I have considered brewing my own beer. I thought i'd get a thread started up by sharing some past experiences, advice, and posting beer recipes. Also need info on equipment and prices for those equipment. I know some of the Barra brew there own beer and maybe some se's or regular DCU fans do.
Pick up a copy of Charlie Papazian's book and check out these local home brew supply places. www.mdhb.com www.mylhbs.com
Brewing beer is relatively easy and a lot of fun - not to mention the finished product is beer, like real beer... I got a nice kit when I started that came with two large plastic buckets (one as a transfer bucket and the other as the fermenter. It came with all the pipes and tubes necessary - Brewer's Best is the company. While it is mostly plastic, it has stood up well and I've made a lot of good beer with it. I also started with Brewer's Best beer kits because they include everything you need for a specific type of beer. The instructions are easy to read and really hard to mess up*, they include all the supplies for a specific batch of beer. After doing one or two kits and getting a feel for it, then you can go off and find other recipes... * - in terms of mess ups, I had a backwash issue when priming the syphon from the wort into my transfer bucket and basically spat a mouthfull of cold wort back into the transfer bucket - I wasn't about to chuck the whole batch so brewed it anyway and had no issues - tasted just fine when it was done... Just called it "Spitting Beer"...
Oh and you are going to want a large pot - 10 gallons - for the whole wort making. It is just easier when you are working with a full 5 gallons of liquid than trying to add water later to get up to 5 gallons.
My basic setup from memory is: 1 brew kettle. 2 5 gallon glass carboys with handles. I always transfer from the primary fermenter to a secondary one to filter out all the yeasty smutz. I'd also recommend getting a beer jack to cover the fermenting beer in the carboy so as not to let light damage the beer. 1 car wash bucket to use as the primary fermentation blow off bucket. 1 giant funnel and strainer. plastic tubing for primary fermentation (fat hose) and long thin plastic tube. 1 five gallon bottling bucket. 1 fermentation lock and rubber stopper. 1 auto siphon (essential). 1 thermometer. 1 hydrometer and flask (to measure alcohol content). 1 bottle capper. various hop bags. 2 cases worth of non-twist off beer bottles. 1 large plastic spoon 1 rubber stopper for the carboy. 1 bottle filling attachment. Lots of bottlecaps. Boil them before using.
I actually saved up a bunch of rubber stop beer bottles and found them to be quite easy to use. You then don't have to worry about the bottle capper, which is yet another time when your bottles can go spilling all over the counter with beer gushing all over your kitchen...
Have you ever decapitated a bottle with the capper? Broken glass and spilled beer. Two sad combinations.
i've brewed for a couple years now and love it. it's not something you do to save money but there's nothing cooler than serving your own beer to friends and having them rave about it! first step: i recommend palmer's _how to brew_. it's definitely a brewer's best friend. as for kits, i'm lucky enough to live now near a fantastic homebrew supply store (it's in minnesota, but surprising numbers of people across the US get their stuff from there). in any case, some of their kits should give you a good idea of the basics you'll want to pick up. http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdBySubCat.aspx?SubCat=11166&fd=1 just for reference, i've used the brewing intermediate kit with 2 glass carboys. one 6 gallon for the primary and one 5 for the secondary. i know a lot of people brew with plastic, but i love the glass: less worry about contamination, tight seal, and there's nothing like watching the beer "brew". also, there are some great online resources out there. www.brew-wineforum.com is the one i frequent; there are a ton others, too. it's a great hobby, not too difficult to get started with, and all sorts of directions you can take it. and besides, it's pretty forgiving-- you can make some real mistakes on your beer and they just add some interesting complexity . biggest thing in that respect is to maintain a constant temperature (cool-- 60-5º or so for ales), give the beer plenty of time to ferment out (a week or so in primary, 2 in secondary, 2-3 to carbonate in bottles), and be very compulsive about cleaning AND sanitizing. that last point is probably the biggest key to good beer. welcome to a fantastic hobby!
I think most brew recipe books overcomplicate how long you should ferment the beer for. I switch from the primary fermenter to the secondary when I stop seeing foam moving through the blowoff hose and visible activity seems to have considerably slowed. I know it's time to bottle when the the fermentation lock on the secondary goes 90 seconds between bubbles. Using the hydrometer is just a way to screw things up at that point. I also think that most brew recipe books underestimate how long the beer should age in the bottle before drinking. You will notice a marked difference in taste between 10 days in the bottle and three weeks. I tend to be impatient and start drinking too early. A 2-3 week estimate for bottle conditioning is pretty good.
agreed. i never bother with the hydrometer. if you give the beer enough time, it'll ferment out. also, i'm lazy and don't want to bother with the math!
Thanks guys, this is very helpful. I probably missed it, what is the overall time elapsed to making beer, a lager essentialy.
Lagers, if you're going to do them right, require special equipment because they ferment at lower temperatures than ales. I've never bothered trying to brew a lager for that reason. Overall elapsed time to make an ale, depending on the recipe, from boiling to drinking, ranges from 3 weeks for something like an English bitter to a month for most other recipes.
just to second that, if you're going to do a lager you probably want an extra fridge or freezer with a temperature gauge. i've done one, during winter, and i kept it in a cooler that i kept filled with ice for about a month (for lagering, it should ideally be held pretty close to freezing temperatures). came out great but it was a royal pain and i don't plan on brewing another one until i have space/ money for another fridge. ale's are much easier though and also more forgiving. a month or five weeks for most of them and you're good to drink. of course, the longer you leave them in the bottle the better some of them get. it's really interesting to drink hold back a six pack for 6 months or so and try it again-- the flavor profile really evolves.
I did mostly lager beers despite not having the right temperature for storage (usually you want cave temp, which is in the 55 to 57 degree F range - this comes from the German methods of using caves to lager, english - store, their beer before serving). What you get is "steam ale" - using lager yeast and methods but bottle conditioning at ale temperatures. I found it tasty. The "frost lager" that you find in US beers (i.e. Bud, Miller, etc) is done because they use off-ingredients like rice malt solids and other filler that does not hold up well at higher temperatures (and are therefore stored at near freezing temperatures). For me, I judge beer by their drinkability at "room temperature" - if I can drink it warm then I know that it will be terrific at a slightly colder temp...