Homebrew Necessities
 

Hey AMJ, PRTCL and any others that do this....

So after playing with the idea forever, I'm finally getting motivated to do this. I was looking at this kit and was wondering if you felt this was a fair price and what else (besides a kettle and bottles) would you think I would need to start brewing some simple beer recipes. I am planning on starting with recipe kits at first, to get the basic know-how down. After that I will probably start experimenting with recipes that others have put together and finally start playing around with my own.

Here's the kit I'm looking at:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewin...arter-kit.html

I've started saving Sweetwater bottles, as it seems silly to buy any.

Seems like an awful lot of work for a beer that may or may not taste good. I think I'll stick to driving down to the liquor store. :lol:

Many times, the most fun is the adventure on the way to your destination and not the destination itself.

That is an advanced kit. A more basic kit would be this:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewin...arter-kit.html

The advanced kit would let you make 2 beers at a time. Not a bad kit. You will hate the capper though. A good stand up capper was the first thing I bought after I knew I was going to use the kit.

Ok, first things first.

Start drinking Sierra Nevada in the big bottles, in large quantities. They use 24oz. bottles, and it's easy to get the labels off. Why 24oz. bottles? Because bottling is a pain in the ass, and bigger bottles equals less shit to clean. Avoid any beer that uses plasticky type labels. They suck.

The kit looks ok, go directly for the glass carboys though. The plastic bucket carboys are harder to get sanitized, and they hold odors you may not want.

The next thing you'll want, is a decent heat source. It takes forever to boil a huge pot of wort, on a typical kitchen stove. Cheapest option; a propane turkey cooker.

As far as kettles go, I would bite the bullet, and get one that holds a five gallon batch. Yes, a lot of starter recipes let you boil three gallons, and then add water to top it off to five. This is also a pain in the ass. A big kettle, with a spout built in to it, allows you to transfer your wort to the carboy via a piece of 1/2" tubing. Quick, easy, less risk of getting evil bacteria in your beer, and no fucking around with funnels.

Right, now that the shit is hot, you have to cool it down again. This takes forever if you don't have a wort chiller, so buy a wort chiller. The idea is to get the wort from boiling to about 70 degrees, as quickly as possible, so you can pitch your yeast. The longer it takes to do this, the higher the risk of unwanted critters in your beer. A wort chiller will do the job in about half an hour. Setting your kettle to cool in a bath tub, or a big ice chest, takes hours, and eats up a lot of ice. Screw that.

One of handiest items I have, is a digital thermometer/timer from Pyrex. You stick the probe into the wort/water, set it to beep at the desired temp, and go read RoadRacing World for a while. Unless you're really into watching water boil, this is the way to go.

Let me know if you get stuck on something.

Cheers.

JC

I haven't done it in a while because of my living situation and never got the best results. We'll be in a bigger house soon so I'll be back into it :D

I'm pretty sure that steve worked with a buddy to make his own wort chiller much cheaper. If your handy you can find the instructions on how to do it

We always order from morebeer.com
Steve also belongs to a brew forum I'll check the home page when I get home for you. As well he has a pretty good primer you want to pick up easy recipes.

You tube should have alton brown's vid on home brewing there are a couple of discreprancies.

The biggest challenge is the bottles I believe there is a brew supplier near binghampton that sells em but collect em from a local bar if you can.

That brings you to your next challenge. Bacteria. We soak the bottles in fragrence free oxyclean it helps peel the labels easily. We use cheap ass vodka to sterilize the caps when bottling and he cleans the carboys and brewing supplies with Star San.

The expensive glass bottles aren't always worth it it's the airlock that's important. Get a plastic waterbottle that the airlock fits and santize the bottle really good.

There is an easy starter recipe for the cider we make. It's a win happy situation everyone loves it and it's easy. Apple juice, champagne yeast, corn sugar. High Alcohol content nice dry fizzy flavor. It's apple season to the actual cider from the stands makes a nice flavor.

If you decide your into it you may get me to commission some carboy bags for you with the old sewing machine lol

I looked into making a wort chiller, but copper is so expensive these days, that the pre-made version worked out to be about the same price as the copper itself.

I like Oxyclean too, for washing up and soaking bottles/carboys etc.. When I bottle, I soak the bottles in Oxy first, then run them through the dishwasher with no soap. I also run the dishwasher empty, with a cup of bleach tossed in, before the bottles go in. Yeah, it's a bit over the the top, but I've only had one batch go bad, out of the last hundred or so. (I drink a lot...)

I still like glass carboys better than the plastic buckets. You can't see what's going on in the buckets, without taking the lids off. Plus, if you end up having to bleach nuke your bucket, it takes a trillion gallons of rinse water to get that smell out.

The cider recipe brings up a good point. Lee, you need to make a beer, (or something) that your wife likes to drink. That way, you won't have to answer a lot of stupid questions when she comes home to find a pallet of grain sitting in your garage...

JC

Any of you guys use the counter flow chillers, I have my old immersion chiller I will prolly stick with. Since I iwll be geting/building a kegerator I may go straight to kegs since bottling is a major PITA.

Also you guys like the oxy clean better than b-brite since thats what i always used. And since I am at the hospital I have tons of betadine at my disposal ;)

Thanks for all of the input. Lots of good suggestions.