Brewing Anniversary

Happy anniversary to me: it was seventeen years ago today that I brewed my first five-gallon batch of Pale Ale in my tiny apartment kitchen in San Leandro, California. I think I still have the recipe somewhere; I'll post it if I can dig it up. The extract kit was a Christmas gift from my mother. I told her later that she had created a monster, because that was the first step toward giving up my software career in favor of becoming a full-time brewer.

So here's to you, Mom, on the 17th anniversary of that fateful brew. Thanks!

(By the way, I'm brewing a Weizenbock today. I haven't come up with a clever name yet.)

[Edit 01-12-2007: Paris found my old recipe book; here's the scanned image of "Batch #1". Note also that the seventeenth anniversary of the brew was not yesterday at all, but rather next Friday, January 19. I figure that gives me an excuse to throw another party next week!

It was fun reading my old recipes, but it made me wonder how I choked down some of those early efforts.]