currently experimenting with Zymurgy here, I’m probably talking to myself (what’s new), but maybe you guys have some ideas, and maybe I’ll spark someone to try it. It’s fairly easy, at least using extracts and steeped grains. I’m a total newbie, having only been brewing for 6 months. I also have yet to brew a lager. I’d like to do a dark lager some day. I need a place to keep the temps at 55-60 for the fermentation process. I’d use the fridge to lager it.
I do have a room I could use, I usually keep the temps low (60ish) at home any way, and just wear sweaters and sweat shirts.

I know Ginger works well.

so I could use my phone to connect to the internet when need be, like when I’m lost or need to find a restaurant or store or something.

has hops. Hops is a defining character in beer. It contains alpha acids that make the beer bitter, and imparts floral, herbal, and citrusy flavors and aromas to the beer if added later in the boil. Gruit in it’s purest form is Yarrow, Sweet Gale, and Marsh rosemary. Gruit was used before hops was common in ales, to preserve the beer, offset the sweetness, and have a slightly psychoactive effect. Hops does all that, but is even better at it, and since the 1300’s has become the defining bittering agent in beer.

I could not find marsh rosemary or yarrow, so I bittered with Mugwort, did the flavor/aroma part with Sweet gale and dry “hopped” with both. It tastes only very slightly like beer as you and I would know it.

Beer takes about 2 weeks to ferment, 2 weeks to carbonate, and 2+ weeks to condition. I plan on 6 weeks total for beer to be “up to snuff”. Of course more conditioning time helps a lot of beers. Kegging helps reduce the time, but since I don’t have one, I can’t give any tips there.

doing extract beers. Steeping in color grains is no big deal, and you can steep in some flaked barley, and add maltodextrin if you want to add body. As you can tell, I haven’t taken the plunge and mashed my own wort yet. That hopefully will happen today. It’ll probably be a partial-mash, but from everything I’ve been told, partial is perfectly fine for good beer, in fact a lot of brewery’s add extract for some alcohol boost, and as long as you have some mashed grain, you’ll get enough body to make it good.

bad decisions AND bad luck. Sorry to hear you’re stuck.

Happened to us once when driving into Spokane, while coming down the hill on I-90 into the valley just before the Downtown area. My dad was driving us in our ‘87 Suburban and pulling our 25’ trailer. I was sitting in the back seat and glanced out the window just in time to see 3 lug nuts go flying away from the left rear tire.Called that out to my dad and he started to slow down, just in time for the wheel to go flying off and begin bounding down the freeway, passing us while bouncing. My dad somehow steered the truck from the far left lane all the way to the right-side shoulder in a lifted truck pulling 25’ of dead weight, all while dragging the left rear wheel hub, carving a channel in the road. Crazy shit. It’s a good thing you noticed and were able to stop in time

I’m fucking sick of snow.

This is Seattle. We don’t get winter here. Fall, Spring, and a sliver of summer. What in the hell.