Hello From Trinidad and Tobago

[dhan17]

Hi all,
I am pretty much new to brewing but I have done three batches with the use of beer kits thus far. The first went horribly wrong as I as following the recipe from the brew kit. I have since gotten the book 'how to brew' by John Palmer and it has helped a lot. The second batch I did was a stout that turned out ok. In the third the batch I think I knew exactly what I was doing and planned all the steps ahead. I got a pretty decent batch of Australian Pale Ale brewed from a coopers kit.
Recently, I travelled to New York in vacation and I was able to visit a brew store in Brooklyn called Bitter and Ester. The guys there were super helpful and we able to get me moving towards the next stage of brewing. I was introduced to specialty grains the diff varieties of hops. They said that brewing from kits alone and hopped malt extract really does not add the character into the beer and that I would be amazed by the difference of steeping some grains and adding the buttering and aroma hops.
I bought my supplies and now I am ready to brew the first batch of beer that was not necessarily a prepackaged kit. Very excited about this and can't wait to taste the beer.
I visited a couple brew pubs while in Brooklyn Covenhoven and Bierkraft. Great beers and I would recommend these places to anyone visiting New York. If I can get my beer anywhere close to those I would be grateful.

Sorry about the long introduction. Looking forward to exploring the forum and learning some new stuff in terms of brewing.

 

[passedpawn]

Hello, international brewer! Welcome to our forum. I don't recall seeing any other brewer here from your island.

Good luck with your new brew.

 

[unionrdr]

Welcome! You came to the right place. All kinds of good info to be found here. I was just thinking you might try a chili beer with some scorpion peppers from your island? My son started growing them & ghost chilis on his balcony.

 

[Doctor_M]

Welcome to the best home brewing forum on the web! I have been to Trinidad before, beautiful country!

 

[dhan17]

Thanks for the welcome. @union scorpion pepper is not to be messed with. My mom made some hot sauce with those once and one drop was too much for all your food. Burns both ends as well 😥But maybe when I am a bit more advanced I can experiment.
@doctor great to hear you visited. It's a nice place but considerably lacking in terms of good beer. Ppl are very contented with the lagers here which are Carib and Stag. Now there is a movement towards light beers with coors pretty much dominating the market. To me if tastes like water with a hint of beer. We get some English ales, some Belgian beers like Stella and Leffe. My go to beers are basically Guiness and I can get blue moon which is not bad.
Brewing beer seems like the best way to get something good to drink. But ppl here still need to get an appreciation for good beers. For most it's just a means to getting drunk.

 

[Cyclman]

Welcome to the hobby, and the group, from Colorado

A little steeping grain and adding hops improves homebrew dramatically.

 

[unionrdr]

Thanks for the welcome. @union scorpion pepper is not to be messed with. My mom made some hot sauce with those once and one drop was too much for all your food. Burns both ends as well ��But maybe when I am a bit more advanced I can experiment.
@doctor great to hear you visited. It's a nice place but considerably lacking in terms of good beer. Ppl are very contented with the lagers here which are Carib and Stag. Now there is a movement towards light beers with coors pretty much dominating the market. To me if tastes like water with a hint of beer. We get some English ales, some Belgian beers like Stella and Leffe. My go to beers are basically Guiness and I can get blue moon which is not bad.
Brewing beer seems like the best way to get something good to drink. But ppl here still need to get an appreciation for good beers. For most it's just a means to getting drunk.

You wanna talk about evil heat?! My old neighbor from back home used to grow these huge Scotch Bonnets that she made this hot sauce out of that was straight outta the devils garden! She used all Scotch Bonnets & no tomato sauce, etc to cut it with. You dipped your tsp in it & shook it off till the spoon was only coated slightly. It still burned so bad you almost couldn't eat the chili you put it in! If that stuff was that evil, I can only imagine what the Scorpion peppers are doing to my son's stomach!?

 

[kitr]

Are you still brewing there? May I ask where you get your supplies from? Was wondering how to get grain sent in and was hoping someone had solved that already?