Disclaimer: I know the guy that founded this company. Sam Wammack taught me a lot about homebrewing over the years. Thanks, Sam!
To echo Homebrew’s comment: Homebrew has live yeast in it. This yeast loves what’s in your colon. Yeast+food=CO2. If you have really been at the beer, you can clear an intersection. (No exaggeration! I’ve seen it done. Downtown Las Vegas, in town for Winterfest, a friend of mine cleared an intersection with his blast. Almost peeled the paint off the facade of Main Street Station Casino!)
Gatopescado, you have to “start” liquid yeast sooner than you do dry yeast. Keep a little wort in the fridge, and the day before you brew, pitch in your Wyeast. That way it gets a good runup to having enough cells to ferment rapidly. Nothing against dry yeast, mind you. I’ve won a healthy number of ribbons with dry-yeasted beer. But liquid yeast gives you much more control of the final product. More precise, you might say.
It seems that just about everyone has added their favorite store in their posts. I haven’t == www.morebeer.com Located on the other coast, I buy from them because they have free shipping over $50 and THEY HAVE NEVER SCREWED UP AN ORDER FROM ME. To each their own.
Yeast is a variable. I use almost exclusively liquid yeasts. I have a yeast bank (taken from carboy when I rack from primary to secondary) and it covers some 8 different varieties. Each has a different character. Yeast strains are not beginner topics; start with dry and move as your confidence and palate grows.
My horror story. I had just finished pitching the yeast into a carboy of mead. 15 pounds of honey, 5 gallons total volume. I was moving the carboy and put it down a bit too hard and broke the side wall of the carboy. Splash all over the kitchen floor. The wife very nearly killed me.
I originally did this to make them portable for a cross-country trip to meet with friends then camp a week. I didn’t want to lug expensive glass bottles, especially when empty, all over the country. I figured we would drink up and toss the plastic bottles. Well, they worked fine.*
Now, because of the volume of brew I like to have on hand to keep a constant variety, I use them at home also. I didn’t want to have to buy 10 cases of the fancy Grolsch-type bottles at $25 a dozen. The plastic bottles do a good job, don’t leak even when sitting on thier sides (The sediment drops out better and won’t run back down to the bottom when drinking), won’t break if you drop them, are free and disposable! Works for me.
*I use mostly 2 liter bottles but also some one liter or 20 oz also. I have noticed that the smaller the bottle, the better the carbonation. The trade-off is ease of bottling, storing and serving size. The 2 liter bottles will carbonate adequatly, is just about the right size to polish off by myself, easy to port to the many outdoor concerts/events in my area that let you “bring your own”. I did a few 3 liter plastics and discontinued doing that because they are too much to drink in one shot and don’t fit in the custom racks I built for storage.
XAIO, thanks for that link! I’ve been looking for a west-coast mail-order joint (soley to cut down on shipping time) and will check these guys out. I’m real happy with my current supplier, but your’s ships free for a lower amount and are only 1-2 days away ground shipping. (Actually, this isn’t so critical now that I use dry yeast :smack: )I’ll do a little comparison and probably give them a shot. Heck, they can’t be as bad as my local supplier! :rolleyes: Wankers. But that is beyond the scope of this thread…
Turkey, I’m no expert, but I like to talk about stuff I know something about, so feel free to keep them questions coming! In the coarse of things, I’m sure we both will learn something.
Yep, PET bottles work fine. They have an added bonus that if you take some with you, you don’t really have to worry about bringing them back with you. You can just throw them away.
One caveat, they don’t block light at all, so be sure to keep them out of the UV light.
The Tap-A-Draft “mini-keg” system works on the same principle - 6 liter PET bottles, plus a pressurization system that uses those small CO2 cartridges. Fits right in your fridge.
I just checked them out. They look great! Prices are real good, possibly even less than I’m paying now and the packaging looks good. Does the stuff arrive like in the pictures? I like that. Austin has awsome packaging also. The extract comes in little buckets that have a million uses around the house. I usually order 3 kits and get free shipping. It looks like I can order 2 at a time and still get the deal from your place.
I’ve tried a few places in California and haven’t been happy. One place sent the extract in a freakin’ zip-lock bag! Took me forever to try to squeeze it out! Then, they didn’t label the two different kinds of hops! I just guessed and tossed them in. :rolleyes: I should have known when the kit arrived tied up in a “WalMart” bag.
Gatopescado, this is a bit off-thread, but what the hell.
I will normally get the extract or the mini-mash kits. The grains, hops, corn sugar, clarifiers (they switched from Irish moss to wirlfloc tabs) and instructions come in a polyetheylene bag and everything inside is bagged separately. The malt comes in gallon containers which are not as useful as the little plastic buckets but serve the purpose. Besides, how many of the little buckets can you use around the house?
I dream of having enough money for one of the 10-gallon sculptures with temperature control…Just wait until you hold their catalog. Drool.
They are also helpful (as all hb shops should be). I send them an e-mail and I get a quick and helpful responses.
What’s in my carboys? Amber ale, Belgian Duppel, and Mead.
This is one of the big YMMV issues of homebrewing. Some people have had catastrophic failures using plastic bottles. Make sure they didn’t get squeezed and popped back into shape, because that makes weak spots. Make really sure you’ve cleaned the caps before sterilizing. You might need to use pliers to get them to fasten securely.
If you end up at the high end of brewing equipment, the combination of a kegging system, a counterpressure bottle filler, and a special 2-liter bottle adapter allows you to transfer fermented, carbonated beer from a soda keg to a 2-liter bottle for taking to parties. Just make sure the kids don’t drink from the used Dr. Pepper bottle.
Yep, be sure to check the plastic bottles if you’re going to use them. The Tap-a-Draft instructions say you should only use their bottles 6 times (fortunately they’re inexpensive) before tossing them, to avoid problems both with weak spots and with the inevitable problem of having flavors of a previous beer “contaminate” your next batch. Plastic eventually accumulates previous flavors/smells.
Oh, tips about equipment:
Do not use a wooden spoon to stir, at any point in the process. You cannot properly sanitize one.
Use a metal (stainless steel preferably) or plastic (if heat-resistant) spoon to stir with. If you are using a plastic fermenter bucket, do not use a metal spoon in it, as you can scratch the inside, which provides a place where bacteria could take hold.
Replace a plastic bucket after a year or so, or when you notice scratches/discoloration/persistent odors.
For a brewpot, find a big (~3 gallon) stainless steel or enameled pot. (If the enamel on the latter starts wearing through or flaking off inside, replace it.)
I use a big speckeled enameled pot originally designed for canning jelly/vegetables, and soon I plan on replacing it. I have a broad stainless steel straining scoop (flat spoon with holes in it) for stirring in the brewpot - I can skim off foam or floating additives (orange peel, for instance) with it easily. For stirring in my plastic fermenter, I have a long-handled plastic spoon that I bought through Northern Brewer. One end has a narrow “paddle” which will fit down into the neck of a carboy for stirring, if need be, and the other end is a regular spoon.
