2015 was my first full year of brewing. I started lurking /r/homebrew, probably around late October/early November of 2014, to start to get a feel for the hobby. I picked up my first kit in January and it's been a fun ride ever since. I think i have somewhere around 30-45 gallons under my belt and I'm hoping to increase that this coming year. Without this sub, I wouldn't have fallen as deep into the rabbit hole as I did, but I'm very thankful that I did because you guys have taught me a hobby that I'll keep for life. So thank you very much and cheers!
In the picture is a bottle of my Christmas old ale. I brewed it back in September and bottled it Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be handing this out to family and friends for Christmas.
Here's the recipe. I'm very happy with how it turned out. For the future, the things I would do differently with this beer is maybe adding more of the spices after the primary. The spices I added at flameout and they're more of a note in the beer than a flavor. Still good though and I hope those I hand this out to will enjoy it.
Here are a couple extra pictures:
Picture of the beer itself. I'm really pleased with the color that came out.
Here's a picture of my girlfriend helping me add the little Christmasy accent to the bottle as well as a picture of me melting the wax. I wanted to have a gift ribbon on the bottle to make it look more like a gift and I figured I would melt the wax over it, so that when you untie the ribbon, the wax would come off with it. It should make taking the wax off to uncap it a bit easier, but we'll see how it actually goes. The picture shows me melting the wax in a half of a can in boiling water, but shortly after I took the picture, I just put the can on the stove. The boiling water technique took too long and placing it straight on the stove got it going faster. Next time, I want to use a bigger can so I can have more wax to dip the bottles in. Some of my bottles are dipped right at the neck, but I wanted the wax to go beyond the next. I just like the way that looks.
This one might be NSFW, so don't click if squimish. I was pretty careful throughout the waxing process not to burn myself. Of course, with my luck, as I'm putting away the last bottle, the bottle somehow moves a funky way and the wax touches my finger. Blister ensues. This was a few days ago and today, my finger is fine and it's like it never happened. But still....I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone this, but for those not in the know, hot wax is HOT.
Thanks again, /r/Homebrewing. CLINK*