I have seen the kits, I have even bought a few as gifts (ok lousy last minute gifts), but I think I want to give it a go.
I know there are different types of beers, but I would like to have something that doesn’t totally blow, kind of bland if you will. I also want it to be easy.
How do I do it? How long does it take? Should I get a kit, buy a brewery? Plant some hops? Please give me an overview and suggestions.
I’ve only done it once, but it was a good result and really easy.
All I had was a brewer’s bucket, some malt, yeast and Bog Myrtle (I was making it to a very old recipe called ‘gale beer’ that uses a local wild herb for flavouring, instead of hops that were introduced much later).
Essentially, you just sterilise everything, boil up a few gallons of water, stir in your malt, leave to cool to blood heat, add the yeast, put the lid on and wait a while (I can’t remember exactly how long), then siphon it into bottles and cap them.
My recipe called for a quarter teaspoonful of sugar into each bottle - this gives the yeast an extra boost and fermentation starts again, but the CO[sub]2[/sub] has nowhere to go, so it goes into solution, adding a natural sparkle to the beer (or making the bottle explode, showering you with shards of glass).
The end result was a crystal-clear, aromatic, sparkling amber (the colour of real amber, which isn’t straw yellow) beer that was moderately potent.
One day I’ll do it again.
You can, of course, get really serious and make your own malt and brew from a ‘mash’ of malted grains, but that’s probably a little extreme for the first attempt.
Get yerself some supplies. I use “www.austinhomebrew.com”. Best prices and service I have found.
Its about as easy as running a dishwasher and boiling water. It can be a little messy if you are not careful, but I manage to not destroy the house. The worst part is bottling, but with experiance, that too gets very easy. I use “Grolsh-type” , liter-sized bottles and even 3 liter plastic bottles with screw caps. Can’t get any easier.
The biggest obsticle I have come up on is temprature. You can only brew certain types of beer at room temprature. Of course, there are many excellent Ales you can make without special refridgeration, so you can get a good start without too much investment. If you decide you like the hobby enough, you can invest in a fermentation fridge later. I’m getting one after Christmas to brew Lagers.
Here is a tip: Use only White Lab Liquid Yeast for your brews, and make sure its fresh. I noticed a huge increase in the quality of my beers when I made the switch. Wyeast is good, but I found White Lab much better.
Don’t plant hops or a field of grain! All the stuff you need can be found at the site I listed above. Just pick a clone of a beer you like and they send you everything you need. I have made 4 batchs from AHB and they all have turned out very good.
Any more questions? I’ll check back later. There are also a buch of other posters with more experiance than me, and I’m sure they will be along shortly. Also, read sig carefully.
Pick a clone kit of a commercial beer you like already. For example, if you like Newcastle Brown Ale, they sell what they call “Their version” , which is a very good copy. I brewed a Newcastle so “right”, you couldn’t tell it wasn’t the “real thing” from the brewery.
It is very simple. I brew beer all the time - an constant supply of very cheep beer, that is a good quality.
All you need is
a fermenting container with a spigot and air lock
stirrer
brewers sugar
can of ‘beerconcentrate’ - syrup with hops extract and malt (comes with a sachet of yeast)
bleach
bottles (I use plastic PET screw cap bottles, because I am too lazy to cap bottles. Also no broken glass and are easier to clean.)
plain jellybeans
You can get these from any supermarket or a brew shop (look up nearest in the yellow pages).
Sanitise the equipment by filling with bleach in water and soaking for a few hours, the rinse out thoroughly with boiled water several times untill all chlorine smell is gone (and then some). Thats the hard part.
Pour in concentrate, bag of brewers sugar and some hot water and stir. Fill up with water and chuck in yeast. This is at about 25-30 C (you can use a sanitised thermometer if you want).
Leave for 2 weeks. I have left mine for a few months before bottling with no problem.
Sanitise bottles and lids. This is the second hardest part. Same story as earlier.
Put 2-3 jelly beans in each bottle and fill each bottle from the fermenter (sitting on a bench). Leave a small air gap in each bottle. Jelly bean are just a lazy ‘sugar delivery system’.
Cap bottles and leave in a dark cool spot for at least 2 weeks.
Drink beer.
There are heaps of web sites and books on this stuff. You can make it more complicated if you like, but this is the simple lasy and effective way.
Also… when you empty the fermenter in step (5), clean it out straight away - scrub, rinse, bleach, rinse, rinse, rinse with boiling water - and then do step (2) again.
This way you get all the cleaning done in one hit and you can forget about it for another month, when you do it all again.
There are many good books on the subject. The one that I got started with is Brewing the World’s Great Beers by Dave Miller. John Palmer’s How To Brew is available online completely free. Either one should give you the information you need to make great beer.
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the process, seek out a local homebrew supply store. A good one will carry all the requisite equipment and ingredients. The proprietors should also be able to hook you up with some good beginning recipes.
Yeah, dude, get into it. I am a regular brewer and concur it is easy after you’ve done one or two brews. I’ve been brewing nearly 3 years and of the (I think) 34 brews I have made during that time (I admit I am fairly anal with the record-keeping aspect of things) only one batch was undrinkable (though I still drank it, of course ).
Homebrew stouts seem to have a higher success rate, I’ve found - both mine and other people’s. I was never a big stout fan until I started brewing but now I’d be doing one every fourth batch or so.
In addition to the good advice so far, (I like Nothern Brewer for kits and supplies), the best intro to homebrewing happens to be online for free. Although he sells printed versions, you can read How To Brew for free online by clicking that link.
And if your partial to their beers, the South Australian brewers Coopers make kits that come out just like the stuff you buy in bottles. Their sparkling ale comes with sediment just like the homebrew. Their kits even contain Coopers own yeast that has been developed by the family over a hundred plus years. The website has lots of good information.
I have been brewing beer since 1982. It is a fun hobby and you get the benifit of having good beer to drink to. Start with an easy kit and really pay attention to the process. Just remember cleanliness is the key to great beer. The liquid yeast tip Gatopescado pointed out is one to remember too. The first batch I made with liquid yeast was superior to what I had been doing with dry yeast. I almost started culturing yeast at that point but that is really time consuming.
The easiest trick for cheap, easy, first time beer brewing to try it out is
a) use a 5 gallon plastic water cooler jug. Pour out enough to make space for the wort and jam an airlock into the top hole. Saves you from having to buy a carboy.
b) buy a kit beer and add a couple of pounds of malt (or honey) and boil and ounce of hops in the wort.
Get a little fancier and you can
c) boil crystal malt in the wort
d) start your dry packaged yeast the night before in a big bottle using an airlock. Boil a couple inches in the bottle worth of water and something fermentable (honey, malt, even white sugar). Let the water cool to tepid, pour in the yeast, and jam in the airlock. When your wort has cooled and in the fermenter (plastic carboy), then pitch the yeast which will obviously be active.
To all homebrewers out there, the above are some easy ways to make a decent drinkable homebrew. Heck I still do it that way sometimes. But it’s an easy introduction that yields really good results with a minimum of fuss and initial investment
Grolsch 16 oz swing-top bottles are great for brewing - no hassle in capping. I’m lazy that way.
Besides the How To Brew site, the Homebrewing for Dummies book is actually a rather useful resource. Between the two of them, that’s a good start. Charlie Papazian’s Complete Joy of Homebrewing is good, but as a newbie brewer I found it hard to use as a reference manual, it seemed kind of densely packed. He’s got great advice though: “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.” Many people have taken up that phrase since. I also like Brew Your Own magazine, at http://www.byo.com/
Start out with an all-extract kit for easiest brewing. You’ll get a can or bag of liquid or dry malt extract, maybe some hops if they’re not in the extract already, some yeast (liquid is best). Follow the directions given by the resources I mentioned. Don’t worry if your first try isn’t that good - you’re learning! It might take a few batches before you get some results that make you and your friends go “wow” but once you do, it’s worth all the effort.
Eventually you’ll want to move on to where you cook some grains in water first (sort of like steeping a tea), then add some malt extract to it. Some people even graduate to using all grains, which is more complicated but allows you full control over the process. I recommend at least shooting for the former type of brewing, eventually, as it opens up a lot of good recipes to you.
And as another poster said, ales are the easiest ones to brew. Lagers require extended fermentation time around 50 degrees F or less, while ales are fine around 60-70 degrees F. This is easiest for your average homebrewer to deal with.