Brewing Your Own Beer

My tip is to use milton baby bottle sterilizer rather than the stuff they sell in brew shops because every time I've used that stuff the brew has tasted chloriney to the point of indrinkability. tip two is to use premixed finings, buying dry isingglass is a false economy. and remember isingglass is not veggy.

geetabrau

(yay for the random function!)

in the new era... anyone tried this? quite keen to give it a go.

Some friends and I are on our 5th batch now, it's going far better than expected - plan is to go hardcore on the next batch and do our own malt from scratch and prob cultivate our own yeast, and then do a massive 20 gallon batch this summer when we can cook outaide

still doing it! still awesome. propane burner has been obtained so the outside brewing party is a go, and optimism says that we will not burn my friends house down while doing it. mentioned this on the hastings thread, but we are starting to do 2-3 batches at the same time (well staggered by the weekend) because some of the crazier stuff takes a lot longer. currently fermenting IPA has a potential alcohol of 9.6% and contains a full pound of hops for a fivish gallon batch.

we have gone kind of gonzo on this, ive lost track but i think we are over 25 batches in now. somebody else on ilx must be doing this right?

A long time ago Carl got me a home brewing kit. I sat down to read the instructions and I just couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. I kept it in the closet for like 6 years then sold it to some guy on craigslist. I hate doing dishes, so I'm turned off by how clean you have to make everything to avoid contaminated. Plus what am I going to do with gallons of beer? I never drink that much of the same beer. I will gladly pay pros to make beer for me. Still, it seems like a fun idea to make your own beer. Maybe I would like to take a class or something.

This is something I've always been interested in doing, but I have always had some of the same reservations as Jeff. Seems like so much work for something that could potentially be really easy to fuck up. But, then, I do have friends that brewed their own stuff and what I've tasted has been pretty good. So maybe I'm just selling myself short.

Flatmate and I want to do it this year, if it happens will pop back here for help!

I have always had some of the same reservations as Jeff.

Me too.

We still have the kit we purchased a couple of years ago, though, and have thought about taking a class at Brew Camp.

Fortunately my flatmate loves washing up.

The cleaning isn't as bad as people think, because basically you take your brewing pail, full it with hot water and sterisol and then soak all the various little bits and pieces in that.

My pals and I are in deep. 3-4 of us collaborate/go in on batches together. I've probably made 40 batches since college, with about 25 of them in the past year or so. (Had a lot of beer to drink lately...) It's a fantastic hobby, I think. Really not that expensive, and I hardly buy beer from liquor stores anymore.

Part of the satisfaction comes from plain old crafting something yourself. Figuring out what you're aiming for, tweaking the recipes, getting your hands a bit dirty, and enjoying and sharing the end result- what's better than that?

Also, you do not need to make 5 gallons each time. I regularly scale down recipes to 2-3 gallons (and I can do all-grain with my extract setup! Brew in a bag, look it up), enabling me to brew more often and cheaper and experiment more.

I correlate it with cooking, it is enjoyable for pretty much all the same reasons imo.

Also keep in mind that thx to the abv of most homebrews, they cellar really well, so it isn't like you have to pound through 5 gallons unless you decide to keg it instead of bottling.

Yep, got a 6-er of a Tripel aging, along with a few RIS that were a present from a bud. And that was a good portion of my share of the batch, since I split the ingredients. And I'd honestly match it up against a lot of commercial Tripels! It's a bit overcarbed but that's part of the charm, I think? Something like that.

i would also recommend doing this with at least 2 people, preferably 3. It's def not hard in any way, but it can be kind of multi-tasky to be efficient.

this is the next one we are tackling:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/recipe-kits/extract-kits/northern-no-1-limited-edition-extract-kit.html

btw the brewing tv stuff on that site might be worth watching if you are on the fence about doing this, it does a decent job of demystifying the experience

oops, i bumped this thread: Homebrewing?