The Official Homebrew Thread

[510dat]

Cooking, or brewing, your own beer is surprisingly easy. It gives you the ability to make beers that have all the characteristics you like, in quantities and prices that aren't very expensive.

To start brewing, you will need to find a local brew shop where you can get your equipment and ingredients. Ideally, whoever is behind the counter will be able to listen to what you want, and come up with a good recipe for you. Avoid pre-packaged brew kits, especially if it doesn't have the hops separately. I have yet to have seconds of any of them.

I prefer medium and dark ales and stouts that are not very bitter, good mouthfeel (think Guiness), and complex flavors.

Newcastle is one of my favorite commercial beers, and is more palatable to non-beer drinkers than the real dark and heavy beers. Last August, I wandered into my local brew shop and talked to the guy there. I told him I wanted a Brown Ale similar to Newcastle, but less hoppy and less bland. He gave me a funny look and said, "well, that's basically what brown ales are, a little bitter, and a little bland." But, he started looking through his selection of ingredients, and put a kit together for me. The ingredients cost a grand total of $22, plus an extra $3 for a water barrier that I needed.

Since I was borrowing all the equipment, I went to my friends house, and cooked up the stuff there. It turned out to be an excellent brew, and it didn't last very long at all. I've done a couple brews since then, but my friends keep asking me about the ale, so I figured I'd do another batch and take pictures, so here it is.

I went to a closer brew shop to try them out, and I discovered that the prices of various ingredients have almost doubled in the previous nine months, to about $40 for a batch of 5 gallons of beer. Which, at about 78 cents per bottle is still a good price.

I have since made a batch of the same recipe using ingredients from another shop, and the total was $25, the ingredients were fresher, and the service was better. So shop around and see what you can find.

Here's the directions I followed:
http://www.fermentationfrenzy.com/kit-instructions.php3

[510dat]

This is the expensive part, but the hardware is pretty durable, so hopefully you will only need to buy this stuff once.

You will need:

a 5 or 6 gallon glass carboy (you can get plastic, and it is cheaper, but it leeches chemicals and flavors into your beer)

a 4-6 gallon stainless steel pot (trust me, aluminum is not a good thing to have in your beer. Steel might be ok)

a ~2 foot long metal spoon

a grain bag

a thermometer that can measure between 32F and 220F

a supply of iodine solution or food-safe sanitizer (I prefer the iodine)

a siphon of some kind; for about $15 or $20, there are a number of siphons that you can pump to start it.

a water lock for your carboy

a supply of bottlecaps

a bottlecapper

about 50 clean twelve-ounce bottles with appropriate mouth shape -no screw-off types. Newcastle, ESB Fullers, and Sierra Nevada bottles all work. You can also buy bottles at your local brew shop.

an extra 4-6 gallon container to move the beer to and from; I used a drink-cooler and a small saucepan.

a food scale is indispensable for weighing out your grains.

A wort-chiller is an very useful time-saver. Not much more than a coiled copper tube with hose-fittings on the end, you dunk this into your cooked wort before you add the yeast. Left alone, it takes 24 hours for a wort to cool. Put ice around it, and it takes 60-90 minutes, with a wort chiller it takes about 20 minutes. I don't have one, as they're relatively expensive; between $50 and $100. I use ice, which is fine.

[510dat]

There are five basic ingredients that go into a beer:

Water.
easily overlooked, this wet substance is crucial. It should taste good at the beginning. If your tapwater isn't tasty, go to the store and purchase springwater or (non-carbonated) mineral water. Do not use distilled or reverse-osmosis water, as it has no minerals, and the yeast needs that to make the alcohol.

Malt extract
this can be liquid or a dry powder. It provides all of the sugar, most of the color, and some of the flavor to your beer. There are light and dark ones, with different over and undertones.

Grains
Primarily barley, but almost any grain could theoretically be used; these are used to add flavor and aroma to the brew, and a little color. Ideally, they will be fresh, pungent, and ground in front of you. They smell something like a fresh box of grape-nuts, but better. Since this is where much of your flavor is coming from, avoid stale grains.

Hops
are a very smelly leaf-bud native to somewhere in Germany. They're related to hemp, and they smell like it, too. However, they have none of the recreational properties of marijuana. They provide the bitterness in beer, some of the sharper flavors, and act to preserve the beer during storage.

Yeast
is actually a living culture, and therefore requires care in handling. It must be kept refrigerated until you start cooking the brew. Take it out of the fridge when you start cooking the wort, so it has a chance to warm up before you add it. There are dozens of varieties of yeast, each having different characteristics. The yeast primarily separates a Pilsner from an Ale from a Heffeweisen from a Lager, etc., and dictates the temperature the beer must ferment at.

[510dat]

The ingredients and setup:

[510dat]

grains in the grain bag, checking the temperature, stirring in the hops

[510dat]

Often the hops are added on a schedule, which will give a different character than if they're added all at once.

For this recipe, I put in half of the 2oz in at the beggining of the simmer (t-minus 60 minutes), 1/2 oz at t-minus 30 minutes, and 1/2 at t-minus 10 minutes.

If you have a lot of free time, you can pick the seeds out and grow your own plants. Feel like a pothead yet?


One of the more tedious parts is cooling the wort from ~200F down to ~70F. Left to it's own devices, this will take about 25 hours. I got a bunch of ice, and put it in my sink with the ice. This cools it down in about an hour. When I cooked a batch with my dad, he got some dry ice. We sterilized a stainless steel bowl, put the dry ice and some regular ice in the bowl, and floated the bowl in the wort. Cooling it that way took about a half an hour. I don't know why we didn't just put the dry ice in the wort; that may have been even faster.

[510dat]

the yeast tube being added to the cooled wort.

[510dat]

I tried siphoning the mix into the carboy, but the hops plugged up the siphon about halfway through.

I didn't have a large funnel, so I ghetto-rigged one by cutting the top off of one of the water bottles.

[510dat]

What I don't have pictures of is me adding about 9 liters of water. Unless you have a 6-gallon pot, you won't fill up the carboy. It's not a big deal, just add clean water until the carboy is mostly full. I used twelve 1.5 liter bottles of water. I probably could have added one more bottle, but I didn't have one, so I made do.

This is something I continually forget about; not all carboyd have the same diameter throat. The stoppers I have are too big for this carboy; they would go in, but then pop out. Not desirable for a sterile environment.

In desperation, we tried trimming the stopper, but it's a really tough plastic that comes off in tiny chunks. We eventually wound up using a grater to get it into shape, and so far it seems to be working.

haha I like how the bird is on your shoulder in one pic. That thing is awesome.

[510dat]

Originally Posted by blue660r01

haha I like how the bird is on your shoulder in one pic. That thing is awesome.

Yep, that's what she does.

[Sea Bass]

Thanks for posting this up. I've always wanted to brew my own beer, but I never really knew how easy or hard it was to do right. I'm think I might try this next weekend.

[510dat]

Originally Posted by Sea Bass

Thanks for posting this up. I've always wanted to brew my own beer, but I never really knew how easy or hard it was to right. I'm think I might try this next weekend.

It's pretty fun stuff. It's better if you can get a friend to help you out. The setup and cleaning is the hardest part, so if you each get a carboy a big cooking pot, and a set of ingredients, you can do two batches for not much extra work.

[Sea Bass]

Originally Posted by 510dat

It's pretty fun stuff. It's better if you can get a friend to help you out. The setup and cleaning is the hardest part, so if you each get a carboy a big cooking pot, and a set of ingredients, you can do two batches for not much extra work.

Sounds like a plan. Homebrew next Sat, drink, smoke a bowl, then go out!

[Tackett]

Originally Posted by 510dat

Yep, that's what she does.

How do you put up with the poo? I used to raise lovebirds and had to get bird diapers.

[510dat]

I trained her to only poop in her cage, or outside. Took about six months. She lets me know when she needs to go, and I can prompt her, so I can take her most places with me.

[bhendjol]

thanks for your post.
might be useful.

[Wired 24/7]

Who does it?

What was your experience? Tips/pointers... how to make the beer taste better... what kind of hops did you use (pellet or whole?)

I want to engineer and piece together some of the parts myself, I'm heading down to a homebrew supply store in a few minutes to check out the selection.

If this turns out with any sort of success, I will definitely post up pics/how-to.

that guy with the orange bird avatar does it ....510 i think

[vnarang]

Need more hops.