Oh, let's see... about 14 or 15 years now. I took a several year hiatus and am just getting back into it though. I used to run a national homebrewing forum on the old WWIV BBS network (one of the competitors to Fidonet). Brewed in some competitions, did fair to middlin (best was 7th place in one of the custom categories, man the competition was tough and the field was pretty big). Quit brewing several years ago when money was tight and I had a lot of other worries to deal with. My life's no longer a trainwreck though, and money isn't quite so tight so I can afford to relax and enjoy my hobbies again.

I actually found one of my simpler extract competition recipes ("cinnamon honey ale") that I tweaked and perfected splattered all over the internet, even found one chick that was posting it to boards and claiming it was one of her "old family recipes" lol. She didn't even bother changing any of the recipe text (like my part about skimming the bee eyeballs out) but she did manage to remove my name from the attribution

Go figure heh. It's one of my favorite brews though, and what I generally brew for a "house" brew. If you're looking for a simpler brew that's clean, very drinkable and has a lot of flavor you might try it out. I'll share it with ya if you want or you can always google it, I guess.

Even after all these years I still don't do all grain, though. I do some partial and mini mashes occasionally and use a lot of specialty grains on occasion, but have never had the space to build out a full all grain rig. Eventually I will, though...

-- Gary F.