ElkRiverHarmonicas
537 posts
Feb 08, 2011
3:27 PM
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This is something I've gotten pretty heavily into since Christmas, when my wife gave me a Mr. Beer homebrew kit. She is the best wife ever. The first batch was so awesome that I got a five-gallon fermenter, now I can do seven gallons at a time. Right now, I've got cherry beer fermenting in the 5 gallon and apple wine going in the two-gallon Mr. Beer thing. Wondering if anybody here does that kind of thing.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 08, 2011 3:28 PM
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ReedSqueal
88 posts
Feb 08, 2011
3:41 PM
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I started homebrewing in 1984. After a multi-year hiatus I picked it up again a few years ago. Boy a LOT has changed since then. The internet is an absolute boon to the homebrewing hobby. I used to subscribe to Zymurgy magazine just to get the ads to find out where to buy quality ingredients and homebrew supplies. Ala MAIL ORDER! And I had "The Bible" -- Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. I learned everything I knew (back then) from that book. Now, a few clicks of the mouse and you have more information in 5 minutes that took weeks and months to get.
I'm a partial mash brewer. I'd love to go the all mash route but time is elusive. Especially when trying to lean blues harp ;-)
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Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy.
-Dan Castellaneta
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Aussiesucker
744 posts
Feb 08, 2011
3:56 PM
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I used to be heavily into brewing beer for around 10 years. I have 2 X 30ltr brew kits now not used for around 5 years. I have honestly never tasted any commercially available beers that came close to most that I produced. Similarly there were batches that were close to the worst beers I have tasted.
What I found now that I am retired, I travel a lot and having a brew fermenting was very time restrictive as it was not always ready for bottling at a time to suit. Also it didn't travel too well.A lot of outback travel over rough roads takes the paint of beer cans whereas even commercially brewed bottles sometimes explode.
It had its advantages though as it was very low in cost and great in taste. And there are endless varieties available in pre packaged kits that virtually guarantee success. But apart from the disadvantages above and the time and mess cleaning & bottling ,I found I drank more & put on weight!
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Aussiesucker
745 posts
Feb 08, 2011
3:56 PM
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Last Edited by on Feb 08, 2011 3:58 PM
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arzajac
456 posts
Feb 08, 2011
4:04 PM
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I used to brew before I got married. My wife hates the smell.
I used to brew from scratch (Way cheaper and *much* better...) It would take up an entire day off. I'd get up at 7AM and start the mash. I would boil a given amount of water and add the milled malted barley to it and do a protein rest at 50 degrees C for 20 minutes, then add another amount of boiling water to bring the temperature up to 68 degrees and hold it there until all the starches were converted to sugar. I would have to stir that big pot for an hour...
Then, I would sparge (rinse) the grain with another given amount of boiling water and then boil that down to the concentration I wanted. I added hop pellets during the boil. I prefer German hops to British hops.
I would then transfer it to the fermenter without contaminating it. When cool, I would add the yeast and wait.
A few weeks later, I would bottle it into sterile bottles after adding a little bit more malt sugar to get fermentation going.
This sounds like a lot of work and it is. But I would usually be somewhat drunk starting from the 11 o'clock point. After all, Papazian says that the first step to any of this is to Relax and have a homebrew.
Your first time though, you are allowed to have a store-bought beer since you have no homebrew yet...
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harpcrab
61 posts
Feb 08, 2011
4:17 PM
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We started brewing in '89. Back then, the closest thing we could get to "exotic" beer at the store was Heiniken. We made a lot of good beer (most of the time) usually grinding our own grains, fresh (dried) hops, etc. Had a few explosions as well (excess bottling sugar- sounds like gun fire in the middle of the night). '
It does take alot of time, especially the bottling part. As better beers became easily avaiable at the store, and free time scarce, we finally stopped about 10 years ago. Since then I've turned an old Craigslist freezer into a 2 tap kegerator, and we pick up local microbrew kegs (having one right now). I still have all the brew equipment in the basement, and I've been considering buying a few cornelious kegs and brewing again- Wouldn't have to spend time bottling anymore....maybe this thread is the kick in the butt I need to get going again!
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Bluesharp- If you don't blow you suck...
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bluemoose
472 posts
Feb 08, 2011
4:33 PM
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Totally unfair topic!! The wife has us on a no alcohol for February kick. Probably a good idea but man....it's hockey season!!!
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MBH Webbrain - a GUI guide to Adam's Youtube vids
FerretCat Webbrain - Jason Ricci's vids (by hair colour!)
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REM
36 posts
Feb 08, 2011
4:49 PM
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Bottle conditioning the beer is great (it definately adds to the flavor), but it's a serious PITA. Having to sanitize 48 bottles (12 oz.), sanitize the the bottling bucket/equipment, and then go through the hassle of filling and capping all 48 bottles, then you have to wait until the beer carbonates(I always had trouble waiting and would end up trying 1 or 2 before they were fully carbonated). I'm not saying it's not worth it, but using a 5 gallon keg and force carbonating is so much easier and faster.
I started brewing when I was about 16. I was obviously too young to buy beer, and I found "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing" in the library. When I finished my first batch I felt like a genius/mad scientist.
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BigBlindRay
83 posts
Feb 08, 2011
5:04 PM
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Hey Dave!
I dont brew my own beer but im really good at drinking home brewed beer - I'll show you sometime!
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Big Blind Ray's YouTube Channel
Mavis and her China Pigs
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
539 posts
Feb 08, 2011
5:07 PM
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Yes, it is a PITA. I'm not at that point where I'm sick of it yet, but, dang it takes a while when you're bottling 5 gallons of beer in 12 oz. bottles. I've got some 22 ounce glass bottles too. I didn't have enough bottles last time and I wound up filling two two-liter Sprite bottles with beer. I gave one of the two-liters to my neighbor for Super Bowl consumption.
Harpcrab, I did have a 22 ounce bottle bomb go off last week. I had the right amount of sugar, but I bottled too early. I took every bottle from that batch and promptly put it in the fridge to lessen the pressures.
I want to get more into grain brewing, I've always wanted to create my own Medieval weak and strong ale recipes. I'd call it Friar Tuck's Elk River Ale.
If you ever get to West Virginia, Ray, drop in. There's more beer here than I can drink. The most important ingredient in beer is the water, and the city artesian wells here in Parkersburg, W.Va. have some of the best-tasting water anywhere. Parkersburg is a regular winner at the International Water Tasting Awards.
That's an awesome story, REM about when you were a teen. I brewed some as a teenager myself. I had no clue what I was doing, I didn't have the book, there was no internet in those days and the beer was pretty nasty and brewed in a margarine container hidden under the hot water heater at the grandparents house.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 08, 2011 5:24 PM
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KingoBad
599 posts
Feb 08, 2011
6:53 PM
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I used to love to brew my own beer. Finally gave all my brewing stuff to a good friend because I didn't want to move all of the stuff with me.
I used the bottle capper more than once to place unsavory things in bottles for those who might steal my beer!
We used to make plum wine in Oklahoma. We would put balloons on the necks of the bottles to gauge when the wine was done fermenting. When they stopped expanding - you were done. I say that, as I have experienced more than one occasion where I was dodging corks in my very own shooting gallery of a brewery. Only one exploding bottle.
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walterharp
534 posts
Feb 08, 2011
7:34 PM
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yes, since 1990. all grain. have a kegging system. 8 gal batch about once a month. Grind and start mash before bed, get up heat water and sparge out... boil, done by 1 in the afternoon. bottle the strong beers
about 4 cases worth costs $10 in ingredients so costs of equipment eventually work out.. probably not costs of labor though.
have a mead and a esb brewing now.
when i started you could not get belgian beers, or unusual ales, now if you can pay the price, you can get almost anything.
adam can vouch for my belgian white (wit)from when he was in town, but he is not a fan of darker or hopier beers so could not heed the true call of the siren when he was in town :-)
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Aussiesucker
746 posts
Feb 08, 2011
10:24 PM
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It's a hobby that anyone who loves beer should at least try. It is so cheap ie discounting labour, and so good that it almost always beats commercial products. Being free of preserves it is also better for you. Also you reuse all the bottles = good for the planet!
I know a guy that is heavily into it in a really big way . He has a complete brewery set up under his house. He has a chemistry background & is able to take any well known brew, drink it and save the dregs, and culture the yeast. He gave me some Pilsner Urquell that he brewed from scratch and it tasted exactly like the original. His set up is such that it is easy and clean with plenty of room to work and store everything. He kegs every brew but is able to fill used plastic coke bottles to take to party's.
When I was into it I used to do everything in the garage which meant moving the cars out on the days of bottling and running between the kitchen and garage on opposite ends of the house. My brewery was in an old wardrobe. At the time I had thought about moving house and having a purpose built room for the 'brewery'. Would have been a good move as it could now double as a recording studio / practice room. Can't have everything.
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
540 posts
Feb 09, 2011
7:45 AM
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Even considering the entry-level equipment for extract brewing, the cost of even the first batch is cheaper than store-bought beer.
Here's a breakdown of my cost per bottle.
With the Mr. Beer kit, the initial investment is $30.
Each 12 oz. of beer will cost you 70 cents in that first batch. After that, it's around 40 cents for a 12 ounce.
5 gallon plastic bucket fermenter with tap bottled in 12 ounce glass bottles.
First batch cost per bottle, $1.26 per 12 ounce bottle.
Second and future cost per bottle: 32 cents per 12 ounce bottle. Beer of similar or slightly less quality purchased in store would be $1.33 a 12 ounce bottle.
The apple wine I'm making now came from pasteurized apple juice I found on sale for $1.32 a liter. My cost for 12 ounces of apple wine is 30 cents per 12 ounces.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2011 7:49 AM
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Andy Ley
80 posts
Feb 09, 2011
8:47 AM
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I haven't ever brewed beer, but last year I built a small apple press and produced 3 gallons of cider.
It's just about ready for bottling now, and has fermented out to dryness at 7% alcohol.
I shall certainly be making some more this year!
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3 cav 84a
22 posts
Feb 09, 2011
1:46 PM
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G'day. When I first moved to Darwin (the Australian beer drinking capital of Australia) I got into home brewing but I met blokes who were professional at it and they showed me the way. We didn't use bottles we used 20 litre stainless steel kegs. Abottle of CO2 was used to gas the beer and to pour it using a pluto gun. The keg would sit in the beer fridge just waiting for me to come home from work.The wort used came from a brewing company in Adelaide called Coopers who are famous for their beers and ales which use the old way of gassing by doing it in the bottle. When I moved back down to Adelaide after a 10 year stint in Darwin I sold all my brewing gear and kegs but I missed a good home brew so I started again but now I don't use kegs I use Grolsh beer bottles which are perfect for home brewing.
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
541 posts
Feb 09, 2011
2:28 PM
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I love the Grolsh bottles.
I'd like to go down to Oz one of these days and visit you guys, down some homebrew and listen to some Slim Dusty...
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2011 2:30 PM
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Aussiesucker
747 posts
Feb 09, 2011
3:00 PM
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@3 cav84a
I used to have a few old Darwin Stubbies which were the beer bottles introduced in the Territory over 50 years ago. They were great as they were big strong brown glass beer bottles which I think were about 3/4 gallon. They were huge and made light work of the bottling process but heavy going on the drinking side! They were hard to fit in the fridge.
@ ElkRiver
I am a huge Slim Dusty fan but sadly he passed away some years ago. Still has a massive following & was without doubt our King of Country Music & our biggest selling local artist of all time. His harp player Lawrie Minson is a great player who now plays with Lee Kernaghan who is our current king of country. If you plan on a visit to Oz & like country music then Tamworth is a must in Jan each year. It is claimed to be the largest music festival in the Southern hemisphere with over 2000 performers and running for 10 days. Great fun but very very hot ie 40c(over 100F) on many days. But the heat + beer + airconditioned clubs, pubs & fantastic music all go great together.
Re the Grolsch bottles I guess the ones you refer to are the swing tops? They are ideal for home brew as they are also a bit larger than the normal stubbie.
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2011 3:04 PM
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
542 posts
Feb 09, 2011
3:36 PM
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I would love to get down there sometime and check out that stuff. I knew he he'd died a while back. I got into Slim Dusty about the time he died, I saw him on the Wiggles (my kids watched the Wiggles in those days) he was singing "I'd Love to Have a Beer With Duncan," but the words were changed so he was dancing with Captain Feathersword instead of drinking beer. I thought "this guy is awesome! Unlike the Wiggles!" Among other things, as a narcoleptic, I was always offended by the narcoleptic Wiggle, but I really got into Slim.
The Grolsch bottles are the swing top bottles. Those are awesome, you don't have to cap them and they look cool for the homebrew.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 09, 2011 3:38 PM
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ness
306 posts
Feb 10, 2011
10:26 AM
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Started with wine (jug, balloon) as a kid. Did mostly wine for many years.
Wasn't much of a beer fan for a long time. Everything around here was a thin 'American Pilsner', and tasted about the same. US brewers would occasionally crank out a 'Bock', or some other bastardization of a European beer, but nothing ever got me interested. Sure, there were some imports around, but they weren't much better. A few European Pilsners brought over on the slow/hot boat and set in the cooler right next to the fluorescent lights to insure maximum skunkiness.
Then I picked up a mixed 6-pack of imports on a whim. In it was a Belhaven Scottish, and everything changed. It opened my eyes to the rest of the beer world. I began to educate myself, found out there was a lot of good stuff out there, but I just wasn't able to find it. So, I started to brew it.
Did a bunch of extracts, partial mashes and even a couple full-mash. I got a couple friends into it too, and we ultimately shared the cost of equipment and ingredients, and brewed together to share the work. It was a lot of fun, but then it got pushed to the side by other obligations. We've still got all the stuff, and periodically talk about firing it all back up, but not right at the moment. We've all got a little more scratch these days, so we could afford some things now (like a kegging system -- bottling's a chore) that we couldn't back then, so it might make it even more fun.
Last Edited by on Feb 10, 2011 10:31 AM
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
543 posts
Feb 12, 2011
8:23 PM
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Ness, you should totally fire it back up!
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
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ricanefan
89 posts
Feb 13, 2011
1:39 AM
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I started in the mid 90's - partial mash to still spend some time with my wife on brewing day. Once the kids came around, though, equipment went into storage. It will come back out, though...it's just too great a hobby...
I never minded bottling day. Maybe it was because I followed Papazian's rules; one of his most important ones was to always have a homebrew when making homebrew.
My first batch was an ESB. My most recent was a Belgian Dubble. I usually stuck close to a tested, tried-and-true recipe, sometimes adding a little something, sometimes swapping out one hop for another or changing the grain bill slightly. My most ambitious was a milk stout with chocolate, cherries and caramel. The flavor was good, but something killed all head retention properties...
Arzajac - have you tried brewing outside?
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Rubes
232 posts
Feb 13, 2011
3:55 AM
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Gee my home brew stuff also, lies dormant deep within the dark recesses beneath my house, patiently awaiting the 'call'. Active in the days BWAK (before wife and kids) many a party began amidst the heady seedy momentus occasions locally known as bottling bashes!
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Buzadero
728 posts
Feb 13, 2011
7:16 AM
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Dave,
If you ever get out West, I'll hook you up with my son. I cursed him when he was about 18 by telling he and his friends that one quality beer was better than a case of swill on any day.
Well, here he is in his early 30's and his only hobby other than surfing and chasing older women is traveling to far off microbreweries to talk brewing then coming home and working in his own mad laboratory.
He and his buddies do make some fine product.
Now, knock it off and get back to shipping me my next B-Rad.
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~Buzadero
Underwater Janitor, Patriot
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
545 posts
Feb 13, 2011
10:09 AM
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Hey Buz, I'm not working for Harrison anymore as of two weeks ago.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
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ness
307 posts
Feb 13, 2011
2:37 PM
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Elk River,
Man, I do get the itch now and then. About a year ago went on a float trip with a guy that brews his own. He knew I didn't like a lot of hops and warned me about the brew he brought along. But I tried it and it was excellent. He had it pretty-heavily dry hopped and it had a real citrus-y taste that was phenomenal. He said he brewed it from an extract. Just goes to show you (me!) that you can produce quality stuff without a full-blown mash brewing operation.
I kept all the equipment...one of these days!
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John
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harmonicanick
1088 posts
Feb 13, 2011
2:48 PM
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You American beer lovers would feel right at home here in Bristol uk, where our weekly (thursday) blues jam takes place in a very old pub (16th Century) next to an old deserted church that was dedicated to the Knight's Templar (da Vinci code stuff) and the pub is owned by 'the hidden brewery'
The guest ale not long ago was my favourite and went by the name 'pissin' in the wind'!!
Come on down the first one's on me fellas
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BAG
45 posts
Feb 13, 2011
5:52 PM
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I used to years ago. Back in the early 80s I started the first homebrew club in Minnesota. As children came into the household it became difficult to spend to much time towards production and consumption of brew. (The oldest two got to help grind a lot of grain though.) The moniker "BAG" is short for Brown Ale Guy. Still love to try and consume various craft brews and microbrews. Much more variety and better stuff available commercially now than in the early 80s.
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
546 posts
Feb 13, 2011
6:31 PM
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Oops, bad news on the latest batch. I was using extract, it apparently was unhopped, it was not marked very well... but oh well. It was clear when I did a little draw of it today and tasted. There's a couple of pound of cherries in there.
The ale has a strong cherry taste, slightly bitter, but it's a bitterness from the cherries.
So now, I've got 5 gallons of unhopped ale in the fermenter. So what I'm going to do at this point, is try to rescue the batch by trying to make some of the medieval ale out of it I always wanted to make. What I did was take off the airlock, put a paper funnel in the airlock hole (to avoid contamination by ingredients) and put the medieval ale spices in there.
What I tasted today would be what I'd imagine your average medieval worker in the field would have drank. It did go down a lot like water.. I could imagine downing a a gallon or so while working in the wheat field.
Five gallons of ale, I dropped in 7 cloves, a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon, all available to medieval folks with some money. I'll let it sit in the fermenter for a couple more days, then bottle.
Anybody ever work with unhopped ale?
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
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Aussiesucker
750 posts
Feb 13, 2011
8:57 PM
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One of the last brews I made was from a recipe for that great Irish beer Kilkenny. It had heaps of ingredients. It should have been a disaster as temperatures were all wrong, SG wrong, and the brew bubbled on brewing for over 2 weeks. I spoke to the chemist from the company that made the basic brew and he said I should not have used such a crazy recipe and my brew was likely to be a complete failure. He recommended that I go ahead and bottle but be careful where I stored the bottles as there was a strong likelihood of them exploding. They didn't.
My Kilkenny turned out to be by far the best beer I have ever tasted. My friends commented the same. With each sip from the chilled glasses a distinct creamy collar remained around the glass. It was perfect. I never attempted to make it again as it was such a hassle and a complete fluke that it worked. It also had a lot of ingredients added that would, if drunk regularly, make one quickly obese. But it was lovely!
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ness
308 posts
Feb 15, 2011
6:28 AM
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ERH:
In my other post I mentioned 'dry hopping' -- that's simply adding hops to the finished beer, then straining them out later. The homebrew I mentioned that was so citrus-y was done that way. He said he threw a handful of hops right into the keg. You'd probably want to research a little, or try a smaller test batch, but there is still a possibility of getting some hop into it. IIRC, dry hopping extracts some of the more floral flavors and less of the pure bitterness.
Good luck with it! It's a great hobby.
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John
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Cisco
174 posts
Feb 15, 2011
7:02 AM
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I have been brewing consistently for 31 years. I brew from October through April and make a 10 gallon all grain batch almost every week. I keg half of each batch and bottle the other half in 750ml bottles, corked and wire wrapped. I brew mostly Belgian beer styles, even do some of the sour beers occasionally. I own a lot of stainless steel!! I have three stainless steel conical fermenters and several storage chest freezers for keeping the kegs chilled. Needless to say, I have more than enough beer for my wife and I and lots of friends and even a couple festivals. I have guest brewed occasionally at one of the local brewpubs that has a 15 barrel system. Yea, I'm serious about beer!
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Buzadero
730 posts
Feb 15, 2011
7:17 AM
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"Needless to say, I have more than enough beer for my wife and I and lots of friends and even a couple festivals. I have guest brewed occasionally at one of the local brewpubs that has a 15 barrel system. Yea, I'm serious about beer!"
If you looking to get an "Amen"......I'm testifying from the front row.
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~Buzadero
Underwater Janitor, Patriot
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Cisco
175 posts
Feb 15, 2011
7:45 AM
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Well if any of you are coming through Tucson then drop by for a beer. My harp playing sucks because I'm too busy brewing. If I could only put in as much dedication and time into practicing harp as I do brewing I could be pretty good!
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LIP RIPPER
390 posts
Feb 15, 2011
11:45 AM
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Some years back my wife bought me a Beer Machine for christmas I think it was. Then I ordered another, they made 2 gallons each. I made many different brews. I recall a scotch ale that was done on christmas eve one year. When we got home from the family thing I started in on it and it was so good that I wasn't right for 2 days. Shortly after that I had a couple of equipment failures so I went back to the ole fashioned way, store bought.
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
548 posts
Feb 15, 2011
6:12 PM
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Hey Aussie,
It's been a long time since I heard the word Kilkenny! That brings back some memories. It was one of my favorites when I was going to school in Europe, I traveled around in a dozen countries, and it seems in all of them, there was an Irish pub. I spent about a week in Florence Italy at the end of my studies and there was an Irish pub down the street I spent a great deal of time in. In all of them, they had Kilkenny on draft. The only think I drank more of was the monastery beers and Stiegel. I've never seen it anywhere else.
I was based in Salzburg Austria when I was there. The Salzburg Beer is Stiegel, they've been brewing it since 1492. Never saw that one again, either. I miss them both.
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"There are only two things money can't buy - true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Lewis Grizzard
Last Edited by on Feb 15, 2011 6:13 PM
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Aussiesucker
754 posts
Feb 15, 2011
7:04 PM
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Elk River> can still get Kilkenny here but have only seen it in those cans that have the widgets in them that fire up the gas. The last pack of cans I had were all failures ie flat beer.
I didn't keep the recipe but I'm sure there are some on the web. I started with a standard lager kit & all I remember was that was the cheapest part as there were lots of extra ingredients.
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