mead making, and in the process picked up beekeeping. I have only made a few batches of mead I've really enjoyed, including a sparkling light raspberry ginger methyglin, and a sweeter aged tangerine ginger still mead. Sorry for the really old mead and plum wine pages!
Shortly thereafter I started brewing beer. I made a couple of batches of extract beer first, and then jumped straight to all-grain after tasting a huge difference in quality. Now I brew all-grain beers almost exclusively. My trademark beer is made with Celstial Seasonings' Red Zinger Tea spring ale. (Celestial Seasonings is a well-known local tea manufacturer) Yum!