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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!"
There are only a few things that can go wrong. Infections, which can be avoided by keeping things clean and sanitizing everything; and exploding bottles, which can be avoided by long enough fermentation (or by kegging the stuff).
As to economy, it is pretty hard to compete with the cheapest commercial breweries (at least here in Denmark), but who wants to make that kind of stuff anyway. Making good quality beer is certanly cheaper than buying the imported stuff. And most of all, you get to choose what kind of beer you want to have, down to the last detail. There is lots of room for tweaking and hacking...
In Murphy We Turst
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.
I have been brewing my own beer for close to 20 years, and I'm a computer geek, so I feel qualified to comment on this thread.
There are a lot of similarities between DIY beer and DIY computers. Making beer offers many opportunities for fabricating equipment (to enable more advanced brewing methods), writing software (to help calculate recipies), surfing the 'net (for recipies, supplies, advice, etc), and the list goes. And as with Linux, there's a single individual (Charlie Papazian) who is very influencial in shaping the direction of the field.
The Internet and it's predecessors have played an important role in the homebrewing community. As other posts have mentioned, the Homebrew Digest and rec.crafts.brewing are two long running forums for discussing homebrewing information. It's neat that several important advances in homebrewing (and commercial brewing) were first introduced, and refined, through discussions on these two forums. Beer making is definitely a field, like computers, where the home experimenter can make a difference.
I should also put in a plug for the American Homebrewers Association, which dispite it's name it a worldwide organization that promotes homebrewing.
Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew!
For the first timer, even beer can be a little complex. However, there is nothing more simple than mead.
Take 17 gallons of honey, toss it into a carboy. Add water to fill up carboy to neck. Add wine or sherry yeast. Come back in a year.
Its almost that simple. Ok, you could boil the mixture if you wanted, that tends to make it smoother and clearer faster. And add fruits or spices if you desire. And of course rack it every few months. But other than that...
Btw, for those of you who like to read the manual for these sort of things before diving into it, I cannot recomend enough Charles Papazian's great book 'The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing'. It probably is one of the most important books that started the recent fad, and its well worth getting.
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!
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