I'm Tom. My first brew was 47 years ago, which sounds impressive. However, my last was 41 years ago. For the last 22 years I have been living in the land of Blanche, Dubbel and Abbey. With retirement coming up I am getting ready to brew again, with the intent of brewing lighter beers. I'm now finding that Belgian beers are too strong for my taste - the best part of a trip to England is being able to drink more than a litre a night, so I'm looking forward to brewing a decent pint of bitter.
It's only taken him 22 years so I still have a while before I get fed up of them here's an extract bitter I made. 2.5kg dme 500g dwe liberty bell 100g ekg hops ( 20 min boil) it came out at 6.3% so maybe only use 2kg dme instead of 2.5kg... it took 8 weeks in the bottle to reach its best.
Welcome to the forum. Treat yourself to a copy of Graham Wheelers "Brew Your Own British Real Ale". Plenty of AG recipes for bitters and other styles as well, some with extract only options. If nothing else they will give you some ideas. And you can pick up cheap s/h copies off ebay and Amazon if that suits.
What did you drink in those 22 years then? Btw, also from Belgium (Loppem), you might also be interested in Het Vlaams Hobbybrouwforum. Regards, Jürgen
Bedankt, maar ik spreek weinig Vlaams. Mostly I drink Leffe, Grimbergen and Maredsous - brune in winter, blonde and amber in summer with Blanche de Namur and Hoegaarden (my local brew excluding Jandrain microbrewery) in full summer. I have subscribed to Belgibeer but I find that the beers are not much nicer than Interbrew but much more expensive. Hence the desire to brew myself.
