The general dislike of fruit beers is interesting but somewhat unsurprising. There are a lot of really horrible ones out there, I would however encourage folks to keep an open mind on them though. There seem to be more that are actually good nowadays than used to be (lindemans notwithsanding although thier Cuvee Rene Grande Cru is acceptable). As with most things its a sense of balance and appropriateness of amount that makes them work or not. This is true of most of the additives, the product should be enhanced by (smoke, bourbon, etc...) not overwhelmed by it.

Worst beer I ever had was at a sour beer tasting (again like many "styles" sours can be amazingly good or really horrid) and one has enterobacter contamination. That is NOT a flavor you will soon forget (and I've tasted some small amounts in several other beers since now that my taste buds are "sensitized" - enterobacter adds "acetaldehyde, methyl acetate, diacetyl, 2,3-pentanedione and dimethyl sulphide" in various amounts and the flavor profile can be best described as a woody poo like flavor).

Second worst was a cream ale that would have been more accurately described as a "creamed corn ale" the amount of DMS in that beer was overwhelming.

Quote Originally Posted by Jason Roehl View Post
The kits I've been using come with unhopped Liquid Malt Extract and typically a pound or two of crushed grains, then a few ounces of hops. Heat water, steep the grains, dissolve the LME, boil, add hops, boil, add more hops, cool, pitch the yeast, etc. I'm wanting to switch to all grain, using the brew-in-a-bag method, which skips the sparging/mash tun setup, and uses a nylon mesh bag for the grains. I have a friend who swears by the method. Google it. The BIAB method will keep me alive, since I just ordered a new, heavy-duty, 10-gallon brew pot last night (~$175). I don't think I could get the rest of a sparging setup past my wife at this point and live to tell about it.
BIAB works pretty well, you'll get slightly lower extract efficiency than some other methods but at homebrew scale it doesn't matter much. My biggest dislike of it is that its somewhat messier than a mash tun setup (I've been using the 2 gott coolers and a brewpot for ~12 years or so, about 5 I added another hot water heater which allowed me to overlap brews and do 2 all grain batches in about 4 hours.)

Quote Originally Posted by Phil Thien View Post
7% or 8% is okay, much above that and I do start to feel like it is too "boozy" (very good word for that, now I'll know what to tell my friends that try to give me the strong stuff).
Some of my friends make beer in the 10%+ range that's not boozy at all.. and that's a very risky situation indeed!