Jon wants us to start discussions, and alcohol is always a good subject. How many of you produce your own? I mainly do wine, and currently have gallons of elderflower, rhubarb, and chardonay fermenting. Want to swap recipes and ideas?

Cheers,
Graham

My brother and I made beer for a while. Since we've both moved out of our home that's stopped.

We made some great beers though. One was a kick ass cherry wheat and a super hopped up IPA. One batch, a pilsner which we dry hopped with real hops, not pellets, went bad and we had to dump it. It was the first time we emptied 2 cases of beer without getting drunk.
And one time we had a boil over. What a mess. He burned his fingers yanking the pot off the heat.

I have been wanting to get into the home brewing for a while now (both beer and wine) but I'm a little leery of the undertaking. Anyone got any good references or advice to get started from scratch (equipment and knowledge-wise)?

I have neither the resources, space, nor kind apartment super to allow for home brewing of any sort. I do, however, wish I could. Home brew is quite the tasty treat (depending on the home it's brewed in, that is).

On a side note, anyone else expect this to be a post about being Jewish but not going to synagogue?
(Home + Hebrew = Homebrew?)

Ok, I guess it's just me. Oh, to see the world the way everyone else does...

We never brew as often as we'd like because we're slackers. Right now we are whittling away our supply of a particularly tasty batch of mocha porter (our house beer). We got involved in the movie we were watching and forgot to remove the hops and coffee beans as early as we were supposed to. All and all, we're quite pleased with our mistake. It is a robust dark beer with a pleasant hoppy finish.

Over the holidays we brewed 3 5-gallon batches of hard cider and distributed most of it as gifts. There isn't a whole lot to do to the cider other than add additional sweetener (honey) or spices so we tried three different types of yeast. The ale yeast cider was the sweetest and least alcoholic. The champagne yeast brewed a much drier cider, and the cider yeast yielded a dry and very alcoholic cider.

Next up: our front porch hops look like they will produce a batch worth of cones. Can anyone recommend a recipe using Fuggle hops?

In Response to jettaboy20 (#8286):

I have been wanting to get into the home brewing for a while now (both beer and wine) but I'm a little leery of the undertaking. Anyone got any good references or advice to get started from scratch (equipment and knowledge-wise)?

I mainly do wine, and I'm in Scotland, so doubt that most people will be able to reach the same brew shops I use. But advice, I can do.

For wine you'll need two demi-johns (1 gallon glass jars) or similar, a bored cork (I prefer rubber), an airlock (plastic ones are good), a length of siphon tube with a plastic or glass (if you can find one!) u-bend, bottle brush, and a funnel. For your first batch, try buying a kit that sounds good - most of them include the yeast, grape juice, sugar, etc. that you'll need, along with instructions. You'll want a good steriliser as well - I prefer campden tablets.

Basic technique is wash everything with lots of detergent, rinse thoroughly. Add five or six campden tablets to about a pint of warm water, swirl till they dissolve then slosh that over everything. Drain, place on clean kitchen towels to dry, and leave for 24 hours. Next day, add all the ingredients to the demi-john. Put in the airlock (with a little water in - enough to seal it, but not enough that it comes even halfway up the sides.) Then leave somewhere warm (20-25C) for a week or two. After one day, you should see lots of bubbles coming out of the airlock. When it finishes fermenting, you should see very few bubbles (one every couple of minutes). When you're sure fermentation has stopped, add a campden tablet, shake the demi-john to mix it in, then leave for 24 hours. All the yeast will settle to the bottom. Use your siphon tube to draw the clean wine off the top into the other demi-john (washed and sterilised as above). The u-bend should let you take the clean stuff off the top of the dead yeast. Add another campden tablet, put the airlock in, and leave somewhere cool for anything from a week (impatient) to six months (very patient!) then filter (if you want) and bottle. I use plastic corks for sealing the wine bottles - they go in easier and are reusable.

Anything else, just ask. If you want to go for total homebrew rather than a kit, I have a few recipes around (wine and mead).

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#8309):

Excelent. I know there is a supply store somewhere near my apartment that I'll search out as soon as I get paid. I'll see if I can find everything, and let you know how it goes.

In Response to jettaboy20 (#8311):

I'll see if I can find everything, and let you know how it goes...in six months time!

In Response to evilaltor (#8312):

Well, I was going to work on the impatient time scale. I would be very disappointed to wait six months for something that could come out pretty horribly. Plus, I'm just impatient to a fault.

I've been fascinated by homebrewing, but I was under the impression that it's space-intensive. I'm presently an apartment dweller without a dark damp cellar. Is there any form of brewing I can do in a small studio without having my she-mate murdering me?

Also, is it possible and/or legal to ship alcohol so that we could share and enjoy each others experiments? I'd imagine this'd be more feasable for wines than beers, sadly...

In Response to mcgrue (#8319):

Perhaps this [goats.com] might provide you with more of an answer than you expect. In fact, I'm sure some of the folk there would be only too happy to share.

In Response to evilaltor (#8323):

heh, I'd somehow forgotten about that... perhaps due to lack of updating?

In Response to mcgrue (#8319):

Bottom-fermented beer is not horribly space-intensive. (Top-fermented beer takes refrigeration, and refrigerators aren't so small.) The fermentation takes place in a five-gallon carboy (a footprint of about one foot). We place this in an unused space of our kitchen near the heating vent. I've also seen people place it on the top of the refrigerator, but you need to have pretty high ceilings for that. The beer takes up more space after it’s been bottled. As long as you can find a place to store around 50 bottles of beer, you're set. We use a beat-up old bookshelf in the basement.

Shipping homebrewed beer may be a little trickier than shipping commercial beer in the US. Typically the states with large beer manufacturers are more restrictive about allowing homebrew. With enough padding, shipping beer is possible. The biggest hindrance is weight. You'll probably end up spending more on the shipping than the beer.

In Response to jettaboy20 (#8286):

For beer homebrewing I recommend you check out The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. [amazon.com] This is a great book for the beginner and an excellent reference guide for the experienced homebrewer. It covers the supplies, brewing instructions, and is chock full of recipes.

I've drunk Yakuila, Scrumpy Yak, Yak Daniels, and many, many other fine beverages brewed by Yak, a guy who makes alcohol in his boiler press.

Cider, drunk through a three-foot tube, from a 20 litre tank. Then you give the tube to a neighbour. Classy.

Notice how I have not mentioned my secret purpose to destroy EvilAltor in this posting.

I'm waiting for the Instant Karma. You should wait too. Bring it on, Jebus.

In Response to Spiderbaby (#8336):

It looks like one of my monkeys has finally achieved sentience. Who would have thought that years of systematic abuse would have bred such hatred? Perhaps now all I need to do is syphon off the excess rage, infect some people and shoot a movie. I think they'll call it "The Angry People Who Couldn't Stop Killing".

In Response to evilaltor (#8323):

That was the first beer exchange...and a good exchange it was. The second exchange hasn't gone so well. So far I am the only one who has shipped beer; hence, the snide comments I insert hither and thither about no beer yet. I think Zamphir and Dynedain gave up and drank the beer they were going to ship to each other.

In Response to albionsoft (#8309):

I've tasted more beers and wines ruined by a tiny bit of leftover detergent than I care to remember.

If you're very thorough in your rinsing, go for it. For the rest of us I recommend diluted bleach. One fluid ounce of bleach per gallon of water will kill anything if you let it soak for an hour. Fill a large food-grade bucket (your fermenter, if you're not using carboys) with the solution and soak your implements in there. Sterile bucket, sterile accoutrements, and one good hour to spend with some previously-chilled beer.

Here's my advice for what not to do... Don't ever bottle dandelion wine in Jones Soda bottles (with screw-on caps) when it's still bubbling vigorously. That's bad. Very bad. I recieved a call that day at work from my mom who was quite pissed about 14 bottles exploding in the kitchen. I made out something about the carpet smelling like rotten flowers before the rage took over and she turned all green.

On a related note: Do you have to wait for it to complete stop bubbling or is it possible to stop fermentation otherwise in a homebrew setting. I know they do it with reds, but they also have huge vats to work with. I have empty pickle jars from subway...

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#8347):

Do you have to wait for it to complete stop bubbling or is it possible to stop fermentation otherwise in a homebrew setting.

Campden tablet. Kills off the yeast pretty quickly - wait a day or two for it to settle, then siphon off the top. You should really do this anyway - secondary fermentation after bottling leads to embarrasing explosions...

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to Oedipa_Maas (#8345):

I think Zamphir and Dynedain gave up and drank the beer they were going to ship to each other.

Actually, my wife drank a lot of the beer I was gonna ship.

But Dynedain is single.

In Response to evilaltor (#8342):

Wow, first the Goat's server, now a monkey? It's a red-letter week for the Turing Test.

In Response to Oedipa_Maas (#8327):

Hrm. Well, a few aquaintances of mine had converted most of their refrigerator into something that produced a stout that was like a Mega-Guinness. The only other homebrews I've seen have also been superdense beers that tended to be sweet and sat in my stomache like an alcoholic brick. Is it easier to brew stouts than others?

But as these were two college lads doing this, they only needed the fridge for condiments. My ladymate would probably disapprove of such use of space. Is a half-size fridge large enough? I seem to remember there being all sorts of tubes and vessels and gauges...

The biggest hindrance is weight. You'll probably end up spending more on the shipping than the beer.

That's easily solved: Goats Beerswap 2003! ;)

*Guinness is a stout, right? I'm such a beer noob.

In Response to introp (#8346):

"Relax, have a homebrew."

In Response to mcgrue (#8358):

Sounds like your friends made a kegerator [beveragefactory.com] for chilling the beer after it was brewed. If they were putting their beer into a keg instead of individual bottles, they needed a way to keep the beer fresh for a little longer after they tapped the keg. The beers that require refrigeration for brewing are lagers, pilsners, etc.

I'd recommend starting out with some sort of dark beer for your first batch. The many flavors in dark beers cover imperfections. They are very forgiving. You are more likely to end up with a tasty porter than an IPA on your first batch.

A beerswap is a wonderful idea. Too bad many of us live so far away from each other.

You're correct. Guinness is a stout. More specifically, I believe, it is a cream/milk stout.

In Response to introp (#8346):

I've tasted more beers and wines ruined by a tiny bit of leftover detergent than I care to remember. If you're very thorough in your rinsing, go for it. For the rest of us I recommend diluted bleach.


I find diluted bleach less effective at removing some of the crud than scrubbing with brush and detergent, and needs just as much rinsing. The one thing that cannot be over-emphasised is that your tools cannot be overly clean, overly rinsed, or overly sterile. Be religious about that, and the rest is just experimenting and finding what you like.

Cheers,
Graham