Brewing beer...

fred hargis

Member
Messages
1,245
Location
Wapakoneta, OH
Someone here bought some brewing equipment in the past year or so (suffer from CRS, can't remember when or who). Anyway, was curious to know how things worked out. This is something I may pursue next year after the shop gets established.
 
I think I was the one, but I know several others on here that do brew.

I'm still doing a brew every few months, have even brewed my first batch of wine and done several ciders. I've got a pumpkin ale that I did a while back that needs to be kegged. I've only bottled maybe a dozen or so bottles, I keg almost everything since my friend sold me 10 kegs and the kegerator (he used to make root beer and sell it at his campground).

I've started buying the equipment to do full grain brewing, but probably won't do my first until this spring, I'm still doing extract batches.

I'm sure others will chime in, but ask away any questions you have. :wave:
 
Actually all I was wondering was whether it was a successful endeavor. This is something I've always wondered about and never made the effort to learn anything....usually when I approach something with that level of knowledge, I wind up spending a lot of money and never getting anything in return; at least that's how my wine making days ended (many years ago). In your case it sounds like everything has went well and you have advanced on. Did (do) you have a book that explains the basics to recommend?
 
Well, I haven't really stopped buying brewing equipment for the last 20+ years :rofl:

Brent is also way off of the deep end... and Darren has certainly more than dipped his toes in the water. I think there's a few more around that are heading that way.

Here's my stock intro equipment page. This is somewhat of a living document so if you see things that look wrong or confusing please let me know and I'll try to fix them.
http://getaclue.org/~ryan/beer/
 
You can get into brewing pretty reasonably, starting off with extract brewing, and fermenting int a bucket.

I think the one thing that is necessary is having a kettle big enough to do a full boil. A lot of starter kits have you do a partial boil and then to add water to your concentrated boil. I never had success with that method.

So, for a 5 gallon batch, a minimum 7.5 gallon kettle is required, 10 gallon kettle even better. Boil overs are a mess and you want to do anything you can to contain that.

You can go either aluminum or stainless, I've got both, LOL

If you have questions, feel free to ask!

One of us should be able to help.
 
I've had a couple of questionable batches, but nothing that made anyone sick and mostly they hadn't aged enough. I'm pretty obsessive when it comes to sanitation while I'm brewing. Making sure things are cleaned and sprayed down with starsan, especially anything touching the wort after the boil has chilled. I even spray down the scissors and the yeast packet before cutting it open to mix in.

I've mostly used youtube and the resources here for learning, which I still am. My wine batch turned out ok, but I was going for a sweet Muscat and turned out with a Chardonnay. I learned the art of mixing in grape juice and it's actually been a big hit.

I'd repeat what Brent mentioned, having a big enough kettle and the right tools. I started with the starter kit from Williams Brewing and it pretty much had all the basics I needed, then bought a turkey fryer burner for my heat source.
 
I would agree that a full boil is easier to do successfully.

But I have done partials and had plenty of beer from other folks who did partials that came out just fine. There are a couple of tricks but it is possible..

If you can get a big enough kettle to do a full boil without risk of boil over though, boil overs are a giant pain.

On that note if you can figure out how to do the boiling part outside on the patio or driveway where you can hose it off when you boil over its a good step towards maintaining harmony in the household.

I would second Darrens point that its difficult to understate the importance of clean clean clean and sanitize. I'm saying focus on clean because you really can't sanitize something that is dirty. The caustic cleaners like PBW are twice as effective for every 20F temperature increase up to around 180F (at which point the benefits aren't as dramatic). Somewhere around the 170F+ range they become really magical and any crud just melts away. I'm also a big fan of "clean as you go" because once its all dried on its 10x harder to get clean.

Basically all of the failed batches I've seen were due to one of three things:
  • Inadequate cleaning (I would include in this my struggles with brewing in Hawaii where every beer had a faint pineapple note no matter how clean I tried to be)
  • Crazy experimentation (yup)
  • Gross negligence (example: falling asleep during the boil and having it boil down to a thick syrup, not paying attention to the airlock and having it blow over, leaving the beer in the carboy for 3 months because life).
 
All very interesting, thanks to everybody. I intend to start watching for used equipment and I was wondering about the heat source, but I already have a turkey fryer. Good stuff, thanks!
 
Top