Home Brew Beer
jpclotfelter
Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 294
Does anybody here do home brew beer? This is something I have been think ing about doing for years and I think I am about ready. Any advice on the subject would be greatly appreciated.
I am already very aware of the need for sterilization so please spare me from that lecture.
I am already very aware of the need for sterilization so please spare me from that lecture.
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this is my setup. Just so you know you will NOT save money making your own beer. You will however make the nectar of the gods lol.
www.homebrewtalk.com the absolute best knowledge base for home brewing hope this helps if you decide to do it! If you do and decide to go all grain brewing lemme know i'll give ya some pretty good recipes.
Very true. Including my kegerator build I'm at about 1500.
Here is my fermenting closet. (Still not sure how I conned the wife into letting me have this closet for brewing lol.) In here I have a double IPA (108 IBU) in the bucket. A wheat bear in the carboy, and a 12% alc sweet stout in the corny keg (been aging for about a year now) And in the top of the closet I got an orange/honey mead going with about a year on it too.
I get liquid wort from an on-line supplier. It comes in a can. Looks like caramel. I have boiled up the malted barley, but that's just a crapload of work. It's not like we're going to plant, reap, thresh, and germinate the barley ... so you gotta draw the line somewhere. I get hops in the flower. They really do taste better than the pellets. I get liquid yeast for the first batch. After your first batch, you can re-grow your own yeast from the sediment at the bottom of a bottle. That's the best way. By about the third batch, your yeast will have adapted to your methods and water, and you'll have a better result. Grow faster and taste better too. Then you just keep re-starting it, like sourdough starter. Of course, the fourth ingredient is the water. It's great if you can fetch your water from a mountain spring. Otherwise, you have to boil the crap out of city water. I have a hygrometer, but I've never felt the need to fool with it. Brewing is not a scientific endeavor. Ignorant aborigines have done it for millennia all over the globe. Although I must say the modern six gallon white plastic pail with an O-ring gasket top is an outstanding modern wrinkle. Just boil your water, add your wort, boil, add your hops in a woman's stocking, to make it easy to get them back out. Let it cool..Add your yeast, then let it sit. Skim the foam off the top every day or two. In a week or week and a half, when it quits fizzing, clean your bottles, pop just a touch of malt sugar into each bottle, and decant your brew into them. Cap and age. In about two weeks, you'll see the sediment has settled and the stuff is good to go. You have to explain to your guests that they need to decant each bottle they drink into a glass. People don't know this stuff, and they will tip a bottle up and drink the sediment. Fall weather is best. Ale is very forgiving. Lager wants cool weather for sure.
Interesting factoid: Dull-Aware is the only state where it's actually illegal to home brew beer. But then, it's illegal to sell venison here, too. Factoid number two: hops make a natural sleeping pill. Just plant them outside a bedroom window.
As for me, I plan a batch of porter, but not until October.
Oh yeah and I built this over the last few months!
Just need to make my pump housing and get my fittings to attach my thermocouple then it's done. Oh yeah a nice wash is needed too.
My buddy and I did up a batch of Belgium Dubbel about 4 years ago and his ex wife just found the last 2 bottles of it in her fridge 2 months ago. Drank it and it was still good, don't know how that happened because it was just pure home brew no perservatives or anything like that. It had changed some over time but nothing so much that you couldn't tell what it was when we brewed it.
Really need to get all the sh!t together and brew up another batch or so.
my friends have even made a Facebook page for our "brewery" CLICK
follow if you wanna see what i am making.
we just bottled Jimi Hendrix Little wing IPA last night and we are three weeks from cracking the first bottle.
it is a tripple dry hopped Amber IPA. It smells epic and initial tastings show promise. 9.19ABV.
our last beer (Audrey Hepburn Abby style ale) will be included in this years Holiday pass from me.
what are you all brewing?
...hope the link works