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Flotsam and Jetsam / Re: Homebrew - Any tips?

« on: April 17, 2012, 12:18:03 am »

A little bump on the homebrew thread for Carbine, and the links I promised him.

Here's one of the local shops for me, and their information page: http://www.mainbrew.com/pages/infosplit.html. I'd read through the "First Batch of Beer Rundown", that should give you a good idea of the extract-brewing process. They mention a Starter Kit. Most, if not all, homebrew shops I've been to have these, or something similar. It's going to have all the equipment you'll need, except maybe a giant pot for boiling, but they'll have suggestions for what kind of pot to use, and where to get it. Also, you might check on craigslist in your city, since at least here in Portland there is a constant churn of people buying equipment, trying it, and deciding it's not for them and unloading their equipment.

One suggestion if you're thinking about taking the plunge and starting: check at your local shop and see if they have a demo day, or if any friends do it, see if you can watch them brew a batch. Reading through the instructions, it might be intimidating, but actually seeing it is another thing altogether. It's much easier than you might think. I've shown friends how before, and their reaction is usually something along the lines of "That's it?"

Further down that info page is stuff about wine and mead. Both can be fun and easy. There is also information about all-grain brewing. This is what I do, but for the first eight years or so I homebrewed I did extract brewing. All-grain gives you a little bit more control over what styles you can make, but it's definitely not noob-friendly in terms of equipment or work/time investment. You can make some terrific brews using extracts, though!

And sorry about the power drains. Spiders gonna be spiders, though.

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Flotsam and Jetsam / Re: Homebrew - Any tips?

« on: September 10, 2009, 09:00:48 pm »

Regarding cider... I've tried it in the past from juice with mixed results, like what sounds happened with yours. After my girlfriend and I enjoyed a couple bottles of perry this past spring, I made a mental note to do some research and watch for the pear season this fall. At the same time, a co-workers's dad got into winemaking pretty hardcore, and brews exclusively from concentrate kits. I'd talked with her about those kits, and we sampled a bottle of grigio...so she surprised me with one of the Vinoka/Spagnols Perry kits for my birthday. It's basically 6L of apple concentrate that you hydrate back up to 6 gallons, then add a bottle of pear concentrate/flavor when bottling. It's still too early to tell, but I have much higher hopes about this.

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Flotsam and Jetsam / Re: Homebrew - Any tips?

« on: September 10, 2009, 07:49:18 pm »

The biggest expense right now is buying enough plain brown bottles (not the twist-off ones).  With 100x 12oz bottles, 5x 64oz growlers, and 10x 22oz bottles, that only allows for about 3x 5gallon batches at any given time.  I can produce this stuff a lot faster than I can drink it.  All that cider is taking up 5 gallons worth of bottles too.  Not sure if that will ever pay off.  It costs me about as much to buy empty brown bottles as it does to buy full ones... but the ones filled with beer seem to be cheaper (thinner glass).

I've only had problems with reusing a couple of breweries bottles. New Belgium uses thin bottles--broken a few with my capper. Had good luck with the local stuff like Portland Brewing, Widmer, Deschutes. Full Sail does twist-offs on their 12oz bottles...I know that some people can get those to work, but I don't even try. I've moved to using as big of bottles as I can, and EZ-caps if possible. I've got a couple cases of 16oz cobalt blue EZ-caps, along with a case of 32oz EZ-caps. 9 or so cases of 22's also expedites things. Bottling with 16/22/32 plus a handful of 12's cut the time it took to bottle a batch significantly.

One thing to think about is setting up a RSS robot on your local craigslist in the forsale and free stuff sections for something like "homebrew -wii -psp -xbox". People are always moving from bottle to kegging, or getting out of homebrewing altogether, and dumping their equipment, including bottles... true story is that I picked up 6 cases of clean 22's for free. I've seen cases of EZ-caps for pretty cheap on occasion.

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Flotsam and Jetsam / Re: Homebrew - Any tips?

« on: June 30, 2009, 03:23:21 am »

I don't rinse out the iodophor. For instance, while I'm soaking a bunch of bottles to bottle a batch of beer, I'll invert them and let them drain while I'm soaking another bunch. Bleach has a long contact time, whereas iodophor is just a few minutes. My place doesn't have a dishwasher, but if you have one I've heard that you can just run a full load of bottles through to sterilize them... no personal experience, though.

If you've got hard water, you may want to tweak it a little, depending on what style of beer you're going to make. For some styles to be "authentic", you're supposed to mimic the water qualities of the area of the world that style is from. I try, but I don't sweat it too much. Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew, etc.

One thing you may want to check is if there are demonstration days, either through a homebrew club in your area, or your local homebrew shop. Actually seeing someone go through the steps would be super-helpful. I know I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning that would have been easily avoided.

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Flotsam and Jetsam / Re: Homebrew - Any tips?

« on: June 28, 2009, 08:43:05 pm »

I'm a pretty big homebrewer, mostly beer but I'll do a batch or two of mead a year, plus a few batches of cider over the years. This fall I'm thinking I'll have a another try at cider, maybe wine.

To address some of what's been said, I never use bleach. Bleach has to be rinsed off, which if nothing else, adds another step. I use Iodophor/BTF, which is a no-rinse-required sterilizer. In wine-making they use potassium metabisulfate, a.k.a. Camden tablets.

Light is never your friend, though. I always have carboys covered or in the dark. I only use blue or brown bottles, since the clear and green ones don't block the bad part of the spectrum.

From my reading into cidermaking, there seems to be a minor school of thought that you can use the yeast that naturally occurs on the fruit in addition to what you pitch--i.e. use raw unpasteurized cider. But it's been a while since I've looked into it.