Homebrewing- The Best Accompaniment To Hookah

[Scalliwag]

I found a link to that stuff. It even gives a lot more info on what is in the beer than I have ever seen a beermaker put out http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/bigfoot.html

[Lakemonster]

Good Lord!

Most beers have a starting gravity of 1.050-1.055.... I converted the Plato units into SP

Starting Gravity of that stuff is 1.092

As for bitterness. it has 90 units. Reg Budweisers and Millers are around 10, English Ales around 40... Stouts 50-60...

The hops used are fairly high Alpha Acid

Chinook 12%
Centennial 8.5%
Cascade 5.6%

The stuff is mad crazy, yo.

[Buford]

High gravity ales really need that much bitterness to balance out the residual sweetness from the malt. Even with 80% attenuation the FG would still be pretty high in comparison to a "standard" ale.

[ghostofdavid]

Anyone ever purchased an inexpensive Mr. Beer homebrew kit? The wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas and we're keeping the price hovering around 50 dollars or so year. It looks like a lot of fun. I know that 2 gallons every couple of weeks isn't a lot, but it looks like it would be a lot of fun.

www.mrbeer.com

[BrotherBuford]

Frankly, everything I've heard about Mr. Beer points to "crap". It's just an overpriced little fermenter, that's all. The Mr. Beer kits are prehopped extracts - not that they can't make decent (not great) beer, but you're extremely limited as to what you can do. For a little more you can have a good setup for 5 gallons and you won't really outgrow it. I started doing partial-boil extract beers with a decent setup last year, and now I'm making all-grain beers using the same equipment with a few additional pieces I bought or built later. Over the past 13 months I've produced about 125 gallons of beer. Of those, I had two bad batches (one infection and one decoction mash failure), so I've made 115 gallons of drinkable beer. Three of my beers have won awards in competition.

Extract is the easy way to start - it makes decent beer, and there are less things to worry about. Once you get the basics down you can move on to partial mashing or all-grain if you have the capability to boil the volume of wort necessary. I find all-grain a lot more fun and there are a lot more options when designing recipes, but there is a lot you can mess up if you don't know what you're doing. Get the basics first.

Bottling is most likely how you'd start, but I moved on to kegging fairly quickly. Kegging is a LOT easier, but it takes an investment. I built my own kegerator for the purpose, the building of which you can see here. Bottling is kind of a pain in the butt. Here's a photo rundown of how I used to do it. I still bottle from keg using a beer gun if I'm going to be entering a competition, but I don't bottle whole batches.

Here's a more recent photo of my kegerator:


First thing you need to do is read up on the process so you know what you're getting into. Palmer's How to Brew is an excellent book to get started. It's an easy read while not insulting your intelligence, and he covers beginner to advanced topics. The old first edition is available online for free at howtobrew.com, but the current book covers more and is worth a buy. Once you get into it, Daniels' Designing Great Beers is the next step up as it gives you guidelines for designing your own recipes that conform to style. You will likely also want to buy brewing software - it makes life much easier for recipe creation since it handles all the calculations for you. Brewing involves a lot of math if you want to get technical. Personally, I like BeerSmith.

Here are a couple photo logs of making extract beer and making all-grain beer (with decoction mashing, an advanced technique only needed for certain styles):

My first batch last year, a partial boil porter using extract and steeping grain

A decoction mashed all-grain dunkelweizen done earlier this year

I buy grain uncrushed now and just mill it at home when I need it. It keeps fresher that way and I can keep more on hand. I also have a stockpile of hops in the freezer, around 6 lbs. (There's a shortage right now.)

Most of the hops stash:


Here are a couple beers I have made, a Bavarian hefeweizen and a dry stout (stout poured off of a nitro tap I installed for just that purpose):



I got into it whole-hog and I figure I've spent nearly $3000 on the hobby in the past year, but it's a lot of fun. And the beer is awesome! Edited November 29, 2007 by BrotherBuford

[Bulldog_916]

One of my coworkers has a lot of beer brewing implements. I'll have to ask him about it. I'm always interested in how to make some of the things I buy. I'm not an elitist but I've found that a lot of times it's better to do it yourself and the result is more satisfying. Congrats Buford on your multiple awards. Kinda cool to have an award winning home brewer on the forums.

Speaking of beer, I'm thirsty!

Cheers!

[SmokingDjinn]

Hey whats up,
Homebrewing is a very time consuming and rewarding process. I used to be very good at it a couple years back, I took silver medal in the Minnesota State Fair for home brewed pale ale. Well, I had so much beer sitting around, gallons, and gallons of the stuff that I developed a little bit of a "problem". Anyhow, if anyone else is interested in getting started in this I got everything (and more) that you will need and am looking to sell it. I would have to take a complete inventory but I know of the following: 5 5 gallon glass carboys, bottling bucket, keg system with c02 tank, bottle capper, not sure what else but everything else you would need. Just PM me. Enjoy that brew and if you ever get around to brewing an NA beer, which would no doubt be very hard for a homebrewer, let me know.
SmokingDjinn

[BrotherBuford]

Here's a starter kit for $70 that could get you going: http://northernbrewer.com/starterkits.html

You'd still need a brewpot and ingredients, though. Edited December 2, 2007 by BrotherBuford

[BrotherBuford]

Considering that the two examples I showed above are cloudy and opaque due to their respective styles, here's a shot of the American pale ale I have on tap right now. You can get very clear beer without filtration if you give it enough time. I use whirlfloc in the boil for fining, but I have never used any post-fermentation fining agents.