Time For Another Homebrewing Revolution! (Newcastle: house, buy, live in)

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by Maineah

There used to be some nice brewing supply stores in Portland I personally haven't home brewed for quite some time so I don't know what is still around. There was the Whip and Spoon which I know is gone that ran classes and had a good supply section. There is a lot of overhead in a well stocked homebrew supply store! If a homebrew supplier could get hooked up with a brewery to get a discount on grain and hops it would save a fortune over the prices the home brew warehouses charge for small quantities.
They say U Brew's are popular in Canada. CG confirm?
These are places where you use the breweries equipment for a fee . They're usually around 15-50 gallon brewlength houses.

Whip & Spoon is gone? I went there once or twice.

Starting out, I wouldn't be "well-stocked", that's for sure. I've never done all-grain so I wouldn't be much use there.

I *will* be transplanting my hops. I don't know if production will be much the first harvest after transplant.

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by Zymer

Whip & Spoon is gone? I went there once or twice.

Starting out, I wouldn't be "well-stocked", that's for sure. I've never done all-grain so I wouldn't be much use there.

I *will* be transplanting my hops. I don't know if production will be much the first harvest after transplant.

How do you determine the bittering units of your home grown hops?

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by Zymer

Whip & Spoon is gone? I went there once or twice.

Starting out, I wouldn't be "well-stocked", that's for sure. I've never done all-grain so I wouldn't be much use there.

I *will* be transplanting my hops. I don't know if production will be much the first harvest after transplant.

You gotta try all grain sometime. Once you do it you'll never do anything else. The control is total. You determine the color, smell, gravity, and to a point, clarity, just from the mash.
There is nothing on earth like the taste of first runnings from an all grain mash. Setting up a good all grain system can get expensive but ypu can do it on the cheap with just a cooler if you want to try it. How do you cool your wort?

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by Maineah

How do you determine the bittering units of your home grown hops?

I don't. I never worried about that when I was buying them.

RDWHAHB

Wort cooling is done in a large sink. Fill with cold water, kettle goes in so it sits right over the drain. A small wedge goes under the kettle so water can drain at a rate that can be replaced by the tap, so I have a constant flow of cold water coming in. Takes the temp down fairly quickly.

[Cornerguy1]

Canadian politicians invented the concept of so-called sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco to fund the flavour-of-the-month pet project.

As a result, our booze and tobacco prices have been through the roof for years.

With a case of 24 bottles of beer running you about $40, U-Brew places have been popular for years.

I live in the sort-of boonies, but the local town of 10,000 has a thriving U-Brew for beer and wine.

The way it works is that customers buy the makings from the store, add the necessary amount of water, and let it ferment at the U-Brew. The customer then returns after a couple of days to bottle his product.

The concept has evolved to the point where most stores offer a variety of ingredient mixes designed to replicate your beer or wine brand of choice.

Not sure what the beer costs are cuz they haven't gotten around to coming up with a mix for Newcastle Brown Ale, but wine goes for about $3 a bottle.

[Submariner]

We are generally allowed 200 gallons per year per household.

Two fun points over-lap this however.

First there is no expectation that anyone would record how many gallons they made each year, and there is no rule or suggestion that anyone keep records. So who is to say how many gallons you have made? Therefore your math is allowed to be fuzzy.

Secondly the 'household' issue is vague on purpose. The IRS 'household' could be a single dwelling where four adults share rent, if each adult files their taxes separately then they are each separate households. Four households in one dwelling.

If you start-up a 5-gallon batch every two weeks, that is only 130 gallons per year.

So to reach the 200-gallon limit in a year you have to finish 40 batches per year. Basically start-up a new batch every 9 days.

The problem that I found was that unless your goal was to weigh 500 pounds by the end of the year; you just can't drink that much liquid bread in such a short period of time.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Anybody ever ferment oats? Maine grows a whole lot of oats every year.

-break-

Maine's Democrat legislature just couldn't adjourn without adding to our tax burden. They doubled the taxes on beer, wine, soda and flavored water except for a few small Maine brands. We could have slipped from the #1 tax burden in the country to #2 and they couldn't stand that! Our position as #1 in tax burden must be preserved.

We need a new legislature. We need it bad.

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

Anybody ever ferment oats? Maine grows a whole lot of oats every year.

Oatmeal stout is delicious. Oats can be tricky to work with, especially for whole-grain brewers, because they can tend to get gelatinous.

[K-Luv]

There is a homebrew shop that opened up on Forest Ave right next door to the Great Lost Bear in Portland. They've been around for a few months now, so selection is pretty slim, but they still have everything that you need. As it turns out, it is an extremely popular store.

[GregW]

I have made some really really good hard cider from a local orchard (Mack's in Londonderry) using fresh Mutsu cider. I add a pound of sugar per gallon and use Champaign yeast for the higher alcohol tolerance. I let it ferment in a five-gallon carboy (covered with a couple of paper bags to prevent light driven reactions from contaminating the batch) and bottle in beer of sparkling wine bottles. Some of the product is freeze concentrated by placing partially filled two quart plastic bottles in the freezer and once frozen, straining off the ice a couple of times. The result is very smooth applejack.

You do not need a fancy reflux condenser to distill alcohol. The hillbillies’ have been using a copper coil in a barrel of cold water for a couple of centuries. You could easily scale it down for the sink. Try filtering the stuff over maple charcoal and see what you get. Good luck. Oh, keep a fire extinguisher handy. One seventy proof alcohol is very flammable.