Posted: 9/10/2007 9:20:30 AM EDT
| I was wanting to try my hand, but would like advice or experience with starter kits. |
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Don't bother with the Mister Beer (or whatever they call it) they sell at Bed Bath and Beyond. If you can, go to a brew store. A starter kit might run you about $60-$70 then some more for ingredients, but the advice an experience brewer can give a beginner can be priceless (and possibly determine if your 1st batch is a success) |
| I was looking at the kits from morebeer.com. Sounds interesting. I like that they have "Ingredient Kits" to mimic certain beers or you can roll your own and experiment. |
From someone who makes his own beer, this is good advice. You might want to think about getting into brewing. It is going to cost you about $150.00 to get completely set up. This includes a fermenter, bottles, and other various equipment. After that, you can brew up 2 cases of beer for about 21 bucks. That's a lot cheaper than the shit beer you buy in the store. The nice thing about home brewed beer, is it really tastes like beer. You sit down and have a couple of homebrews, and you know you drank some beer. |
Definitely go for the started brew kit that just has bottles and what not. Then get a beer ingredient kit for a certain kind of beer for your first batch. Just so you get an idea of what you are doing. Otherwise its pretty easy to make up your own brews based on other recipes. |
My advice is to find a local brewing supply store, so you can get good advice. If there's a homebrew club in your area, thats a good bet too. "the Complete Joy of Homebrewing" is an excellent reference book that you should invest in before you go buying all your equipment or trying your first batch. If you decide you like it, invest in some kegging equipment, as sanitizing bottles gets old VERY quickly  If you are careful about keeping things relatively sanitary and you can follow simple directions, you shouldn't have any problems making some great beer, and almost as import, learning to better appreciate all beer. One other thing that I found makes a big difference is using a liquid yeast specific to the style you're brewing, as opposed to dry yeast. It's $5 more per batch, but well worth it. |
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I have been home brewing for around 7 years now with decent results. I would skip the 100% extract kits and start brewing partial extract kits. I have since moved on to All Grain Brewing. But the equipment required to brew partial extract will yeild excellent beer with a minimum investment to start. All of my equipment and ingredients have been ordered from the following two suppliers. Midwest Kits Northern Brewer If you can afford it stay away from crimp cap bottles. I'd highly recommend using EZ Cap bottles to start with. |
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find a local brewstore. I did all extract once or twice, mostly did partial extract, and eventually did all grain. All grain is way to much effort for a test plunge. To start with you need a carboy (preferably a glass 7 gallon bottle (forget, it is a metric size) 5 gallon will do), airlocks, large matching strainer and funnel, syphon hose, bottles, caps and capper. You will need extract, grain, hops (often 2 types), beer yeast, and some capping sugar. Some brews involve some other stuff as well. I had bad luck with self capping bottles - ymmv. FWIW I never did pet bottles (2lt coke), put other than a rather large serving size, they could work (greater risk of contamination - would not reuse). --- just a warning. With a 5 gallon carboy - I suggest you use a large tube as your airlock. the little airlocks on top can clog and then things can get messy. With the 7 gallon carboy you have more headroom (with a 5 gallon batch), so less foam gets to the airlock and there is less chance of clogging. |
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He might want to do an all extract with an addition of some extra malt extract and corn syrup. I did several of these, and you can get some fairly good beer out of it for the effort put into it. Basically if you can read a measuring cup, and boil water, you can make beer with this system. Cleanliness is what it is all about. Get a good sanitizer, and use it. Get a copy of the joy of homebrewing. Then relax and have a homebrew. It has a lot of good info in it, along with quite a few good recipes. I think homebrewing is a lot like gardening. You can get the same thing at the store, but it sure doesn't tast the same. It is worth the extra effort. |