Hi Everyone

[weevaa]

Hey guys,

Just joined up after lurking around for a while reading. Thought I would say Hi & introduce.

I am based on the North Shore in Browns Bay and have just got into brewing, just bottled my second extract brew, can't wait to try it. Looks like there are a lot of good keen people out here, and some good advice to be had. I am currently scouring trademe (without luck) for some cheap kit, mainly a big pot for my next brew which will be partial grain. So if anybody is upgrading anythig and wants to get rid of stuff, let me know :-).

Thanks!

[jt]

Aw Stu - number 3 ????

[Stu McKinlay]

On its way.

[jt]

That's a bit of a gap between 2 & 3 Stu, you're slipping ;-)

I'll have a beer in celebration tonight, cheers to you all !

[Stu McKinlay]

Yep, we're getting slack alright. We might miss out on three under three by a couple of weeks.

I suspect this might be the last one but you never know... I'm very tempted to use a few brewing metaphors but I'd best not.

[Greig McGill]

Congrats Stu. Remind me to by you a beer at Kieran's. ;)

[Barry]

Wow Stu, so have you figured out what causes it by now?
Awesome news, congrats mate.

[Tony]

Stu, you baby factory, congratulations!

[Chris Banks]

Hey Everybody
My name is Chris I have also been watching the forums for a while and joined when a few different
posts appealed!
Im in Wellington and have brewed since i was about 14 yrs old consisting of apple cider,ginger beer,rhubarb champagne except 1 kit lager (disaster). And after a long break (7-8 yrs) I brought
a macs starter kit (at the beer show in wellington town halll about 3yrs ago)and through trial and error discovered what kinds of beers I actually enjoy.
Despite some considerable refinements I still havent broken away from kit brewing.
After reading about hop plants on here i brought several plants and planted them so im hoping (hopping?) that a bucket full of fresh hops might inspire me to get into all grain!!
I plan on building all my equipment so have been doing a lot of research on that and learning how
its all done.Anyway thats my little spiel.
Cheers Chris

[Martin Bridges]

OK, so finally getting around to answering this.

I'm Martin and I too am in Browns Bay on the North Shore. I arrived in NZ from the UK about a year ago. I'd never brewed in the UK but I'd been an enthusiastic member of CAMRA. I helped organise the Ealing Beer Festival for several years (I was the Wet Stock Controller, so I did the beer ordering and looked after the beers during the festival). I also ran a real ale bar in my spare time (the Questors Grapevine Bar in Ealing).

Anyway, my work colleagues bought me a homebrew kit as a leaving present so once we'd sorted out a house here I got stuck into brewing. I'm on batch number 9 now - most of them have been extract-based with some steeped grains, but the most recent batch is a partial mash Alt. I'm planning to go all-grain as soon as I can get the necessary kit together. The delay has been purely down to cashflow - these damned food/fuel prices are killing our household budget.

I got involved with SOBA not long after arriving and I help organise the Auckland-area monthly meetings. We're starting to get a good group of people together (and they're great to have a beer with) so hopefully we can start to achieve something.

Since you're just down the road weevaa we should meet up to swap homebrews sometime.

Cheers,

Martin

[weevaa]

Sounds like a good plan! Will let you know when my next batch is ready for tasting and we can have a bit of a swap and get together.

Great to see this thread turn into a good "meet & greet" for everyone, its good to put locations/stories behind the usernames.

[Tony]

Yes likewise weevaa. I also live on the Shore, so keep in contact. Try and come to a Soba meeting too.

[weevaa]

Well perhaps we could have a North Shore get together, maybe in conjunction with a SOBA meeting? Sample a few beers then follow onto the meeting? My brew is 4-5 weeks away from drinking so that would be an approx timeframe to work to.

Denimglen where are you base?