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Do You Homebrew?
Fiscus asks: "Alcohol is a part of most peoples lives, and I'm sure many Slashdot readers rely on a couple of 'cleansing ales' as the week draws to an end. While most of us drink alcohol, not many decide to start brewing their own - now is your chance! And if you already homebrew, a new forum has been setup to speak with fellow brewers. Homebrewing can open up a whole variety of benefits; brew your favourite beer, experiment, make rocket fuel, as well as impressing friends. The new forum, is Australian based, however everyone is welcome and I would love to see some Slashdot readers down there sharing advise/tips/recipes for the christmas homebrewing season! Happy Homebrewing!"
Beer is an Aussie thing.
No it's not. There are pubs in London older than your country!
I'd imagine that getting it cheap isn't the point. Although I suppose that it would be cheaper to get good beer for less money by making it yourself. I have a friend that makes his own and its not bad, at least as good as "good" domestic (US). As for the places to make it for you, they're called microbreweries and are a god-send for those of us that just like beer.
Damn it I'm making myself thirsty. Time for a Natty Ice run methinks.
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Apparently not. According to this web site, beer was "invented" by the Mesopotamians and Sumerians as early as 10,000 BC.
Obviously one cannot discount the fact that the indigenous population of Australia may also have made the same discovery, but otherwise one must presume the earliest brewing of beer having taken place after the first (European) settlement in 1788.
I've been homebrewing for nearly 10 years now. Although the homebrewing fad has passed, there's still some folks out there seriously dedicated to the art.
rec.crafts.homebrewing is a great place to visit to ask questions once you've got the basics down. Brewing beer is not really all that complicated with the quality ingredients available today.
A few tips:
1. Sanitize - You must sterilize anything that touches the beer after its done boiling. Don't go crazy on this just wash your hands and arms and keep some weak bleach solution handy.
2. Ferment Cool - For ales, anything over 68-70F is too warm. Basements work great for this and constant temperatures are important.
3. Don't Worry - 9 times out of 10, whatever you're worrying about won't affect your beer.
4. Wait - Homebrew less than 1-2 months old is almost never (some styles excepted) as tasty as it will be later.
5. Moderate - Both in recipe's and drinking. If you're shooting for a high alchohol beer to get you drunk faster, it will probably be nasty. Same goes for hops. Keep it in the moderate range (20-35 HBU's for your first beer)
Get some good equipment and try it. If you're spending $200 on a video card, you can afford $150 on a good setup that includes a wort chiller and a nice big pot to boil.
You'll never want to go back to commercial brew again (those living in many places in Europe can ignore the last sentence).
A long running forum is The HomeBrew Digest. There's only about 14 years worth in the archives.
You may also want to try: nntp://rec.crafts.brewing
It's been awhile since I read that newsgroup but it was also useful for me.
Distillation is the process of evaporating alcohol off from beer - alcohol vapour flying around heating apparatus isn;t a good thing. Its like boiling a pan of petrol on a gas stove.
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First, I wonder why this is in "Ask Slashdot" - It's more of an announcement, it belongs in the general category (heck, belongs front-page). Still, I'm glad it made it to Slashdot in whatever form. :)
So far, I've brewed one very small (1 gallon) and one "normal" 5 gallon homebrew batch.
I got lucky - Both batches are drinkable. Not the best, but drinkable, and I know exactly how to fix the problems. (Too much priming sugar in the second batch, it's overcarbonated, tastes much better if you let it sit for a while and lose some of the excess carbonation. Yes, I've had 1-2 bottles go boom in storage.) Both batches were primarily fermented with bakers' yeast, which is normally a no-no, but the kits I made these with weren't exactly fresh...
That said - If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Most people consider it to be extremely good luck if your first 1-2 batches are drinkable, but you learn from your mistakes. I fully intend to brew myself a weizen of some form when I finish drinking through my current batch. (I'm not a big drinker, so a batch of 48 bottles lasts quite some time)
The process can be fun, and it's very rewarding when you get something drinkable, and after a few tries, better than what you can buy in the store. (Even my "weird" batch is still far better than the likes of Coors, Bud, etc.)
Economy-wise - You will probably save money, as long as you don't compare prices to the economy beers like Coors, Bud, etc. You might be spending a bit more, but after a few tries, there is no comparison as far as quality - Homebrew is much better. (Competing with microbreweries is a different story - Most of them are VERY skilled, but they also tend to be quite expensive.)
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The beers I have made that I didn't LOVE were due to experimentation. I brewed a dead-on Hefeweizen that I couldn't stand. I ended up giving it all away to Hefeweizen lovers who all told me how great it was. Turns out I don't like any wheat beers. Another I made that was questionable was a very high-alcohol Russian Imperial Stout. Each bottle had a 1/3 lb of malt in it, it tasted like licorice and coffee but was very drinkable after it had aged. Most people did not like this beer however.
The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to get a good homebrew shop and be very loyal to them. Take their advice and ask them questions. If you are in the U.S., in the northeast there is a great shop in Monroe Connecticut called Maltose Express. They have never once steered me wrong... no I am not an employee, just a gracious customer of many years.
Which brings me to another point. The beer you make will only be as good as the recipe you use. DO NOT use the recipes off of the can of malt extract, if you do, I can guarantee that your beer will suck. Do not use recipes off the internet unless you validate them with an experienced brewer. Your best bet for recipes is a quality recipe book (Try Clonebrews or Beer Captured by Mark and Tess Szamatulski, owners of Maltose Express) or your homebrew shop.
As far as process goes:
Use liquid yeast, either Wyest smack packs or tube yeast, or yeast you cultivate yourself. Those packets of dry yeast are very hit-or-miss. Your beer is only as good as the quality of your yeast.
Be paranoid about sanitation. Get a quality chemical sanitizer (I currently use C-brite but there are others) and use that on anything that the beer will touch once, tools, hoses, containers, bottles, etc.
Use a two-step fermentation. Your primary fermentation will be VERY active over the first four to seven days. Once the majority of the yeast have settled out of the beer, rack it to a secondary fermenter, and complete the fermentation there. Getting the beer off of the 1-2" of yeast that will cake up of the bottom of the primary will give your beer a cleaner taste.
If you are bottling your beer (as opposed to kegging it), use malt as priming sugar instead of Corn sugar. It will take a little longer to condition, but I find that, depending on the style, malt will usually give a better head to your beer.
Enjoy!
well, here, you walk into a winebrewing shop and tell the clerk what you desire, and he'll sell you the stuff you need, usually what you need is a either a brewing bottle/plastic barrel(which, is a one time cost of course), some sugar(about ~5.5kg for ~20liters, depending on how strong wine one wishes) and a 'wine box'(or, you can buy the yest and other stuff seperately, but usually there's no point, especially when doing wine, unless one has harvested own berries/something, it's harder to make from them though)
:). however the timing doesnt have to be as precise in 30d wines as in 2d/7d.
the quick type of wines are reaaaally simple to do if one does just RTFM(1 page). basically you boil the ingredients(that are for taste) for a while, put them into the barrel, boil some water and mix sugar into it and pour that into the barrel too, add water so that the barrel is full(20l) and the right temperature, then you add couple of bags of enzymes/some other chemicals, in right order(this is the hardest part, the 2d/7d wines skip a bit of the natural process)
then the bubbling starts and you wait for 2d/7d for the bubbling to stop, it's important to let it use up all the sugar, after that you add the clearing chems(if you leave sugar in it wont get clear, and will look bad/taste bad, sweetening should be done afterwards) after few more phases(taking couple of hours, removing co2 & etc) it's ready to be bottled & drinked. best to bottle it in glass bottles for about a week though, and pour to a glass for drinking if you want to be stylish, one way to improve the taste when drinkin without keeping it in bottle for about a week is to shake it strongly during drinkin, as there still will be lots of co2 in it.
i've done 30 day homewine too but it didnt turn out as good, and took too long for my impatient mind
(oh yeah, about the absolute maximum % is around 15-16%, but i just put enough sugar for ~13-14% because that's an easy way to screw up too, by putting too much sugar)
the same shops sell ingredients for homebrewn beer, cider & other stuff, no moonshine equipment though(distilling alcohol is illeagal for private people in finland).
most bigger supermarkets around here carry equipment/ingredients too, but special shops are better because if something goes wrong you can go ask them for help, as it sometimes possible to rescue a batch gone bad(if the process didnt start for example, then there's 'kickstarter'packs).
overall, it's pretty easy if one can follow instructions. i do it about twice a year or so and cover my costs through friends.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yep i brew beer my top tips would be:
- sterilise everything with gusto (or sterilising power)
- after about a weeks fermentation (when its stopped bubbling) syphon it into a barrel and leave it there for at least a month. it will taste much better than the 2 weeks it usually says on the tin.
- a couple of days before you crack it open make sure its where it needs to be for the drinking thereof and let some of the gas out (unless you are brewing lager - yuck). This preparation ensures the sediment has settled after transit from the shed (and the gas expulsion), and it hasnt got a head the size of Belgium.
I also make wine.
'But wine is less macho.'
'Aha, but its completely free.'
'Free, you say? Explain.'
Well, at the moment im brewing a blended wine of blackberry and elderberry (the British grape). I picked them from the side of the road over a warm summers weekend during a pleasant bike ride. It has cost me a packet of yeast (40p) and a bag of sugar (69p). I reckon ive got about 8 bottles (i got tired of picking).
Hurray for alcohol, bringer of blissfull inattention
How true. I just bottled a batch yesterday. Put 7 quarts (about) of honey into 5 gallons of water 6 or 7 months ago. Added some "yeast food", and waited. No boiling, no racking, no nothing.
It doesn't get much easier than that.
--Probably shouldn't have added the yeast food though. It's a bit drier than my wife likes (~13%). Mixed with some Jagermeister or some cranberry juice, it's really good though.