Anyone else here brew their own beer? What about wine or mead? Me and a group of guys started brewing our own beer in January of 2009. We'd been brewing about one batch every other week when we would actually meet. This year has been an off year, but we got back together today and brewed ourselves what I like to call a Baltish Porter. It's the second recipe that I completely made up, with the first being a Black IPA (which I had the idea for before it became popular this past year or so). Anyway, this porter should be a strong mother, weighing in at a predicted 9% ABV. I've personally been involved in making almost 50 batches of beer, and pretty much all of them have been good.
We started off just making premade kits and using recipes to make clone batches. After we got an idea of what ingredients go with each other, we started to experiment by adding and substituting stuff from the kits/recipes. It wasn't until these last two batches as a group that we actually used something completely original. Some of the other ones I'd like to mention are:
Triple Nut Brown - Imperial Nut Brown kit with nutmeg and coconut added. This one refermented when we added the coconut.
Chocolate Peppermint Porter - Just enough peppermint to know it's there and have it in the aftertaste.
Don Cherry Ale - Belgian style dubbel that we added tart cherry juice to, causing it to referment.
Ol' Fezziwig clone - Clone of the Sam Adams style that is only available in their Winter Classics Pack.
Breakfast Stout - Oatmeal stout base with brown sugar and raisins added. The brown sugar kicked up the fermentables too much for the yeast and it didn't fully ferment. We are going to try it again.