Most of my life I did not like beer very much, but that changed when I moved to Germany in 92 and discovered Hefeweizen. When I moved back to Nova Scotia in 94 it was unavailable in the government liquor stores, and my brother had just started homebrewing, so I decided I was going to start brewing my own Hefeweizen. It would be a good 2 or 3 years before I brewed one that was loyal to what I was drinking over there, but that was more because once I started brewing I sort of lost the desire for a Hefeweizen.

In the first year I also did a few small 5-10 litre batches of mead and fruit wine, mainly because I had met the woman who was later going to become my wife and she had more of an interest in those than beer. Did I mention that we met on-line and our first date was brewing beer together? I'm such a geek! Within a year of my first batch I had bought all the equipment for doing allgrain, and remember very well doing that first batch. The only references I had to go by were TNCJOHB (which I do not think has very good info for allgrain) and the 95 allgrain issue of Zymurgy, which fortunately is a pretty good reference. And of course an e-buddy from Montreal that I met in r.c.b who was really my biggest help.

There was no turning back and from then on I did very few extract batches. For a couple years in the early 2000s I got heavier into making mead than beer mainly because it takes so much less time to make (not counting aging!!!), but fortunately I'm back into beer. I do not have a permanent brewery yet, but now that I finally am a homeowner I'm working on it.

Favorite beers are Kölsch and Hefeweizen, but also like a good Pale Ale and Brown Ale (including Altbier), and have been known to brew the odd Stout. Love putting lots of fruit into the secondary of just about any kind of beer, and also make a fair bit of mead and melomel.

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