I'm just curious. It gets me a lot how diverse our group is here. Teenagers-to-old-farts, speed-bikers, gun-nuts, body-builders, girls and boys, punk-rockers and hippies, pot-heads and frat-boys...Nascar and F1 fans. We got everybody under our tent... I hear plenty of praise for beer and booze in general, but...

But where are the homebrewers?

I like beer, but I hear it's a pain to make well. I just went to a local brewery's 5th anniversary here in Austin, and was admiring their setup.

My gf roomates brew there own stuff mostly IPAs and wheat bears. Some of the best stuff Ive ever had. Side note I just attended a brew festival and tried Blue Mountain for the first time...good stuff.

red_devil said:

My gf roomates brew there own stuff mostly IPAs and wheat bears. Some of the best stuff Ive ever had. Side note I just attended a brew festival and tried Blue Mountain for the first time...good stuff.

Click to expand...

So there's like a house-full of hotties brewing-up IPAs somewhere in VA? If I show up there, don't tell my GF!

Making beer is actually super easy. You do need to be anal about sanitization at certain points. It isn't hard, it just takes time. There is a quick method, which uses less equipment, but it costs as much to make your own as it would to buy good beer. If you dump mad loot on equipment, then you can make better beer than you can buy, for way cheaper. But that is the method where you're gonna spend at least 6 hours making a batch. But all that equipment is pretty-much a one-time investment.

brownfinger-You've peaked my interest. Give us more details on these two methods.

tragdor said:

brownfinger-You've peaked my interest. Give us more details on these two methods.

Click to expand...

Well here you go then: One method, the expensive-but-easy way, is called "extract-brewing". The other is called "all-grain brewing".

All-grain brewing starts-out with weighing and grinding your malted barley kernels. Then you soak them in hot (145-160F) water for 45min-2hrs, then you slowly drain off the liquid into the boiling pot. That soaking part is called the "mash", and is the actual "brewing", by definition. I've simplified the description, the whole process takes around 3 to 4 hours to get all the liquid into the boiling kettle. This is the part of the process that is skipped by extract brewers.

Extract brewers use either a powdered or syrup malt-extract. The "brewing" is performed at a factory that makes malt-extract, then it is de-hydrated down to a syrup or a powder. The homebrewer then adds the extract to water in the boiling kettle.

From that point on, the two processes are essentially the same. To the liquid (called "wort" untill it's fermented) is added hops, and it is boiled for 1 to 3 hours, most commonly 60-90 min. After boiling, it is cooled, yeast is added, fermentation begins, and then it is beer. Then it is aged, packaged, un-packaged, consumed, pee-ed out, etc... All very familiar stuff by then.

There's tons of variations, depending on beer-style and tradition, lagers and ales, etc...
I bet some of the DSMers could get into it, because most all-grain home-breweries are mostly custom-built affairs. You can buy all of the equipment you need, but there are always lots of things that need to be adapted and fabricated to make the pieces work together. Just like our cars, every set-up is different for various reasons. If you ask 50 different people how they make beer, you'll get 50 different answers.

+1 for beer ^

Off topic, but I'll be consuming quite an unhealthy amount of beer and alcohol tomorrow night. Happy Halloween!

i_nick_2005_i said:

+1 for beer ^

Off topic, but I'll be consuming quite an unhealthy amount of beer and alcohol tomorrow night. Happy Halloween!

Click to expand...

+1 hopefully no

That sounds pretty cool. Brownfinger, do you brew your own brew?

Amazon.com: The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing (9780380763665): Charlie Papazian: Books

Not done it yet. I need to get a bottle caper and caps : (

I'm no homebrewer, but interesting read and 1 up for diversity to these forums. Is it significantly better than an off the shelf beer or do you need to know what your doing to tell the difference?

tragdor said:

That sounds pretty cool. Brownfinger, do you brew your own brew?

Click to expand...

Yeah, hell yeah, I do. I stick to British and American style ales. I'd love to do lagers, too, but there is a whole different set of equipment. Lagers need to be kept at 32-50 degrees during fermentation, as opposed to the room-temp fermentation temperature of ales. So i'd need another (third) dedicated beer fridge.

fulanititoo8198 said:

Is it significantly better than an off the shelf beer or do you need to know what your doing to tell the difference?

Click to expand...

It depends. Most styles of beer are meant to be drunk fresh, so yes, any homebrew that is done half-way right should make you easily aware of the difference. A lot of beers are meant to be aged to a certain degree. Keeping your hands off of it for the required amount of time is a serious challenge for some.
Once you've munched on a hand-full of really good malted barley kernels, and a cone or two of fresh hops, those flavors are tatooed on your brain. Then you can really truly detect a huge difference in the intensity of the beer flavors in a fresh, well-made homebrew.

tkelly27 said:

Amazon.com: The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing (9780380763665): Charlie Papazian: Books

Not done it yet. I need to get a bottle caper and caps : (

Click to expand...

That book is the best, even though it is way out-dated. I'd almost say NOT to use or read any other book on the subject untill well after making several batches of your own beer. Brewing is a notorious subject for getting (apparently) completely contradictory information from every different source.

About bottling, at least get a bench-mounted capper. Well worth the extra $20. Those two-handed "wing-type" cappers suck-butt. It will make you hate brewing. Even with a bench capper, I hate bottling. Start looking right away for a local source of good 5-gal kegs, and a CO2 tank. Once you get a draft set-up and a few kegs, brewing is SO much more fun and enjoyable. Bottling is my hands-down least-favorate part of brewing. 100 times worse than cleaning.

Oo, the brewing hobby sounds like fun, just another one of those things you can have fun with from day to day. I have tasted home made beer and with the people around here its a hit and miss. One guy tried to emulate Schlitz or however you spell it. Another brewer which was a couple, had a very nice set-up and the Ale they made reminded me of the Waterboy glacier h2o drink at the end, that Ale could have woke me out of a coma. I may try brewing, later in time!!

I can't personally say I have. But, my girlfriend loves to make her own brews and name them. She even goes as far as to make custom labels for each batch. I have helped bottle them but that's about it. I leave that up to her since she is sooooo good at it. She mainly does wheat beers but on occasion has done a stout or two. I'm not a big stout drinker but the wheat brews have all been A+++++. What can I say I love my little home brewer.

NjTSi said:

I can't personally say I have. But, my girlfriend loves to make her own brews and name them. She even goes as far as to make custom labels for each batch. I have helped bottle them but that's about it. I leave that up to her since she is sooooo good at it. She mainly does wheat beers but on occasion has done a stout or two. I'm not a big stout drinker but the wheat brews have all been A+++++. What can I say I love my little home brewer.

Click to expand...

Your girlfriend Rocks!! I wish my wife would make me beer with labels! I'm gonna text her right now!

i work in a micro brewery, some of the best beer i have ever had

NjTSi said:

I can't personally say I have. But, my girlfriend loves to make her own brews and name them. She even goes as far as to make custom labels for each batch. I have helped bottle them but that's about it. I leave that up to her since she is sooooo good at it. She mainly does wheat beers but on occasion has done a stout or two. I'm not a big stout drinker but the wheat brews have all been A+++++. What can I say I love my little home brewer.

Click to expand...

Lucky you! Helping me bottle is all I can get my GF to do. She doesn't drink beer, though. She's a booze-hound.

Tell your ole-lady to try this on a stout sometime: Use a simple malt bill; a pound of roast, a pound of dark crystal, maybe a 1/2 # or so of wheat, all kent goldings hops, and London/Fullers ale yeast (white labs 002). I bet you'll both love it.

Lucky Bastard

97dark_angel said:

i work in a micro brewery, some of the best beer i have ever had

Click to expand...

What brewery? Do they distribute nationally/regionally?

brownfinger said:

Lucky you! Helping me bottle is all I can get my GF to do. She doesn't drink beer, though. She's a booze-hound.

Click to expand...

She is the first girlfriend that I have had that actually really likes beer. She doesn't just drink the normal american beers either. When you send her to the liquor store you never know what she will bring back. Whatever catches her eye or looks good is what ends up in the fridge. A little variety in life never hurt.

I tired once and it was a near fail. I still drank the whole batch, but it didn't sit well with me afterward.

Working for a beer company, we get all the brewery tours and everything from whomever we want. One of my sales reps brews his own beer and just randomly tries different foods. Had a chocolate cherry of his once. My god... so good, I couldn't stop drinking it. Side note, I got smashed

david-b said:

I tired once and it was a near fail. I still drank the whole batch, but it didn't sit well with me afterward.

Working for a beer company, we get all the brewery tours and everything from whomever we want. One of my sales reps brews his own beer and just randomly tries different foods. Had a chocolate cherry of his once. My god... so good, I couldn't stop drinking it. Side note, I got smashed

Click to expand...

It's hard to make a total failure. It's almost impossible to make a beer that will hurt you. Usually the worst that happens is that you end-up with something different than you thought you were going to make. Those first-timer kits don't really give you the best ingredients, either.
As a rule, I don't go for fruit/beer combos, but I make an exception for cherry and raspberry. I'd have drank as much of that guy's chocolate-cherry as he would have let me.

NjTSi said:

She is the first girlfriend that I have had that actually really likes beer. She doesn't just drink the normal american beers either. When you send her to the liquor store you never know what she will bring back. Whatever catches her eye or looks good is what ends up in the fridge. A little variety in life never hurt.

Click to expand...

Most people who make their own beer won't go anywhere near your average American lagers, except to boil sausages in, or to stuff a can up a grillin'-chicken's butt. They're not all bad. I can still go for a red-label Bud, a Michelob, an Old-Style, etc..., but no light beer, and only at a bar when it's the special. Or if someone offers me a beer and I was just thinking how much I'd love a beer. I'd never turn my nose up at a hospitality beer.

my brother and i were just talking about doing this, we had it all figured down to a 200 dollar investment each to get started, If you look hard enough online you can find all the recipes for well known beers as well as home made tutches. I want to try a pbr taste.

4g63t said:

my brother and i were just talking about doing this, we had it all figured down to a 200 dollar investment each to get started, If you look hard enough online you can find all the recipes for well known beers as well as home made tutches. I want to try a pbr taste.

Click to expand...

American lagers are actually about the 2nd hardest type of beer to make. Major American breweries employ lots of complex procedures to allow them to utilize the cheapest possible ingredients. Making millions of barrels a year, their profit motive demands it. As a homebrewer, the cost difference to use the finest ingredients available in the whole world is quite negligible.

You can try to make a PBR, but don't be suprised if you accidentally end up making something that tastes a whole lot better Oh yeah, just like DSMers, homebrewers are always up-grading. Be on the look-out for used equipment on the cheap.