[splaz]

I could've sworn in the "What you're drinking now" thread there were a few home brewers.

Well I'm fairly new to it, first batch was okay, for the price, was better than the cheap domestic beers though.

Now I'm expanding operations. I've collected up enough glass bottles now and got a capper, plastic bottles are just not right to drink out of. Done a trial run with some non-alcoholic ginger beer to see how it goes without the exploding possibility, then I'll move onto the exploding beer bottles phase.

So yeah, purpose of this was I'm interested to know some successful recipes, tips, things to add, voodoo to perform and so on to get a real nice brew. Also feel free to share your experiences.

Just using a sealed fermenter and 'canned' beer at the moment, however I may get upgraditis.

First proper glass bottle run will be Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager, moving up from just sugar using some sort of mix that I think is a bit of dextrose and other stuff, can't recall exactly.

 

[rb67]

Check out using some flipper style beer bottles. They have a cool factor about 'em and are re-usable.

http://www.crosby-baker.com/proddeta...rod=Cat%235811

 

[Old Pa]

I always bottled to 22oz "bombers"; the convenient "one serving size".

Dark, flavorful ales rule!

 

[ken36]

If I were only younger. WOW.

 

[Duggeh]

Im currently brewing a batch that should be ready just in time for my birthday. But I use a beersphere kit, so its not REAL homebrewing. its mainly pre-mixed and pour. I liek to add things in, but it doesnt always work. Honey beer was a disaster.

 

[Cooter]

A great resource book is 'The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing' by Charlie Papazian. It's the homebrewers bible. Look for it for tons of great info.

Also, check out beertown. It's the website for the Association of Brewers and there's a whole section dedicated to homebrewing, including recipes.

http://www.beertown.com/

As for exploding bottles, if you're following brewing techniques from the Prohibition-era you might have a few, but otherwise that's a problem of the very distant past. Ferment the beer out completely in the carboy and add some priming sugar before you bottle and you won't have any trouble.

 

[Old Pa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duggeh /img/forum/go_quote.gif Honey beer was a disaster.

It often is as honey is often fungually contaminated. There is clean and there is clean and sterile; brewing must be clean and sterile. Sometimes an hour long boil of the entire wort can help.

 

[Brutus Alphonz]

It's funny how head-fi seems always to know what I'm thinking about getting into next...

 

[Elec]

I've been looking into it. It's a good, practical hobby (if you like beer). One of the only downsides is that there's a bit of an investment upfront to get started. It's relatively small, like in the $100-200 range to get the equipment and ingredients you need to brew your first batch, but then again $200 will buy you a lot of bottled beer at the store.

I'm planning to use plastic 2L soda bottles for storage. They're free (more or less), easily reusable, and damn near impossible to explode via pressure, as Mythbusters demonstrated. I've got some really nice beer glasses so I can just keep a 2 litre or two in the fridge and the rest in my pantry. A friend has a full setup with a 5 gallon keg, fridge, and pressurized tap. I'm jealous, but I don't have quite that much cash to throw away on a home beer setup at the moment

 

[splaz]

Really, I got a kit that had everything in it to do a 22L batch, was only something like $70AU.

Came with a fermenter, air lock, big spoon, hydrometer, 30 750mL plastic bottles and lids, 'canned' beer as I call it, think it's just liquid malt and hops, yeast, sugar, carbo drops (just pure sugar lollies, easier than measuring out priming sugar).

I've found that it depends on how professional you want to get with it as to how much you spend, my uncle has a similar setup with homebrew on tap. Like going to glass cost me as much as the kit in the first place, not adding in the cost of bottles, although you'd drink the beer anyway but you know...

However glass bottles are just... right. They look more professional and I find nicer to drink out of. I don't always have a glass handy to pour into from the plastic and plastic as I said, not right to drink beer out of.

About a 5 minutes drive away there is about 3 homebrew shops. So if I need anything it's easy to go and spend money.

Good to hear they don't explode easily, I will of course not over prime and triple check FG. Ginger beer is developing fairly nicely, you're supposed to leave it for 3 weeks but it's only been a few days and I keep drinking it.

Ah well, I need the bottles back for the real beer and amazingly, those few days saw a noticeable improvement.

I'd do the same with beer but... from my experience it doesn't taste that great before secondary fermentation is complete. So I don't bother sampling it's progress.

 

[Elec]

Ah, the kits I'm looking at come with two fermenters (one plastic, one glass), a siphon, a copper wort chiller, and some other various gadgets that probably add to the cost from what you paid.

They also come with a capper and some bottle caps, so you could easily save store-bought bottles so long as they're pop off and not twist off style to reuse them. Of course, when I think about cleaning and sanitizing, 10 2L plastic bottles seems somehow more appealing than 50-60 glass bottles

 

[Davesrose]

I'm in the process of making my first home-brew. So I guess I can join this club

Today I'm transfering the beer from the furmentation bucket to the glass carboy. Think I'll do some dry-hopping, and then let it all age. I think the hardest part is not going for a taste: already the beer is smelling really good! Can't wait to see what it looks like after bottling. I'm going for the 12 oz bottles......so most the work I've still got cut out for me. Just going by the aoroma right now, I think it's all worth it!!!

For those still considering a kit, I decided to try out this discounted one (it's a special promotion Sam Adams is having....so it comes with a DVD as well as beer-wine's regular kit). The kit has all the standard stuff (ingredients, bucket, carboy, supplies) as well as Papazian's 'Complete Joy of Homebrewing'.

For the first batch, I'm primarily sticking with beer-wine's "general recipe" and using the "dark" malt extract. The only difference I'm doing is adding a bit more hops for dry hopping. After this batch, I'll probably try my hand at a porter. Means I have to work on drinking my first batch!

http://www.beer-wine.com/samuel_adams.asp

 

[splaz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elec /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ah, the kits I'm looking at come with two fermenters (one plastic, one glass), a siphon, a copper wort chiller, and some other various gadgets that probably add to the cost from what you paid. They also come with a capper and some bottle caps, so you could easily save store-bought bottles so long as they're pop off and not twist off style to reuse them. Of course, when I think about cleaning and sanitizing, 10 2L plastic bottles seems somehow more appealing than 50-60 glass bottles

True, mine is a very basic kit. I've used a heap of twist off style with the ginger beer to see if they seal properly, no point ruining perfectly good beer on a first go. The capper sort of needed to be broken in to work with them and even then it doesn't always like trying to cap them. First one I did got stuck and when I tried to pull it out, a part of the capper and the two springs in it went flying out the door and into the hallway, ka-shunk.

Thing is even with the very basic kit though there is a lot you can do, I was walking around the homebrew shop and they've got all sorts of different yeast, hops, malts, dextrose, grains etc... that you could all play around with, even flavours for spirits that you could probably try if you're a little adventurous. Another thing is at the moment I prefer the KISS principle, don't want it complicated it until I've got it all sorted and can make a fairly good brew the simple way, then look at expanding yet again and getting a more refined, well crafted beer.

 

[Cooter]

My minimum requirement suggestions for brewing a decent beer are:

-keep everything clean, clean clean!
-don't use sugar or honey except for the small amount used for priming--stick with all-malt
-use liquid yeast
-did I mention keeping everything clean? (sanitized)

There are several other suggestions I could add (such as using whole hops instead of hop pellets and aerating your wort fully before pitching the yeast) but the minimum will get you good results.

 

[tyrion]

Here is the website for the place where jp11801 and I do some brewing: Brewmasters

He has a big book of recipes and everything you need in the shop. Each batch is 72 22oz bottles. If only he would get new bottling machines. The last couple of batches we bottled took forever.