RealHomebrew.com is the brain child of two avid homebrewers and beer lovers, sickness Andy Vellenga and Carl Weaver.

Andy

My father first introduced me to homebrewing 15 years ago and I never turned back!  I love the ability to craft my own beers to my (and my wife’s) personal taste.  I’m also a gear junky and enjoy filling my garage in Alexandria, approved Virginia with homebrewing equipment to the point of excess.  Unlike the rest of the junk in my garage, I really love using my homebrewing equipment to make great tasting, homemade beer!

Favorite Beer Style: IPA.  Love hops.

Extract or All Grain: Extract, but will go all grain when I feel a mood to go old school.

Favorite Commercial Beer: Flying Dog IPA

Bottle or Keg: Keg, absolutely!

Carl

Carl started making his own beer at age 19 so he would not have to ask his friends to buy it for him anymore. Since then, he has very much enjoyed the process of brewing and thinks of his brewing setup as a chemistry set for adults. When he isn’t brewing, Carl is a professional writer and photographer, and enjoys a quiet life in Arlington, VA.

Favorite Beer Style: Malty ales with a medium amount of bitterness, such as an English brown. However, the rich complexity of dark beers, such as stouts and bocks, appeals to me as well. A good wheat beer is nice too, as is a Belgian style ale. Pretty much anything called beer is fine with me, I suppose.

Extract or All Grain: All grain. When I feel like slumming with Andy I do extracts.

Favorite Commercial Beer: Chang, a Thai beer. It reminds me of hot afternoons spent watching the slow flow of the Chao Phraya River, the sweat rolling down my back as the sun beat down on me. I am also a big fan of Fat Tire.

Bottle or Keg: Keg. Definitely. It is like one giant bottle. One thing to clean and sanitize, instead of 60. It was an easy sell once I saw someone else with a kegging setup. Once you go keg, you will never go back.

Our Advertising Policy

As you can see, we have some ad partners. We might have ads on every page, and if you click on them and spend your money with those advertisers, we get a commission. We just want to be up-front about all this so there is no misunderstanding. We do not simply advertise to companies willy-nilly, giving valuable space to anyone who will give us a few bucks. We only advertise for companies we believe in and know to be first-rate in their businesses.

In addition to banner and box ads, we also advertise using text links from time to time. Not every link we post, by any stretch, is an ad link that will get us money. First and foremost, we are here to provide useful information about homebrewing. If a post will benefit from a link to a specific product, we look first to see if one of our ad partners carries that product at a competitive price. If not, we look at other companies we do not have ad agreements with.

To be even more clear about whom we advertise for, this is a list of our current ad partners. Forgive me if I forget to update this list as they change. It must be the beer that makes me forget on occasion. This list is good as of July 2013. These partners do not change very much, as we like who we work with and see no reason to change it right now, although we always keep our eyes open for new opportunities.

• Amazon.com
• MoreBeer.com