Home brewing

[PartyGirlUK]

Made a thread about this about a year ago before EDF, but can't find it.

OK, Im ready to start brewing my own beer. I have a bunch of money in paypal and want to spend some of it getting a good kit together. I want something which will produce good quality beer, and allow me room for experimentation. Im also probably going to want to put my beer in bottles and make my own label, just because. I have 0 knowledge, but would like to get quite good at this. Tell me what you know.

[Jihad]

Wow Dean, I was just speaking to my buddies about starting doing this a couple days ago. I am leaving the country for 3 weeks, but when I get back I hope to be able to join in this one. Hopefully some good information will develop.

[SomethingClever]

I just made my first batch with the help of a friend who's done it before. I bottled on Tuesday, now I need to wait another week and a half for the carbonation to develop.

The most important thing is to keep everything sterile. They make special iodine-based (I think) sterilizer to clean out your carboys, bucket and everything else that will touch the wort once you're done boiling it.

The whole process is actually pretty easy; just keep everything sterile and you pretty much can't go wrong.

[IggyWH]

If you go to the Sam Adams website, there's a wealth of home brew info since they run home brew contests. They also link to a store to purchase everything that they mention.

[cwsiggy]

Get Papazian's book - the Joy of Homebrewing.

[cbloom]

Can you actually make great beer homebrewing with these simple kits? I've had some friends' homebrews and it was pretty nasty.

[SomethingClever]

[ QUOTE ]
Can you actually make great beer homebrewing with these simple kits? I've had some friends' homebrews and it was pretty nasty.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't need much fancy equipment. Basically just a big stock pot, some carboys or a brewing bucket, a couple tubes and assorted stuff.

The trick is keeping it super sterile, like I said. Nasty homebrew is almost certainly the result of some contamination along the way.

[john voight]

Hi, it depends on what you will be doing.

First of all what is your budget?
Do you want a Aluminum CO2 tank and/or drafting system? Or will you just be primming the beer w/ sugar and bottling it?

The main thing you should understand is; the equipment is very basic. And the best equipment in the world will not make your beer better if you lack experience.

So I would say, start off with some basic supplies, buy some reading material, and brew. If your interest lasts, and you feel you can handle more elaborate setups, and better equipment, upgrade.

Some words of caution; avoid brewing in dirty locations, and avoid keeping your beer in plastic containers (unfortunately most primary fermentors are plastic).

[rapidacid]

I would try some pretty basic brews for your first few times, like Brown Ales ... labels are relatively really expensive unless things have changed over the past couple of years ... like others said, keeping things sterile is the most important thing, and if you're following a recipe, things being dirty is really the only way you can screw it up ... anytime during the process when you say to yourself "oh that probably doesn't matter", it probably matters ...

It's easy to do, but takes a long time ... it's a really great feeling when your friends enjoy your own brews tho ... or the first time you get drunk on your own [censored]

[Kneel B4 Zod]

if you can follow a recipe to make soup, you can brew great beer. I just have a basic starter kit, this one.

like others have said, the most important thing is to keep everything very clean. I have made great beers in the following styles:

IPA
American Pale Ale
British Pale Ale
Stout
Bock
Porter

I experimented with adding cranberry to an IPA, and that was a disaster. undrinkable beer.

for bottles, I buy 22oz. bottles which makes bottling easier, cleaner/more sterile, and really is just a better size than 12 oz.