Zymurgist in Training

I've wanted to get into home brewing for a while. The influence of my many home brewing friends has only increased my desire. I had plans to start last year, and brew some hard cider to hand out for the holidays. So I finally cracked and went out and bought a home brew kit, and decided to brew that hard cider for this holiday season. I shopped around for the best starter cider I could. I was disappointed in the organic, all natural ciders available at the local specialty markets. So I decided to go to the source, and purchased apple cider from the apple orchard near my house. I compared many cider recipes online and in some home brewing handbooks. Eventually found one that came with good reviews. Two weeks ago I prepped the cider and set it up to begin fermenting. I checked on the cider regularly and last Thu it was ready to bottle. Darci and I took a couple hours to bottle all the cider up and clean the equipment. Over the weekend I shared the cider with some friends/family, and got good reviews. The cider will improve with age, so it'll be very exciting to see how it matures. Darci and I are going to make some custom labels for the bottled cider and start handing it out in a few weeks. I'm very excited. I finished reading "The Complete Joy of Home brewing 3rd Ed.". Seems to be a great book on brewing, covering basic through advance home brewing techniques. My brewing friends claim the book to be a great resource. Based off that I decided to start working through the book, starting with brewing a batch of beer utilizing a beer kit. I picked up two Coopers beer kits from my local home brew store: a Dark Ale, and a Bavarian Lager. I'm very excited at the low cost involved with brewing from these kits. At $12 per kit, plus an extra $3 for the necessary corn sugar, it runs approx $0.28/12 beer ($15.00 / (640 oz./12 oz.) = $0.28125). I plan to brew up these two kits sometime this week. A few weeks later they'll be ready to tasting. If I keep up a regular brewing routine, it might be time to invest in some cornelius kegs and build a kegorator.