Does anyone homebrew their own beer? I'm in the process of brewing my first batch. It's in the primary fermenter and is going to be moved to the secondary either tomorrow or Wednesday. For my first beer I chose a pretty generic ale that is comparable to most mass-produced american beers...I read that it's a pretty difficult one to screw up...so I bought it. Right now i'm in the process of drinking a bunch of bottled beers so that I can clean them and then bottle my brew when done. Anyone want to share their experiences etc?

(03-09-2009 10:09 PM)armour248 Wrote:  Does anyone homebrew their own beer? I'm in the process of brewing my first batch. It's in the primary fermenter and is going to be moved to the secondary either tomorrow or Wednesday. For my first beer I chose a pretty generic ale that is comparable to most mass-produced american beers...I read that it's a pretty difficult one to screw up...so I bought it. Right now i'm in the process of drinking a bunch of bottled beers so that I can clean them and then bottle my brew when done. Anyone want to share their experiences etc?

The drinking a bunch of bottled beers part sounds VERY interesting! :)

A couple people I work with have just started brewing at home, but I haven't had a chance to sample their offerings. So far they've reported mixed results. Given there is an unbelievably wide area of micro-brews available at places like Binny's I'd rather spend my limited time sampling them, but I know a lot of people love the whole brew-craft concept. Good luck and happy drinking!

I have a friend who does. The best part is having to drink the bottled beer so we can give him our bottles. So far his best has been a red beer similar to Killians Irish Red. He did a dark beer that tasted similar to Guineess but had a much thinner texture.

My older brother has made about 5 batches. He said 2 of them were basically undrinkable...in his words, "they tasted like prison wine." The other few he made have been good. I believe one was a pumpkin ale which he made around thanksgiving by using pumpkin pie filling in the wort. He said a friend of his, who originally got him interested in homebrewing, makes some amazing beers including a coffee flavored beer and a few other exotics. Unfortunately the first beer I decided to brew is extremely basic...but hopefully will allow me to create a drinkable 5 gallons of beer. If all goes well, I'll move on to a more difficult style of beer or maybe experiment and try to make something of my own.

Hell with homemade beer. Lets make some moonshine.

I'm curious to hear about how this progresses. Home brewing is high on my list of potential hobbies after I develop my cooking repertoire a little more (current hobby). But I've heard from others that I would need to be willing to survive some bad beer in the process of arriving at some good stuff. I've been lucky cooking- hitting few clunkers.

My first batch was flat as roadkill, and tasted about the same. Watching my family choke it down and tell me how good it was still didn't encourage me to make another batch.

$500 to homebrewing, or $500 to the stock market? Both returned the same for me = $0!!

Honestly though, the difference maker is

**Clean bottles. Most important. They must be sterile
**Proper temp and dark area for fermentation (this is where I went wrong)

My neighbor makes wines out of EVERYTHING including dandilions, clover and every type of berry that won't kill you. She swears by clean and sterile bottles. She's a farmer's daughter from Iowa, so she knows her homemaker stuff...

Well tomorrow I'll be moving the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary carboy. At that point I'll probably either put the carboy in a cabinet that is never opened or put a blanket over it to avoid light issues. I have been drinking some tap off only bottles and am going to put them through the washer and then use the sanitation solution that I have from the homebrew store.

In total I have spent approximately $200 so far. $150 for a two-stage brewing system including a larger brewpot, $25 for the ingredients, and $15 for The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. If anyone is interested, I purchased my supplies from http://www.ebrew.com. They are actually located about 10-15 minutes from where I'm living now so it was a matter of convenience. They had pre-sorted recipes for about 100 different types of beers though so it seemed like a really good homebrew shop. They also carry everything needed to make wine.

I have a few pictures from the day we brewed everything so maybe I can get those posted on here. I'm gonna try and take some more pictures as we bottle etc. as well