We have been home brewing for many many years.

Made some pear and kiwi ciders last fall.

Wife caught a couple of flash sales last week and ordered 10 kits. Looks like we'll be making 66 gallons of beer here shortly.

Any other Brewers?

Only reason I thought to post this was the other thread about running out of water and the cases of Frozen water bottles that keep we in the freezer to chill our wort.

The other thread the other day how about honey got me thinking about trying some mead. So I ordered 10 lb of honey from Walmart. It was amazingly cheap at $2.12 a pound. I'm not sure if I'm going to like mead or not it seems kind of gay.

But so does pear and kiwi cider. But in reality not bad at all. Local moonshiner does a Peach... a very good Peach distilled spirit. Not that crap where you put a can of condensed cherries into a mason jar with Everclear.

Just get you a brown robe and a rope belt...then shave the top of your head..

It would be a hoot to set up a booth like that on farmers market day....

My boy made some, wasn’t bad!

Why buy kits?

Price, convience...?

I've been brewing for 25+ years. Fun hobby that all your friends appreciate!

Got a pale ale in the keg that is going fast. A recipe I always wanted to do. Basically, an Octoberfest malt/grain with Sierra Nevada PA hopping. What do you get? Malty Octoberfest goodness with a the pale ale hoppiness to balance. On the malty sweet side rather than dry like the classic Brit IPA.

Things I tell new brewers to make life easier is to get 3 pieces of equipment that never wear out and make brewing a pleasure

- keg don't bottle

get a conical fermentor and ditch the carboy method

- get a propane turkey fryer and do a full 5 gal boil

Other thing I keep telling my son in law who is new to brewing is buy fresh yeast and don't reconstitute yeast from dry packets in kits. It never has worked for me, and doesn't work for him. He's stubborn.

Beware of fake honey. It's more prevalent than many realize. No surprise that the Chinese are the worst offenders.

Both of my sons brew beer. The one works for “adventures in home brewing “ http://www.HomeBrewing.org/ if you are interested.

i've been brewing on & off since 1987. its my late winter hobby. as we speak i have a guinness clone mashing. i do mostly black beers these days but also the occasional pale ale or german lager. bottled a bock yesterday. i will do about 18 or so cases from late dec to late april and it lasts me until the following spring.

my beers used to be hit or miss, but with modern methods, equipment and ingredients, i now consistently brew better beer than most commercial micros i have had. i do not have good luck with ipa's or anything that is heavily hop accentuated and the good hops cost too much money to really get the character you need in those beers. the hops could easily cost more than the malt in a good ipa. hoppy beers are not my favorites anyway.

not bragging, but my stouts and porters are world class. (well i guess i am) i have taken 1st place in national regional competitions when i did that sort of thing. i don't compete anymore. waste of a good beer.

i gave up the kegging thing a few years ago because i like the portability of bottles. and i don't mind the extra work. next batch will be a barley wine with a english ale as the small beer from 2nd runnings. the small beer off the imperial stout i did last month was a german lager that i call lawnmower lager. it is light, clean and delicious. perfect for those that don't like stout/porter.

at one time i thought about doing this for a living but didn't have the guts to do it. kids, mortgage, job etc took precedent.

45 years ago I ran the green garbage can (30+ gallons) brewing cartel in college. Our goal was to make it cheap and we got that done; while it always got drunk, the room for improvement was readily discernible. From cans of malt syrup, table sugar and dry baker's yeast, the sky is the limit as far as future sophistication goes. While I haven'g brewed in years it was a great life experience that has been passed on to my kids and their spouses. Hatari gives solid advice; it's much easier to keg the brew and have it under CO2 pressure in a dedicated fridge. Start where it's easiest for you and take it as far as you enjoy. Highly recommend this art form, your friends will never leave you and your efforts will be the toast of all celebrations.

Mead is definitely not gay but some homemade wines are. Distilling are nice clean neutral spirit is way easier than making a drinkable beer.

cyser is nice too. 5 lbs of real honey and 5 gallons of fresh cider. use a liquid sweet mead yeast and let it primary for a few weeks and then secondary for a few months. every so slight corn sugar prime at bottling time and it tastes like asti spumante. my wife keeps bugging me to make another batch.

What Hatari (with one exception) AND Gringo Loco said. I would be very leery of that 'honey'. If it says China anywhere on it I'd throw that cheit away.

I've been brewing all grain (no extract) for 30ish years. Used to bottle, but what a PITA. It all goes into stainless cornelius kegs now. CO2 or Nitro, depending on what style I brew.
I brew in modified stainless sanke kegs on propane burners outside. Brewing in the kitchen is a no-go. A batch here is between 12 finished gallons and 50. Primary ferment in food grade plastic 7-gallon tubs with lids and air locks, secondary fermentation in glass. I used a conical fermenter for a few years.. loved the idea of it and the relative simplicity. But had sterility issues and the recipes never turned out tasting the same as when finished in clean glass. Went back to glass and don't regret it at all.

House staples are a Northern German style of pilsner, and a pale ale. Once a year I'll do a Guinness clone or a red ale. The lagers I brew in winter and age in glass out in an unheated shed for a minimum of 2 months. In warmer climates you can convert a chest freezer to keep your lagers cool. The flavor improves dramatically.

It's a great hobby. Your friends will appreciate it a lot.. I figure a finished pint of great beer costs me about $0.65 including everything but my time. I use German malt and Czech hops and yeast.

Happy to share recipes. Feel free to PM with questions. I

Wife caught a sale. Something like $22 delivered. Kits are easy peasy... All Grain is a little bit cheaper sometimes but a lot more hassle.

We will corny keg some of it and bottle the rest.

Comes out to about $8 to $10 per case.

Sam Adams type beers and some ipas.

I've spent a lot of money through them. Especially back when I was buying all the hardware and kegs to make my freezer into a kegerator. 8 keg variety. I like all grain brewing, but if i get back into it i'm moving to brew in a bag. Probably 2.5 gallon batches.

Even if it doesn't say it's from China, it still could be.

This article is a little dated, but it goes into some detail. I read a much better article years ago that also detailed the testing methods used to verify honey, and also how counterfeiters were foiling them.

Honey laundering: tainted and counterfeit Chinese honey floods into the U.S.

Used to brew using malt extract. Made some darn good beers that way, but spray malt and extracts are expensive. Now I'm trying to do all-grains but getting the gravity I want is a challenge.

it can be easily done. Ain't rocket science. Awfully hard to make it taste better than store bought though

The Turkey Fryer is essential. Kegs are the only way to fly. But You can get by for a long time without a conical. Modern Plastic Carboys like the Big Mouth Bubbler or Fermonster are cheap. The have most of the upsides of the conical but you still have to rack it off the sediment. I've threatened to try the Bubbler with the valve on the side. At this point, I'ld rather waste or leave some beer behind then have to clean racking equipment.

Most people and the continuation of their homebrew hobby is completely dependent on how much and how easy the equipment is to clean.

A fermenting chamber, wort chiller, and good yeast and it's hard not to make better beer than most of what I can buy local.
I still like my Shiner, Killians Irish Red, And a few of Boulevard's offerings. But you can make some damn nice beer at home.
Most of the piss poor beer I see from homebrewers is from a complete lack of aging on any beer, and they always think beer has to be 10%+...Those are the beers that need a LOT of aging.

ya equipment and technique affect efficiency in all grain. consistency is key. i do a modified brew in a bag. i use a 73 quart coleman cooler with a homemade copper sparge baffle at the bottom and then use the biab mesh bag to hold the grains. this way you can do a fine grind to get better extraction and not have to worry about a stuck sparge. i do a 1 step batch sparge. after mash, vorlauft the entire volume once and then run it dry. then add in all the sparge water at 180, stir and let sit for 15 min and run it dry again and then squeeze the bag. i get in the high 60's - mid-70's for brewhouse efficiency, depending on grain. not great but good enough. so far, this guinness clone i'm doing right now will be in low-mid 70's with golden promise malt. with this technique i can get a good small beer off the 2nd runnings of a big mash like barley wine or imperial stout. 2nd runnings will net about 3.5-4 gallons into the boiler. nice to do a 2'fer that can give you 2 totally different beers.

good idea to get an idea of your mash ph too. i use RO water usually and modify it per style. problem is a lab grade ph meter runs 150 bucks and the probes cost 50-75 bucks and last about a year or so. but if you do repeat recipes, you can get an idea of what your ph will be with a given grain bill.

or you could buy the extract kits from morebeer and as long as you pay real close attention to sanitation you can make just about as good of beer. i think brewing is like golf. starts out just whacking the ball and pretty soon you are dropping big money on stuff and driving yourself nuts. btdt.

We bought a variety pack of yeast from eBay exported from the UK a few years ago.

We have been disappointed with various Safele yeast and the liquid yeast were just too expensive.

It was a dry yeast and came 10 grams to a package. I seem to recall 10 or 12 packages was under $10 delivered. Decided to give it a shot. turned out to be a remarkable yeast. Very dynamic and reliable fermentation. Even though it was only 10 grams.

I'll try to find a lake later and post it up.

I am no expert at beer making, probably made less than a hundred batches in my life.

Good tasteful Beer and Ale at a reasonable price has always been my number one goal.

I think the kits that my wife ordered several American Amber Ales, several Chinook, several Caribou slobber and maybe a wheat beer or two. We keep a variety pack of hops in the refrigerator and will modify a kit recipe often.

We cloned hopsecutioner pretty successfully a few years back. I tried a freelance variation but I named death by Hop's. A bit strong for most.

It is just a hobby for us, something a husband and wife can do together when the weather is not Cooperative outside

safale works good for me. i've used S04 and S05 and 34/70. i think the key is to rehydrate it properly first. i know they say you can sprinkle it but i have read that sprinkling it dry will kill half the yeast cells because they can't take the shock of all that malt sugar all at once why they are rehydrating. that stuff is pricey too. i am trying one called cali within the next few batches. supposed to be just like s05 but cheaper. liquids are good if you want to go the stir plate and starter route. years ago when i was driving myself nuts with this stuff, i used to freeze the liquid cultures in a glycerin solution and then use those to make a starter. this way one pack of liquid yeast would last all brewing season.

theres a lot to this stuff. really fun and if you are a scientific kind of guy you can really go nuts. i am more of a KISS guy anymore.

CashisKing,
I like Wyeast liquid packs. If you find one you like you can harvest all the yeast off the bottom of your secondary and bottle that in a sterile bottle, putting that in the fridge until your next brew date. It will hold true to character for a few brew sessions when leap frogging, saves ya some Cash.

Home brewing since 1985. I use Cooper's kits from Australia, only. I bottle in swingtops, ranging from 500 to 1500 ml or 18 to 54 ozs. Every couple of years I'll do a couple of batches up in stubbies because they feel good in the hand and it reminds me what a PITA capping is. Hunting trips I'll use 2l. pop bottles.

We grow hops which is basically a weed. Added 1/2 pound fresh to a 5 gal batch of IPA this fall. Way better than the dried I've used and less trouble.

Never been a hobby, just a pure cost saving measure. Too many other hobbies. Five gallons costs $18 or .27 cents CAD a bottle. Burp. The good wife says that's how we could afford to retire early.

Great to see all the home brewers jump in! We have a bunch.

did you add those fresh hops to the boil? i grew cascades at my old house and am thinking of putting in some this spring. hard the tell the AAU on them so its kind of a crap shoot. from my brew notes in those days it seemed like they were pretty good.

I did my part in getting rid of some of Jeff's Pale Octoberfest a couple weeks ago and can vouch for it being a solid brew.

I brewed a lot 25-30 years ago but like many hobbies, there is just not enough time to do them all so it fell by the wayside. Certainly something I intend to take up again once retired, which is approaching quickly.

Making my own beer is a hobby that I need to investigate. My brother in law makes some good beer and he has some friends that brew also. I really enjoy craft beers and have been in the business for years. Everyone asks why I haven’t tried brewing and my excuse was I was too busy. I have the time now. Sounds fun.

the mead I made was pretty stout, give you a good buzz.

In my 20 to 30s I made a lot of home brew . mostly stuff I could get from the grocery store to brew.. always had a weekend. crowd that would show up to share my brew with.. alcohol ran about 14% never had any complaints... then a lot of stuff I used was dropped at most grocery stores and I had to order it.. shipping costs run up the prices to where it wasen't worth it so I stopped making it..things have changed back now and ordering the needed ingredients is available now, but I am too old to startup again... my memory is failing me, and my strength is going away..so I buy BUD 16 oz 5% . it is my favorite beer now.good luck all.

I have had some really good homebrew and a LOT of really horrible home brew.

Was involved for 15 or so years with the GABF Pro Am. Tasting, selection, brewing. Was a lot of fun.

I made about 5 gallons of peach wine once.

Started out with about 7 gallons. Blew the airlocks off of a one of my carboys. Fuggin nasty geyser of frothy crap on my ceiling in the laundry room.

Smelled like baby puke back there for a month


Then what I did have that settled out tasted like I imagine some cheap Dollar General douche would be like.

Kept it for a few more months, it evolved into something even more vile than that nasty Braggs apple cider vinegar garbage with the dissolved mouse skeletons in it.



Can’t imagine how disgusting my attempts at beer would be.

You can turn in your Hillbilly card RIGHT NOW!

All this is making me think of trying it. I enjoy making wine. This would be interesting.

I was at a swamp party in west tn a while back. Drinking tequila at some baller’s hunting cabin. 30-40 redneck hi rollers.

Already had about 18, or 31 shots in me. Everybody wanted to slam tequila with the slumlord.

Then this one ole girl went out to her Beamer and hauled out this fat gallon bottle of some unknown semi opaque ‘liquid’.

Here everyone try my homemade wine she says....i took a pull offa that jug and within 1.5 seconds that garbage was spraying outta my nose. *****gag*****

When I was in college at Bellingham WA in 1971, there was a beer strike. Some guys I knew, three college students all named John, made beer in plastic garbage cans.
That beer was good, if the sediment at the bottom was avoided.

When the strike was over, bottled beer in the stores had no alcohol.
That is when I found out that most college students thought 3% alcohol meant an ingredient, not a ratio.

Fire some silver bullets into your old lady and then she gets on WIC, you get the Juicy Juice and make homemade wine with that. It’s 100% juice.

Anyone hardcore enough to germinate your own barley and go with green malt? or even finish the malt? Just askin.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Home-Brew-...do-Lager-Kolsch-Wheat-Beer-/263182583441

Might have been wrong on the price or it may have gone up a little bit. I think it's $13 for 10 packs of yeast. Anyway, I have found it to be a very nice yeast.

I had done beer decades ago and when I finished up I sold my gear. Did this twice.

About 12 years ago sitting around with my wife we played the husband wife badminton game of "what do you want to do tonight, I don't know what do you want to do tonight, I don't know what do you want to do tonight, I don't know what do you want to do tonight."

My wife is a smartass... and on volley number five she answered answered let's make beer.

Bought two or three of a Groupon kits with all the parts and pieces. Threw away some of the crap like the hydrometer and added other parts and pieces I needed.

Pick up a half a dozen corny kegs and a friend of mine out of Pennsylvania picked up 10 or so cases of this satan awful nasty beer called Straub's. 16oz Boomers.

Tried making a wort cooler out of some PEX... didn't work. Tried copper but it was too much of a hassle. Now we keep up milk crate of Frozen water bottles in the freezer. One side of the sink and sanitizer and the other side is running water to chill the wort. Sanitize the Frozen water bottles and put about 18 or 20 in the hot wort (2-3 gallon worth). The temperature will drop in a few minutes. Add 2 or 3 gallons tepid tap water... to volumn. Sometimes I will steep My grain bag extra-long and freelance with extra hops. Maybe some extra sugar or DME. And these cases I will stretch a batch to 6 + gallons. Then we aerate alot. Maybe 10 and maybe 15 times. Prior to the last aeration I'll pitch half of my dry yeast. Once we're finished with the aeration and Pitch the other half of the yeast on top of the Wort.

I used to buy once fired brass and Lead at a scrap metal yard. One day when I was in there they had a busted up beer keg. Only the top part was busted. Bought the keg and cut a hole in the top. Exactly 8 in in diameter which was the rim diameter of one of my wife's stock pot lids... drill the hole in the lid for an airlock. Welded some Outriggers on the side of a turkey cooker to hold the keg steady. Did An All Grain Brew straighten the keg. Brought the water temperature afterwards with a bunch of sanitized Frozen water bottles. Brought to final temperature with tepid tap water. Pitched two packs of yeast added a sanitize gasket and put on the stock pot lid with the airlock hole. A couple of C clamps held everything snug and sealed. Airlock worked perfectly.

Yielded about 15 gallons. Filled up three corny kegs via a siphon transfer. Beer came out good. A little too dark for some folks but we like it.

Unrelated but noteworthy. Year or two ago I bought and used a yeast called... turbo yeast.

Picture on the package shows a Moonshiners still.

Messed around with this yeast trying to ferment different stuff.

Hell, I think this stuff could ferment wet concrete.

But just because it can doesn't make it any good.

I suspect it's a heck of a product if a man was going to take a couple of bushels of peaches... ferment them... then distill.

Not a product I plan to use again... unless I witness a boating accident and recover a still at the bottom of the pond.

Hell yeah...

I took a custodial job at the elementary school just to collect 780 juicy juice boxes (rolling average) at the end of each day.

Never messed with the open ones.

Those rotten little kindergarten ingrates that wouldn't even open the juice... but the school threw away... that was my honey pot.

Dumpster diving for 14 days (before resigning my custodial commission) allowed me to fill our 3 chest freezers with juicy juice boxes.

We Are In Like Flint for the rest of their lives... Juicy Juice Jack.

This is not a true story. But it could be if I lived in Tennessee.

I know us little ingrate shîts used to have orange fights after lunch in the Ag building. Leave a welt on a man for sure.

All fun till one bout took the old man’s coffee cup out of his hand.

LOL

no more orange fights. Had to either watch RoboCop, Predator or take a nap on one of the vice tables in the wood shop.

That [bleep] for making E85, not anything you'd drink.

I strongly disagree. With the exception of a few of our microbrews and some European brands, one can easily generate beer far superior to the typical off the shelf crap sold in this country. Most consumers simply don't know better.

The tough part for me is proper ageing. One might have to wait a year or more for a doppelbock or stout to come around. Something akin to a Bud Light or Pale Ale can be generated in a week.

ya i agree. i would put my homebrew up against any micro. the only exception is the really hoppy ones. at my scale, its tough to get that much hop character that will stick around more than a few weeks. i can get a keg of ipa that tastes perfect after 10 days. by 3 weeks its already going downhill. and you can easily spend 15-20 bucks a batch on hops to get that character. thats why i stick to stouts and porters. they age well. they also taste great young. i cracked my american stout last weekend after it has been in the bottle for 3 weeks and it was perfect. it was all i could do not to drink it all. it will continue to change for months and still be great this time next year. i know because i was drinking some of last years from the same recipe. tasted different but still delicious.

my barley wine is too hot for about 3-4 months and then really starts to improve. i drank my last one i made in 2016 last fall and it was still really good. lot dryer and mellower but still good. the imperial stouts hit their stride at about 6 months and improve indefinitely. i'm sitting here with a fermenter of irish stout perking away right now. its really kicking and the whole living room smells like malty c02. temp has went from 63 this morning to 67. might need to stick it out on the porch tonight to keep it from getting too hot. S04 is a hot yeast.

about the only thing that compares to homebrewing is bbq'ing. i love doing both and consuming both at the same sitting. summer parties at my camp are a popular event.

Got tired of brewing in my garage, so I built a brewery...

https://barrowbrewing.com/

nice. what system did you get?

been brewing (all grain) for 5-7 years now. started it with my son when he did so in college. I brew mainly high percentage stouts. Typically 8-13%. It is nice to be able to adjust your recipe to add (or subtract) certain flavor profiles. I only keg, bottles are waaaaay too much work (for me). The majority of my brewing is stouts, as I can buy the light or medium beers fairly cheaply nearby. I will do an occasional Saison for the friends and their girlfriends that prefer a lighter beer. My darker beers end up being about $1 per 16 oz glass. Much cheaper then the typical stout which can easily run $5-10 per bottle. Once I acquired the tank, corny kegs, and garage fridge, it has become relatively easy to maintain a decent supply on hand. At this age, calories seem to matter more. If I want to drink a few beers, It is nice to pour a solid draft of tasty, high point beer.