Home brewing

[fnord_too]

You may be able to buy everything locally, too. It has been over 10 years since I made beer (I keep meaning to start again), but it is pretty easy and the beer is just great.

Bottling is a a pain, but not too bad. If you want to make it easier and don't mind spending the money, you can buy bottles with rat traps (or just drink a lot of grolsh or or such before your first batch). Also, you can call up a local distributor to buy bottles if you don't have enough. (You need ones without threading if you are going to cap).

It's a great hobby, and you can experiment a lot.

[nolanfan34]

Some good replies so far. The link KB4Z posted is a good starter kit. Something Clever is right too - sterilization is the most important thing. Seems easy, but you have to be very careful, or your beer takes on strange flavors or aromas.

Another consideration is how much space you have to brew. Dean, you're in Chicago, right? If you have limited space, then the kit linked in this thread is good. If you have a guest bathroom, the tub is a good location to put the bucket while fermenting (on a chair or something). You can keep the room somewhat cool, and you're protected if you over-yeast or something and blow the top off the bucket.

If you have more room, like a garage, you can consider a larger multi-step grain mash process. I never advanced this far while I was brewing, but now that I have more room I'm going to consider it.

You can certainly make some great beer. Are you going to save money over buying from the store? No. But making your own labels and six-packs is pretty dang fun.

[Badger]

It's already been said, it's worth mentioning again. Keeping everything sterile is very important.

Austin Home Brew Supply has a good website where you can order anything you'll need. The recipes come with clear instructions and are very easy to follow.
Here are their brewing kits
Here are their recipe kits
I shop there because I live in Austin, but it seems like their online store is good, and they are nice, helpful people. I've called them a couple times minutes before closing hours with brewing questions and they've very helpful.

I recently made my own recipe for the first time and it was very rewarding. We had a competition at work with 4 other guys. Everybody won because we lost the score sheets.

I've made close to a dozen batches now with everyone being a resounding success. I'm about to leave work, I might post more about my experiences another time.

Their Deluxe Brewing kit for $99 should get you started without problems. Get a stock pot if you don't have one. I use a 24 Qt. pot I got there.

Some upgrades I have made to my equipment:
This bottle Capper
A wort chiller
Captain obvious says this cools down the wort after you are done boiling in the hops. I've had it explained to me how this can improve beer clarity instead of using an ice bath to cool the wort. The big advantage is that it makes it a lot easier to cool down, and works a lot quicker. Chilling the wort used to be my second least favorite part about brewing (sanitation is my least favorite, but I still do a hell of a job at it).
Jet carboy and bottle washer
Attaches to your kitchen sink (with adapter) and creates a high pressure stream for rinsing things.

I had an auto siphon and it broke, but I prefer my current siphon anyways. It's just a rubber tube.
1. Fill the tube with water.
2. Cover ends with thumbs.
3. Place one end by bucket/carboy full of beer on counter
4. Place other end by a bowl on the ground, with receiving carboy/bucket nearby.
5. Release thumbs, stick high end of tube into beer container.
6. Once the water has cleared you now have beer siphoning through your tube, move the draining end over your receiving bucket/carboy.

Your hands come in contact with the beer, so it's not ideal, but it's a lot better than suck starting a siphon. I always wash my hands thoroughly before doing this.

[LuckOfTheDraw]

Get a kit, follow the instructions. Be very careful to keep things sterile. It helps to do it in a place in your house that stays at a constant temperature. Alton Brown had a pretty good show on the topic on an episode of Good Eats.

[PartyGirlUK]

Id want eventually to be able to experiment, i.e if I wanted to try and make peanut butter flavored beer I could. Is this possible?

[LuckOfTheDraw]

[ QUOTE ]
Id want eventually to be able to experiment, i.e if I wanted to try and make peanut butter flavored beer I could. Is this possible?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most assuredly.

[doppelganger]

Everybody has pretty much covered the basics of where to go to get the materials and knowledge, so I'll just chime in with some basic "day in the life" process sort of info.

The vast majority of brewing beer takes place on 2 seperate days, spaced about 2 weeks apart.

Day one: Brewing
Expect to spend about 2-7 hours or so from start to finish brewing a batch of beer. (The extra time is just to wait for the batch to cool if you don't have a wort chiller.) You will start by simply adding your ingredients to a big ass pot and putting it on the stove or other heat source. When it's almost finished brewing (If I remember correctly you'll brew it for about an hour or two) you will sterilize your primary fermenter, tubing, airlock, etc.... Ideally you'll want a wort chiller that will bring the temperature down rapidly before you move it into the fermenter, but I never had a problem just transfering and waiting for it to cool. Add your yeast, give it a stir (all sterilized utensils) and then just cover it up and stick it in a cool dark closet for 2 weeks.

Day 2: Bottling
Bottling is the less enjoyable, more "grunt work" intensive portion of the brewing cycle. The only thing you will use a stove for is to dissolve some sugar or malt in water to use as a starter culture for bottle fermentation. Other than that, it's all pretty much about making sure everything in the immediate area is sterilized. The basic process is to transfer the beer from your primary fermenter into a bottling vessel (this allows you to leave most of the spent yeast behind) and then transfer it into the bottles. The whole process from start to finish is about 2-3 hours or so for a 5 gallon batch.

Once it's bottled you need to allow a minimum of 2 weeks for bottle fermentation and carbonation to occur. A lot of people will age it for longer to let the flavors improve, but I was a broke college student so I usually started drinking it within a month of bottling.

You can brew 3 cases worth of Bass quality brown ale for about $25 once you have the fermenting equipment and bottles. (Not a huge savings, but the satisfaction of making it yourself is well worth it.)

Oh, and I second the Papazian book recommendation. That guy is the homebrew guru.

[doppelganger]

[ QUOTE ]
Your hands come in contact with the beer, so it's not ideal, but it's a lot better than suck starting a siphon. I always wash my hands thoroughly before doing this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, and just an aside, I was always a mouth siphon proponent. Just take a nice big swig of bourbon or vodka and swish it around a little before you do it and the risk of contamination is pretty low. Plus it makes you feel all old-school and manly.

[sledghammer]

Is it possible to put your home-brew into a keg, for use in a kegerator?

[Badger]

I'd like to elaborate on doppleganger's post about brewing. My schedule is slightly different as it's 3 days of work over a 5 week period instead of 2 over a 4 week period. Times are approximate.

Day 1: Brewing
This is the day most of the "work" is done. I believe I spend about 3.5-5 hours from start to finish. I've cut a decent chunk of time off since I started brewing, because there's a lot less reading instructions and I've streamlined the process somewhat.
- Preparation - 30-45 minutes
This consists mainly of sterilizing everything your beer will touch after boiling as well as getting out all equipment and ingredients.
- Grains - 60 minutes
Heat your water, many recipes have you only heat 2-2.5 gallons of the 5 gallons of beer you will make. I use bottled gallons from the grocery store for 50 cents a piece. Heating takes a while on my stove, keep the lid on, it will speed things up. Then put your grains in a grain bag and let them soak for 15 minutes. It's like making tea. Make sure to let most of the liquids drain from the grain bag.
- Extract - 15 minutes
Turn off the heat and stir in the malt extract (it's a liquid, but very thick and syrup-y) After this point your mixture can burn easily due to all the sugars.
- Hops - 75 minutes
Bring the mixture to a boil, add hops and let boil for 60 minutes. Bittering hops go in as soon as the boil starts, flavoring hops after 45 minutes and aroma hops after 5 minutes.
- Yeast - 30-45 minutes
Most of this time is cooling the mixture (wort) as to not shock the yeast. I used to put the stock pot in an ice bath in my kitchen sink, but switched to a wort chiller/ice bath combo to speed things up. What's called the 'cold break' will precipitate from the wort. Rapidly chilling the wort is supposed to precipitate more of the cold break, leading to a clearer final product. Once the mixture is cooled to 80 F, you pitch the yeast by throwing it into the wort and aerating. This is done in the fermentation bucket, not the stock pot. Add enough water to make 5-5.5 gallons. Make sure to stir in plenty of air.
- Wrap up -
Put the lid and airlock on the fermentation bucket (lets gasses bubble out, but nothing gets in). Clean everything thoroughly and stick the bucket in a closet somewhere.

Day 2: Transferring (1 week later)
Again, sanitize everything that will touch the beer. Siphon the beer from the primary fermenter (bucket) to the secondary (typically a glass carboy). Make sure to leave the sediment behind. Clean up and put glass secindary fermenter. Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

Day 3: Bottling (1 more week later)
Having friends over helps a lot here. Sanitize everything, making especially sure your bottles are clean. That's where my sink attachment comes in handy. First boil the priming sugars in a cup of water, this is what will carbonate your beer. Dump this in the bucket (the one you used as a primary fermenter, not the one with the beer in it) and wait for it to cool. Siphon the beer from the secondary into the primary fermenter once the sugar water has cooled to 80 F. Next you add a wand with a spring controlled valve to the end of your siphon tube. This makes starting the siphon (as described in my previous post) even easier, because instead of your thumb on the low end you have a spring controlled valve. This works such that pushing the end down on the bottom of the glass bottle opens the siphon and allows beer to fill the bottle and the siphon stops when you release pressure, allowing you to move the wand to the next bottle without spilling or breaking the siphon. Cap the bottles and let them sit 3 weeks. Enjoy.