How do I brew beer?

Well, I guess the title has it all. I'm seeing all these posts by Salanis, and it is making me think that I would like to start trying to do it myself.

What is needed as far as space, pots (I assume at least 5 gallon?), bottler, etc. (not ingredients, I know that to start I can just buy a kit)?

Can your average idiot do it?

After the initial investment, does it come out comparable in price to store bought?

Thanks in advance, and if there is another thread out there, point me in that direction.

Find your local vintner and brew supply. Walk in, browse and ask questions. Homebrewers are not hiding secrets. They are open and love to share. A large pot, a 5 gallon bucket and a 6 gal carboy some tubing and airlocks will get you going. The bottle capper is under $10.

My first batch of extract based pale ale was as good or better than sierra nevadas.

Find a brew shop and ask about getting started though. It is worth it just for the smells of the grains when you walk in the door.

A 5 gallon batch of an extract pale ale will be about $35.

mtn wrote: What is needed as far as space, pots (I assume at least 5 gallon?), bottler, etc. (not ingredients, I know that to start I can just buy a kit)?

Even fora 5-gallon batch, you can brew with less volume and add water. It's not perfect, but it's more than doable. It does takes a bit more careful supervision. If I were buying a pot, I'd go big. But if I had a fairly big, but not 5 gallon one already (like 3 gallons) I'd use that first in case I didn't keep up with it.

Can your average idiot do it?

You bet. The biggest key is cleanliness. You get that right and it's hard to go all that wrong.

After the initial investment, does it come out comparable in price to store bought?

You probably won't beat the price of the cheap stuff. I never have, but I've never really tried either. But it's easy to get good beer for moderate beer prices. Or ridiculously good beer for good beer prices.

As a rough rule of thumb, I tend to figure I get beer at least one "tier" higher in quality than I could buy once we're not talking about the bottom rung stuff. Or I get stuff that I can't usefully get anywhere regardless of price.

In my experience, you tend get more quality for your $, but less variety unless you swap a bunch around. Which itself can be pretty fun if you can find some people.

Not much space. <1/2 store price.
Get about a 2-3 gallon stainless pot and a 5 gallon water bottle, plastic OK. Buy your stuff from Defalco's: http://www.defalcos.com/ Don't buy a "Mr.Beer" type thing. Junk and way over priced.

Search the forum here for homebrew. I've posted some how-to's. Here's some notes: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/anybody-here-homebrew/21234/page1/

I think there's more.

I am the average idiot and I can do it.

Don't bother with the plastic bucket stuff, plastic is harder to sanatize. Find a brew club or homebrew supplier nearby, that helps. You can buy a starter kit for ~$20 but go for the glass jug.

I do it in the second bathroom downstairs, if it goes bad it just goes down the drain.

Buy a kit. Basically you boil water, add stuff and let it cool. Now pour it into the glass jug with yeast. I leave mine in the jug longer than most so it becomes more clear.

Siphon it off into a five gallon bucket with a spigot and then the spigot into bottles. Done.

For bottles I go to a beverage market, a wholesaler. In NY there's a nickel deposit on bottles, so if you pay the nickel you can have the bottle back. Or you can just drink a lot and save the containers.

It's easy.

Everyone has a story about bottles blowing up in the basement or whatever, I cover my 5 gallon jug with a black plastic garbage bag, keeps light out and encapsulates any mishaps.

Have fun.

And DO NOT leave a pot of boiling stuff unattended!!!! It will boil over as soon as you look away and sodomize your wife's brandy new black and stainless stove and you'll hear about it for the next ____ years.

Just a tip.......

Dan

914Driver wrote: And DO NOT leave a pot of boiling stuff unattended!!!! It will boil over as soon as you look away and sodomize your wife's brandy new black and stainless stove and you'll hear about it for the next ____ years.

This is doubly true if you're brewing up a partial batch to be diluted later. It's why I mentioned extra careful supervision. Though in my case, it was a rental apartment, and the wife was out of town. Mess was more or less cleaned before she got back.

That's all good advice, but I wouldn't get too crazy with sterilization. Except for early on, I've only ever used dish soap, and never had a problem. Like racinginc, I usually do a few hundred liters at a time, and put it in a keg. Bottling gets old after a while.

I use a 5 gal pot from Target, boil down, and top up with gallon jugs of water. For space, I ferment in a closet. 6-gallon better-bottle carboy.

Follow basic directions and sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. I use Star San, and keep a plastic spray bottle filled with it.

Bottling is a bucket with a spigot, a length of tube, and a hard plastic wand with a push valve on the bottom. Opens up when pressed on the bottom of a bottle. I sanitize bottles in the dishwasher, with the "heated dry" setting on, no soap.

As for cost... it's generally cheaper than store bought. I probably spend roughly $40 - $60 per 5gal/2case batch by the time everything is done. Depends how fancy I'm getting. That $60+ range gets me things like fancy Belgian strong ales though.

You get a lot more value out of doing fancier expensive beers. I'd agree with Keethrax that you're generally getting about one step up in quality from what you're paying. I also don't brew something that I can just go out to the store and buy as good or better. My goal isn't saving money, it's having really tasty and interesting beers that are tough to find.

Zomby woof wrote: That's all good advice, but I wouldn't get too crazy with sterilization.

It's not like it's hard. While most of the time it's a bit overkill, why risk the time, effort, and money when for 15 minutes more prep time you don't have to?

keethrax wrote: It's not like it's hard. While most of the time it's a bit overkill, why risk the time, effort, and money when for 15 minutes more prep time you don't have to?

With brewing sanitizer (Star San, Iodopher, etc.), it's not even that long. While my mash is in the oven (oven on "warm" stays at 150), I fill up a bucket with 2.5 gallons of sanitizing solution to take care of everything for the day. Sanitizer in a squirt bottle makes it super easy to sanitize as I go.

The best way to learn how is to go to a home brew shop or home brew club and see when they're doing a "how to brew" demo. Or go to a brewers club meeting and ask if there's someone doing a batch soon that you could hang out and help them.

Salanis wrote:

keethrax wrote: It's not like it's hard. While most of the time it's a bit overkill, why risk the time, effort, and money when for 15 minutes more prep time you don't have to?

With brewing sanitizer (Star San, Iodopher, etc.), it's not even that long. While my mash is in the oven (oven on "warm" stays at 150), I fill up a bucket with 2.5 gallons of sanitizing solution to take care of everything for the day. Sanitizer in a squirt bottle makes it super easy to sanitize as I go.

Yeah. I use Star San and my 15 minutes is probably overstating how much time it takes.

The oven bit's interesting though, not sure that would even have occurred to me. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

Brewing in the OVEN?

Now I need a bigger oven.

We use a Turkey fryer and a jug. We prefer the bottles with the... uhh... Hood pins? Just sampled some with a friend Saturday. The consensus was that it was better than Horse Piss.

Edit: We let it ferment in the bathroom.

Super Ninja Edit: ... Before adding yeast we leave it in an iced shop-Vac... In the bathroom.

Here's my ninja trick for rapidly cooling my wort: bag ice.

Cool water in the bathtub to get it down to about 140, then a small bag of ice to quickly get it down to 70. That 90-120 range is the danger zone for bacterial infection that you want to get through as quickly as possible.

Has to be bag ice, since there are fewer bugs where it came from, and I'm anal about finding a bag that is whole. I spray the bag down with Star San before throwing it in.

My trick for temperature control while fermenting is a big K-mart bucket (like you'd throw sodas in at a BBQ) as a water bath. More thermal mass and a bit of evaporative cooling. An old t-shirt over the carboy in the bucket acts as a wick and cools an extra couple degrees. The biggest advantage is just thermal mass to keep temps constant though.

I like the tee idea. Ill bring that up next time.

I probably should start doing this.

N Sperlo wrote: I like the tee idea. Ill bring that up next time.

Cheapo undershirts are the best. The thinner, the better. If using the tee, you want a lower water level to increase evaporation. You will need to check and rewet the shirt every day or two.

Oh yeah, and in the oven I use a nylon paint strainer bag (like $2.50 for 3 at Home Despot) to hold my grains. I can do up to about 6# that way. Makes it convenient. I use those bags again when transferring the wort to the carboy. I go first from my mash kettle into my bottling bucket with the strainer bag across the bucket. Catches lots of hops and lets me gather more fermentables. Also, adds some extra aeration. Then I top up with jug water to 5 gallons and take my initial gravity reading. Then hose from spigot into carboy and shake/swirl carboy while transferring to get further aeration.

I know nothing about beer (and am not a big fan or connoisseur) but the stuff my co-worker made was easily the best beer I ever had outside of Bavaria.

Other places on the interwebz, I've read comments where people said that Mr. Beer was so much simpler and almost as tasty that they relegated their proper beer making equipment to the attic. Do these fine folks steer me wrong?

My buddy has a Mr. Beer kit, and none of the stuff he produces is anywhere near my other friends and their extract kits.