DescentBB

I have been thinking of getting into home brewing my own beer. I bought a book on the subject and am reading it now. Does anyone on the DBB homebrew? Any practical advise you can give?

My advice is don't get whacky. Stick to the basics. A friend of mine home brews and he's started to taking all sorts of bizarre crap and trying to make beer out of it. *Here, try my Apple Trout Ale!*

No wackiness intended. I like beer to taste like beer. It should not have fruit in it. I prefer the stouts.

Beer sucks. Tastier things to get drunk with, there are.

Vader wrote:Beer sucks. Tastier things to get drunk with, there are.

I don't drink to get drunk.

If you lived in Belgium, you'd never get the idea to actually brew beer yourself

In my opinion, the Irish brew the only beer fit for human overconsumption.

[NuB] Dedman wrote:

Vader wrote:Beer sucks. Tastier things to get drunk with, there are.

I don't drink to get drunk.

If that's the case, why dont you shop for non-alcoholic beers now then? Liar!

bash wrote:In my opinion, the Irish brew the only beer fit for human overconsumption.

I haven't had many Irish brews, but I do prefer a couple of the micro brews around here to anything else. Especially SkuttleButt Brewery here in Everett, WA. They have the bast IMHO hands down. The Bachs are awesome.

But that belgium stuff sucks bull tits

STRESSTEST wrote:If that's the case, why dont you shop for non-alcoholic beers now then? Liar!

Because they blow that's why.

Beer is delicious.

Getting buzzed / slightly drunk is just a pleasant side-affect.

[NuB] Dedman wrote:

STRESSTEST wrote:If that's the case, why dont you shop for non-alcoholic beers now then? Liar!

Because they blow that's why.

Not quite... A very nice tasting (if you like German brews) near-beer is Clausthaler.

STRESSTEST wrote: But that belgium stuff sucks bull tits

You, sir, have no good taste in beer at all.

I think by now we've all begun to ignore the Belgian patriotism-slash-arrogance.

I went on a flight to france, and they served me a belgian beer.

It was the most awful thing I've ever tasted. Seriously.

But aside their quirks and poor taste in beer, I love the belgians. They're funny, and their women are hot.

Advice: Get a home brewing kit( it comes with everything) for starters. you can add the other things that go with it. if you become obsessive you will end p with like 3 kits+.

Start to accumulate (not twisttop) of beer bottles(the ones with the flip ceramic top if you can find them), pick up the book "guide to home brewing". start with simple lagers learn about the hops, barley the different type brewers yeast, any locals that have premade toss yeast.

Every week or 2 weeks be prepared to make another batch (usually 3 1/2 case yeild per batch) by the time you have finished your 4 batch (4th week) you can start to put some of your first batch in the fridge. The hardest one that I made was just a simple pilsner... the best was a German Dopleboch (12-14% alc content) you need a dedicated area for storage too

We got bored in Maine Very quick

lol @ DC saying "belgians are arrogent".

potkettleblackstfu

you can't get away with calling tri arrogent

There are two ways you can brew beer at home. The easy way and the hard way. 90% of home brewers choose the easy way. If you want to brew something that tastes like homebrew, choose the easy way and get yourself one of those home brewing kits. If you want to brew GREAT beer, here is a step in the right direction.

1. Get yourself copies of "Complete Joy of Home Brewing, 3rd edition" and "The Home Brewers Companion", both by Charlie Papazian. These books are the old and new testament of home brewing and Papazian is their Moses. If I were to buy only one book, it would be TCJoHB, 3rd ed.

2. Learn how to Mash your own grains. This, done right, will be the difference between making home brew and great beer. Syrups and extracts (the easy way) can never give you the richness of flavor and clean taste of doing your own double decoction mashing. It's difficult to mash your own and sometimes quite stressful, because you can screw it up pretty easily, but there is absolutely no substitute for mashing your own grains. Oh, and for those of you who dont know, mashing is the process of taking the naturally occuring starch in barley, converting it to sugars with heat and water, and extracting a sugar rich nectar from it. In beer brewing, this nectar is called wort. Yeast cannot eat starch, but they love to eat sugar, and that's exactly what you're doing. When the yeast eat sugar, they give off two byproducts, C02 and Alchohol. That's what you're looking for. Maximum sugar extraction out of a very fresh blend of barley malt is the beginnings of excellent beer.

3. Sanitation, sanitation, sanitation! Read up on this, develop a system in your home brewery for keeping everything sanitary, and live by it. I can't tell you how easy it is for your wort to get infected with wild yeasts and bacteria that are floating around in the air at all times. Even having a smoke around your cooling wort can screw it up royally. The process of brewing is very time consuming and ending up with an infected batch can be crushing.

4. Find yourself a good supplier. The fresher and higher quality the ingredients are, the better your beer will taste. Never use the dry yeast that comes with home brew kits. Always use good liquid yeast in sealed packages. Fresh hops is also very important. Always use fresh hops flowers, if available, or hops plugs that are vacuum sealed. Once you open the hops, use it right away. If you are going to attemt to save the unused hops, make sure you store it properly (re-vaccuum sealing would be ideal if you have one of those gadgets).

5. find a bigazz boiling vessel and figure out some way to put major BTU's to it. If you're going to try for 10 gallon batches, you need a vessel to boil in that will hold about 12 gallons. Five gallon batches require a 7 gallon vessel. In a perfect world, it would be a copper vessel, but stainless steel is ok too. Aluminum, however, is not ok. I've seen some guys cut the top off of a beer keg and use a propane turkey fryer burner to do their boil. That'd probably be an exonomical solution, but remember, you'll have to take some precautionary measures for sanitation because you'll be boiling in the open air.

6. Bottling. The most UN-fun part of the entire experience (other than the fact that you get to taste). DONT use recycled bottles with the flip up tops. The O rings are harbingers of nastiness and bactieria. Buy 16 oz or 22 oz bottles brand new from your supplier, and get a cheap bottle capper. Now, if you really want to enhance the experience, get yourself a Cornelius Keg setup. Cornelius Kegs are those tall thin kegs you see commonly used for soda-pop syrup. That with a CO2 or nitrogen setup would be awesome. You could keg the bulk of it up and bottle a small amount for giveaways.

There's so much more to know, but my fingers are tired. Read Papazian's book. You'll learn a lot. And you'll learn a lot by getting a few brews under your belt. Remember, brewing the right way can be as time consuming and stressful as it is rewarding. When the going gets rough, you can always Relax, Take it Easy, and by all means, Have a Home Brew!

I have this: Complete Joy of Home Brewing, 3rd edition.

But not this: The Home Brewers Companion. Not yet anyway.

I will probably start off doing things the easy way to get a feel for the whole process. Once I get competent I will most likely branch out and start doing more on my own.