Posted: 7/26/2011 8:04:31 AM EDT
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I really wanna make beer at home.
Whats the best DIY kit to get? I was looking at a Coopers Brewery DIY Beer Kit. its a bit over 100.00 says it makes 6 gallons. on a side note. how long does the beer take to make? Thanks 
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Quoted: on a side note. how long does the beer take to make? Not long at all. Do you mean the actual making of it, up to the bottling part? Maybe an hour? It seems to me the longest part of the process is sterilization and if you get a bottle washer for a few bucks, you'll be happier. Or do you mean from the bottling part to the drinking part? I believe that takes two weeks. |
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I'd stay away from the pre-hopped extract kits. Don't buy a lager kit (with lager yeast) if you can't ferment at the lower temps required. Stick to an Ale kit otherwise. Usually three weeks before you bottle, then another few to carb up. You'll be disappointed in the results if you rush the process. Keep your first couple of brews simple until you learn the process. |
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Skip that prepackage stuff (e.g. Mr beer etc). Best thing you can do if available is find a brewery store. If the store is even halfway decent, they'll walk you through the process and sell you the minimum supplies you need . Also offer great variety of brews. When starting out, you'll probably start off doing extract brewing. If doing an extract brew if shouldn't more than a few hours from brewing to pitching the yeast. Depending on the brew it'll take a few weeks to ferment, then you bottle and another week or so for carbonation. |
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I just looked at the Coppers and wasn't very impressed, I got my first stuff from Northern Brewers.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/starter-kits Read this online tutorial and it will answer most of your beginners questions. http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html |
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Quoted:
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on a side note. how long does the beer take to make? Not long at all. Do you mean the actual making of it, up to the bottling part? Maybe an hour? It seems to me the longest part of the process is sterilization and if you get a bottle washer for a few bucks, you'll be happier. Or do you mean from the bottling part to the drinking part? I believe that takes two weeks. Depends on the beer. After you put the yeast in (primary fermentation) the quickest you can usually go is bottled in a week, then in the bottles for 3 weeks. Personally I like to do at least 10 days for primary fermentation, transfer to secondary fermenter for at least a month, then in the bottles for a month. More settling = better brew. Filtering can help reduce the process, and get the "green" taste out of the beer. |
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Quoted:
I just looked at the Coppers and wasn't very impressed, I got my first stuff from Northern Brewers. http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/starter-kits Read this online tutorial and it will answer most of your beginners questions. http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html The better basic kit is an excellent place to start. You also need a brew pot, beer ingredients, and some bottles. I just save up pop top 12 oz brown bottles and scrap the labels off. |
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Here's a couple of how to brewing posts I did.
One is an extract with steeping grains and the other is an all grain brew. Same beer, different processes. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_19/627723_Beer_brewing_pictorial____56K_death.html&light=brewing http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_19/633981_Ghetto_All_Grain_Beer_Brewing_Pictorial.html |
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Here's a couple of how to brewing posts I did. One is an extract with steeping grains and the other is an all grain brew. Same beer, different processes. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_19/627723_Beer_brewing_pictorial____56K_death.html&light=brewing http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_19/633981_Ghetto_All_Grain_Beer_Brewing_Pictorial.html The steeping grains is a pretty good first venture into brewing. The Cooper's kits are just dumping two semi-liquid extracts into the water, and I don't think they taste near as good, and don't give you all that great of a challenge. |
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Quoted:
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I just looked at the Coppers and wasn't very impressed, I got my first stuff from Northern Brewers. http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/starter-kits Read this online tutorial and it will answer most of your beginners questions. http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html The better basic kit is an excellent place to start. You also need a brew pot, beer ingredients, and some bottles. I just save up pop top 12 oz brown bottles and scrap the labels off. Same advice I was going to give, though I would go to the Deluxe kit. I like having 2 carboys. |
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Do this! Stay away fromt he Mr Beer coopers bullshit. You are paying a PREMIUM for a starter system you will outgrow by batch 3 or 4. |
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As loathe as I am to give any advice other than "read everything, acquire a voracious thirst for beer and brewing knowledge, build your own brewhouse, and by then you'll know how to make any beer you want..."
I understand that some people just want the experience of making beer the easiest way possible, at least to see if they even like doing it or not. Even still, my advice starts off with, "acquire knowledge." Go on YouTube and search for "Good Eats True Brew." Watch both parts. It'll take about 35 minutes. Then go on howtobrew.com and read the free 3rd edition of Palmer's book. Then find your nearest homebrew store. When you go into the store, head straight for the yeast refrigerator. Open it up and spot-check the packaging dates on a few pouches. If they're all within 6 weeks old, then this is a store you can probably trust. It doesn't matter how MUCH they stock so much as what they DO stock remains fresh. Make sense? Buy or build a starter kit. Skip straight to Better Bottles (brand name) for the fermenters. Any good store should have an upgrade option for their kits. Otherwise, just go a la carte. If the store dispenses liquid malt extract (LME) in bulk, buy that. If not, check the packaging dates on the cans/jugs. Again, fresher is better. The store should also have some house recipes available, with all the ingredients pre-measured. If they do, buy one of those. If not, just get: 6-8 pounds of amber LME, 4 ounces of Goldings pellet hops, and a pouch of WYeast 1056 American Ale. Boil the extract with 2 gallons of water for a 30 minute reduced-volume boil with hop additions of 2.75oz. for 30 minutes, .75oz for 5 minutes, and the remaining half ounce at knockout. Let sit two minutes, then dump the whole thing into your fermenter. Don't strain out the hops or anything. Top up the fermenter with clean water that you've kept in the refrigerator, making sure to splash it around very well. Add yeast. Cover with sanitized aluminum foil. Wait two days, then replace the foil with an airlock. Wait two weeks, rack it, bottle it with 3/4 cut of sugar, wait another week, then drink it. It doesn't get much more KISS than that. Buy ONE kit worth of ingredients, no matter how far away the store is. If you only have one fermenter, that other kit is going to sit around for 3-4 weeks until the first one finishes. Obviously, that's not going to be good for freshness. Stay away from the pre-hopped extract. It's never going to be fresh, and despite what people will tell you, you can't save it with more hop additions. Once hop oils go stale, that taste is in the beer and it won't come out. |
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Quoted:
I really wanna make beer at home. Whats the best DIY kit to get? I was looking at a Coopers Brewery DIY Beer Kit. its a bit over 100.00 says it makes 6 gallons. on a side note. how long does the beer take to make? Thanks
Start with something like this... Baisc kit Add one of these Extract Kits Pick this up and read How to brew Better yet, seek out your local home-brew supply store, (Greenville-S'burg has one as does Columbia,) and souce your stuff and general knowledge from there. |
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Buy it piecemeal. Wait for stuff to go on sale. Get the plastic buckets for free wherever you can.
You're going to want a larger kettle than what comes in those kits anyways. 24 qt minimum. 30 qt if you want to do full 5 gallon boils. Do not buy a wort chiller. Make one. Much cheaper and is easy as pie. eta: As far as how long it takes to make... depends. Do you mean your labor or the yeast's? For your labor, maybe 2.5 to 3 hours on day 1. Another few hours after it's done fermenting for filling and capping bottles. Bottling is a pita. For most beers, time in fermenter will be 7 to 14 days. After you prime it and bottle it, another 10 days+ to carbonate. 2 weeks is best. |
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Skip that prepackage stuff (e.g. Mr beer etc). Best thing you can do if available is find a brewery store. If the store is even halfway decent, they'll walk you through the process and sell you the minimum supplies you need . Big +1. The brew shops I have been too are very reasonably priced, and the staff clearly do it because they love the hobby. They can walk you through the process much better than an instruction book, or a youtube video. You'll need to get bottles from them anyway. |
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find a homebrew store and get something real. ––- fwiw, my knowledge is quite old - and I have not brewed in over a decade. Glass sterilizes better than plastic. Extract + hops is ok, Extract + hops + some grain is better. All grain is the place you want to be, but wait till you have a couple brews under your belt - it takes a lot longer and is more equipment intensive. I did allgrain to keep the cost cheep. Personally I preferred dried yeast to the liquid yeast and it was much cheaper as well. (Then again, I eventually just kept my favorite cultures alive and stopped that cost all together). Kegs are easier than bottles - only problems I ever had was with bottles that had flip caps rather than normal crimped ones. There is new stuff out there that allows you to use paintball tanks. Again, kind of overkill for drinking at home, but then again I did quite a few batches in the day (probably over 100 gallons a year  ).––- I still occasionally wonder through the brewstore. Wart chillers have come a long way. You don't need one yet - but when you get to allgrain, price what you can make to what you can buy. I honestly don't think I could make my counter flow copper one for the price of what I saw in the store - and it was much more compact.. Just skip the the coil in a bucket of ice - it's a joke compared to a counter flow chiller. (just checked prices - damn plate chillers have gone back up - guess I will just need to repair my counter flow someday). Yes you can make your own - counter flow will cost more, but is worth it. |
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Quoted:
As loathe as I am to give any advice other than "read everything, acquire a voracious thirst for beer and brewing knowledge, build your own brewhouse, and by then you'll know how to make any beer you want..." I understand that some people just want the experience of making beer the easiest way possible, at least to see if they even like doing it or not. Even still, my advice starts off with, "acquire knowledge." Go on YouTube and search for "Good Eats True Brew." Watch both parts. It'll take about 35 minutes. Then go on howtobrew.com and read the free 3rd edition of Palmer's book. Then find your nearest homebrew store. When you go into the store, head straight for the yeast refrigerator. Open it up and spot-check the packaging dates on a few pouches. If they're all within 6 weeks old, then this is a store you can probably trust. It doesn't matter how MUCH they stock so much as what they DO stock remains fresh. Make sense? Buy or build a starter kit. Skip straight to Better Bottles (brand name) for the fermenters. Any good store should have an upgrade option for their kits. Otherwise, just go a la carte. If the store dispenses liquid malt extract (LME) in bulk, buy that. If not, check the packaging dates on the cans/jugs. Again, fresher is better. The store should also have some house recipes available, with all the ingredients pre-measured. If they do, buy one of those. If not, just get: 6-8 pounds of amber LME, 4 ounces of Goldings pellet hops, and a pouch of WYeast 1056 American Ale. Boil the extract with 2 gallons of water for a 30 minute reduced-volume boil with hop additions of 2.75oz. for 30 minutes, .75oz for 5 minutes, and the remaining half ounce at knockout. Let sit two minutes, then dump the whole thing into your fermenter. Don't strain out the hops or anything. Top up the fermenter with clean water that you've kept in the refrigerator, making sure to splash it around very well. Add yeast. Cover with sanitized aluminum foil. Wait two days, then replace the foil with an airlock. Wait two weeks, rack it, bottle it with 3/4 cut of sugar, wait another week, then drink it. It doesn't get much more KISS than that. Buy ONE kit worth of ingredients, no matter how far away the store is. If you only have one fermenter, that other kit is going to sit around for 3-4 weeks until the first one finishes. Obviously, that's not going to be good for freshness. Stay away from the pre-hopped extract. It's never going to be fresh, and despite what people will tell you, you can't save it with more hop additions. Once hop oils go stale, that taste is in the beer and it won't come out. Are there any good stores with fresh ingrediants in stock near Fairfax, VA? I also go to Baltimore a lot as I still have family up there. |
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I can't wait to relocate to a suitable abode, I'm going to start a meadery in the basement and become a drunk monk.  Hail Odin! We might have to settle for lesser Gods, this is a multi-cent operation here. The most prolific brewer I know does it out of a 1-bedroom apartment. All grain. And he kegs. |
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Bring this back up with a few questions. How smelly is the process? Specifically, the fermentation phase? Can you leave the carboy in a closet or is it best left out in the garage? Secondly, if you live in a warm climate, is there any alternative other than a second fridge to keep the fermentation temperature in range? |
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Quoted: Yeah, what he said.Bring this back up with a few questions. How smelly is the process? Specifically, the fermentation phase? Can you leave the carboy in a closet or is it best left out in the garage? Secondly, if you live in a warm climate, is there any alternative other than a second fridge to keep the fermentation temperature in range? Are there any brew shops in G'ville? |
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Bring this back up with a few questions. How smelly is the process? Specifically, the fermentation phase? Can you leave the carboy in a closet or is it best left out in the garage? Secondly, if you live in a warm climate, is there any alternative other than a second fridge to keep the fermentation temperature in range? When making the wort, it can be kinda smelly, so just do it when the wife isn't around. I don't mind it. When fermenting the only thing I had that stank was Apfelwien (google search "Rhino farts") and that may give you an idea...but again, this was apple juice fermenting and not beer. I haven't had any real problems with beer fermenting smelling bad; again, at least not to me. For the temp control do another search on google for "swamp cooler." Basically what you do is put your carboy in a rubermaid tub filled with water, wrap your carboy with a shirt, get it wet, and cycle out frozen water bottles to keep temp down. Hope that helps |
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Smell depends entirely upon yeast and ingredients. Most beers produce very little fermentation odor. Cider, on the other hand, can get pretty funky.
As for fermentation temperature, you can go a long way with a damp rag and a fan. I've done ice bath lagering before, down to 38*F, and it's a pain in the ass like you wouldn't believe. 2x a day calculations for heat transfer rate based upon surface area of the carboy covered (add or subtract water to control the level) and ice additions to keep the bath at around 34*F. It sucks. I won't ever do it again. But to maintain 65*F? Shouldn't be too bad. My basement is mid-60s year round, so I don't sweat it. |
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If you are serious you should just get Charlie Papazian's " The joy of home brewing" Started with that 7 years ago and haven't looked back since. PS: Make a list of all the stuff in a beginner kit and then get it from CL, its out there and its cheap. FWIW Northern Brewer has the best quality ingredients I have found yet. |
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Quoted: Are there any brew shops in G'ville? http://www.hoggetowne.com/ Haven't been and their website is pretty useless. |
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Quoted: OK I just watched this video. If I bought a Coopers kit, what kind of beer could I not be able to make?Go with Coopers for your first. This guy has made many kits on video, and often goes back to review them.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIuRjYnEZxcThe Canadian Blonde that he brewed looks good to me...I don't like a lot of real heavy, dark beer. |
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Quoted: Nice. Quoted: Are there any brew shops in G'ville? http://www.hoggetowne.com/ Haven't been and their website is pretty useless. |