Any home-brewers here?

Depending upon how you interpret this; you could be in the DIY Category!!!

Just brewed some great kona coffee in my french press, but i never brewed beer before.
The coffee will be great for the hangover in the morning though.

1. spotless, everything must be spotless, do not short cut here.
2. Patience, good beer takes time.
Oh did I mention to keep it clean?

Summer is for brewing ales and lagers in winter (they brew cooler).
don't be afraid to experiment, adding a bag of hops to a cheap brew kit will do wonders.
use good yeast.

Most of all, have fun and enjoy your beer. I have had to give up homebrew as it gives me gout and I am weak and hate the pain.

Steve

Just tonight opened up the first bottle of a batch of red wheat ale (reddened by elderberry) and liked it so much I'm on my fourth.

advice: brew what you like and never leave that magnificent woman you have found to be your mate.

check out homebrewtalk.com it's the head-fi of beer! Sorry about your gut...

I brewed for about 15 years in the 80s and 90s. Then I developed gout and my alcohol consumption went so far down, brewing is no longer sensible. I wouldn't finish one 5 gallon batch in a year.

In the late 80s, a friend moved into a house with an unheated underground garage. It was the perfect temp for lagering so we brewed 50 gallons in 10 gallon batches over 5 weeks, lager, marzen, maibock, bock, and doppel bock. Come spring, when it started to warm up, we realized we had to hurry and bottle everything. 25 cases in a week Sterilizing 25 cases of beer bottles was hell.

Home brew tends to not cause hangovers because of the live yeast.

Oh sure, after all these years, and NOW you tell me?!!!

I do as well. Typically dry stouts. Next will be an IPA. Like Batty said, Keep It Clean. A little bit of mold, bacteria, dirt can completly ruin a batch. Think of waiting 6 weeks for a batch and then when it come to putting it in the bottles you give it a taste and is skunk. It's never happened to me but has a friend.

I brew, I've finally made the switch to kegging, and I can say this: invest in a kegging setup. It makes everything so much easier (not to mention faster).

Thought you were talking about PSPs...

Hahaha I am glad I am not the only person who thought that when I saw the title of this thread! I feel so nerdy right now!

Don't worry about full grain brewing initially. Extract brews can be damn good. The keys to good beer are 1) use liquid yeast, in date, treated well, 2) use whole flower hops, frozen is fine, rather than pellets, 3) clean everything well.

Find someone to brew with the first time. It's a lot easier than the books make it seem like it is.

A good first beer:

7 lbs dark extract
2 oz fuggles hops
1 vial white or wyeast english ale yeast

4 hrs before you start brewing, put the vial of yeast on the counter

boil 3 gallons of water with the 7 lbs of extract for 60 minutes with 1.5 oz of the fuggles in a muslin bag. for the last 15 minutes, throw in the other .5 oz.

put 3 gallons of VERY cold water in your primary fermenter. add the liquid from the above boil to this. Put the airlock on, and wait for it to cool to about 75 degrees.

Once the wort (the liquid) is at 75 degrees in the primary fermenter, add the yeast. close it up, put on the air lock, and agitate 3x4 a day.

Use a 7ish gallon primary fermenter to make things easy, you have to have room for blowoff. I like using a 1" blowoff hose from the bung to a bucket of water as an airlock for primary fermentation. By the end of the first 24 hrs, you should have significant bubbles.

Once primary fermentation has stopped, transfer the liquid to secondary fermentation. Leave any solids behind if you can, they'll introduce off flavors potentially to your beer.

Leave the beer in secondary fermentation for at least 48 hrs, but up to 2 weeks.

At this point, you're ready to bottle or keg. If you're kegging, and planning to artificially carbonate, just transfer the liquid to the keg, aerating as little as possible, then charge with co2.

If you're gonna naturally carbonate in the keg, use 1/3 cup of corn sugar to prime the keg. Seal with CO2 and set aside for 2 weeks to carbonate.

If you're bottling, use 7/8 cup of corn sugar in your bottling bucket. Use a bottling cane, so you displace enough liquid so as to not overfill. Overfilled bottles explode when they carbonate.

in 2 weeks time, you'll have a nice english brown ale. This can age for up to 6 months.

In all of this, keep temperature between 55 and 70 degrees. Don't let your wort get too warm, or it will kill your yeast. Colder will slow or stop fermentation

Don't worry...I just feel young..

Great hobby. I've been homebrewing off and on for 15 years or so.

The three most important things in brewing: Sanitation, sanitation, sanitation!

I recommend bleach only for cleaning. (Bleach is great for cleaning glass and plastic, don't use in on stainless steel.) For sanitizing, buy a bottle of Star San. It's not cheap, but it goes a long way, and it's a true no-rinse sanitizer that will not impart any flavor whatsoever to your beer. (Bars and restaurants use Star San to sanitize glassware). Bleach and Iodophor (Iodine based sanitizer) can both leave residue you can taste in the finished beer. It also has a very short contact time for sanitizing.

(Note: Many kits come with B-Brite as a sanitizer. It kind of works, but it requires at least 30 minutes of contact time to work. Not very practical.)

Try liquid yeast - it's one of the best things you can do to improve the quality of your beer. The new Ready to Pitch packs from Wyeast or White Labs are great. Stick with Ale yeasts to start. Avoid the Belgian strains until you know more about beer styles.

A wallpaper tray (a buck or two at the hardware store) is great for sanitizing things like hoses, racking canes, etc. A spray bottle of Star San can also be handy for items that can't be immersed easily.

To sanitize a carboy, (or bucket) just add a gallon of dilute Star San and slosh it around a bit. No need to make up five gallons. Don't worry about the foam - you won't taste it, and it won't hurt the yeast.