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I've been a home brewer for a while now. When I was a kid my Dad home brewed, and I've gotten back into it in my mid-20's. It's a fun hobby and, while popular, most regular beer drinker's think it's some kind of voodoo science. It's actually very easy, provided you have the right equipment and take your time during the brewing process. You can assemble a very basic brewing kit for $100-$200 dollars. If you go all grain, add about another $80 for the mash-tun. I built mine out of a home depot cooler following this video:
Make Your Own Mash Tun - YouTube
It works fantastic. I have a probe thermometer to monitor the temperature during the sugar rest, and my wort won't lose more than 1 degree during a 1.5 hour rest.
My biggest tip for a new home brewer is to make sure you sanitize everything. I use iodophor, but there are a number of products you can use. I've only ever had one bad batch (recently), and it was pretty clearly because I didn't sanitize the fermentation bucket thoroughly enough (every bottle had the same off-characteristics and it was basically undrinkable). If you sanitize well, it's very unlikely a batch of beer will turn out poorly. It might not be amazing, but it's still beer!
With regards to needing a hydrometer or not, I use mine on every batch. If you take a hydrometer reading of the chilled wort before you pitch the yeast, and then a reading just prior to bottling, you can calculate the alcohol content (which is something you will be asked if you share your home brew with friends). Also, you should have a general idea of your target original gravity. If you've had a seriously efficient sugar rest you can add water before pitching the yeast, which will increase the amount of beer you end up with (I learned to do this when I extract brewed, and continue to do it with all-grain batches just to make sure the beer is where my recipe says it should be).
I would also highly recommend a wort cooler. After your boil is finished you want to cool the wort as fast as possible to stop the chemical processes that are associated with brewing (especially with regards to hops, as they impart different characteristics to your beer depending on how long they're left in the boil). Without a wort cooler, this process can take hours. With a wort cooler, you can do it in 15-20 minutes. I think it's worth the investment (or you can make your own from copper tubing).
Finally, I'd like to post a link to Hopville's beer calculus for any homebrewers that have not seen it yet: Beer Calculus - Hopville
It's an amazing tool. You create the recipe and it tells you what your gravity, bitterness, alcohol content, strike water volume, flavor profiles, etc. should be.
Last edited by Widowmaker2k; 11-17-2012 at 11:35 PM..
I would assume they are for more complex brewing and for larger batches. For example, I suggested a 5 gallon brew pot in another forum and an experienced all-grain brewer said you need a bigger one when the recipe calls for a full 5 gallon boil. I guess he's right. I've never had that happen. I brew with extract, and I typically start with 2-1/2 gallons of water in the brew pot and 1/2 gallon of extract. It takes at least 2 gallons of water to fill the fermenter up to the 5 gallon mark after the brew.
I make 5 (or sometimes 6) gallon batches. A new brew pub is putting in 250 gallon fermenters. You can spend money like that buying a large brew pot because the pot gets so heavy you'll need help to lift it off the burner (since you'll be brewing outside over a propane heat source). Since you can't turn the pot up to pour anything out, you have to get one with a stainless steel valve port in the bottom ($$$) and most of them have a stainless steel fitting for a built in thermometer (more $$$). Besides, being bigger, it's more expensive that the typical ~$40 retail for a 5 gallon pot.
Others may have different experiences, but that's my view.
Sorry for the double post, but I thought I would address this. All-grain brewing does require a larger brew kettle, especially if you're brewing high-gravity (highly alcoholic) beers. When you put the grains in the mash tun, you have to calculate the amount of water needed to leach the sugars out of the grain. The more grain, the more water you need. For high gravity beers, you need a lot of grain (imperial stouts often call for 20+ lbs of grain for a 5 gallon batch!). Unfortunately, to adequately extract all of the sugars from 20+ lbs of grain, you need something like 6.5 gallons of water. This means that you need a kettle that can sufficiently boil this much wort (until enough water boils off that you're down to 5 gallons). This process can take up to 2 hours, and I use an 8 gallon kettle for it (just to give me some extra room should the boil become over active when I add the hops).
For somebody just starting out, my suggestion is to think carefully before buying a wort cooler/chiller. Those things cost some money (starting ~$60.00). If, like me, you only plan to brew from extract kits, you can get by without one. Here's what I do. When I get ready to start, I put 3 1/2 gallon jugs of water in the freezer and 1 gallon in the refrigerator. When it is time to cool wort, I put the stock pot in the sink surrounded by ice and turn on the cold water. Then I dump a gallon of cold water into the wort. It's usually about 110 degrees now. I put 1-1/2 gallons of ice water from the freezer in the fermenter and then transfer the wort in. At this point, the temperature is good for pitching yeast. The time consumed is about the same as using a coil-type wort chiller.
This concept becomes completely impractical if you have a full 5 gallon boil.
I can think of lots of gadgets I'll buy before I invest in a wort cooler.
The best priced kit I could find online was from a website called the american home brewer dot com. They're kinda hard to find, don't show up too often in google, but their prices are actually the best I could find online anywhere. I guess it's a small distributor that hasn't quite figured out how to get listed in search engines yet. I bought their deluxe kit for $59 bucks and they threw in all kinds of extra crap. I've never seen this before but they sell a plastic syringe with a hose in their kits for siphoning. I was kinda freaking out about this since everyone sells those easy siphons but when I used the plastic syringe the frikken thing worked great (after a few of trys). They also got a bunch of videos on the site that goes through all their stuff in pretty good detail. Give them a look see, you might find just what you're looking for. You may also want to try Monster Brew, they got lots of crap. Later.
The best priced kit I could find online was from a website called the american home brewer dot com. They're kinda hard to find, don't show up too often in google, but their prices are actually the best I could find online anywhere. I guess it's a small distributor that hasn't quite figured out how to get listed in search engines yet. I bought their deluxe kit for $59 bucks and they threw in all kinds of extra crap. I've never seen this before but they sell a plastic syringe with a hose in their kits for siphoning. I was kinda freaking out about this since everyone sells those easy siphons but when I used the plastic syringe the frikken thing worked great (after a few of trys). They also got a bunch of videos on the site that goes through all their stuff in pretty good detail. Give them a look see, you might find just what you're looking for. You may also want to try Monster Brew, they got lots of crap. Later.
I tried to take the spaces out and turn dot into a "period" but the site doesn't display. Can you post a link?
Clean, clean, clean. Home brewing most often fails due to contaminated tools and vessels. Skunky beer is caused by mold and bacteria. Be sure to follow the cleaning instructions that will come with any kit.
Do NOT let the wort boil over. That is a stink that does not come out of the range for a while.
Their kits look like they are quite complete and inexpensive. Although they don't have a lot of different flavors in their recipe kits, the all come in both 5 and 2.6 gallon sizes, making them a second source of ingredients for the brewers with Mr. Beer fermenters. Outstanding!
I'm pretty new to it. My current batch is a Russian imperial stout that I added honey to to increase the ABV. Came out pretty damn good! I had one but I'm going to bottle-ferment the rest for another week.
I got the 2gal Mr. Beer kit on holiday closeout... it came with an "American light" mix that I'm totally uninterested in, but was thinking of maybe adding some additional hops to it when making the wort to give it a bit more flavor and punch... anyone have any ideas?
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Couldn't Find A Kit Any Cheaper Than This Place!
I had one but I'm going to bottle-ferment the rest for another week.
