i've been brewing my ownbeer for years. i was wondering if there is anybody on here that shares the same hobby?
Those Folks hang out over in the Beer Tent...... http://www.survivalmonkey.com/forum/general-discussion/534-beer-tent.html
My Dad makes his own Scuppernong Grape Wine. But I seldom 'imbibe' anymore - a Youngling or a Drambouie on rare occasions.......
I used to brew beer years ago but it's been awhile. Lately I've been saving some half gallon wine jugs with the intent of making some mead.
Those little 'beer brewing kits' we see advertised in some mailorder catalogs - are they any good or just produce cat pee?
I have, through necessity, become a brewer over the last couple of years. My problem is that most of the ingredients listed, ie: from brewing kits etc., are not available here. I need good easy recipes with readily available ingredients. Anyone have any? Beer, wine, spirits. The only thing I have found useful on YouTube is "jailhouse" recipes!
i started out with mr.beer manymanymany moons ago. the problem is they are just 2.5 gallon batches. before i upgraded i had about 6 of thier little beer fermenters. they do make good brews.
i was doing all grain brews when i had the time. now my job has seen to it i have less time so i have gone back to extract brewing. i'm using brewers best kits. each kit has specialty grains for steeping and the extract. each kit will come with the exact dry yeast that the brew needs. i went the extra mile and picked up three wine coolers and added a temp controler to them. i keep one around 62 degrees for fermenting my ales, one at around 50 degrees for lagers and one at 30 degrees for cold crashing before i bottle. they are always in use. right now i have a rye pale ale in the ale cooler and a pilsner in the lager cooler and a wheat ale cold crashing. i have about 8 cases of finished beer conditioning atthe moment. about 6 cases are ready to drink, but i never have the time to enjoy one anymore.
I don't have any spare ingredients except for a few specialty grains set aside, but I'm an excellent yeast harvester! I like making BIG wheat beers. They finish quickly, wheat is readily available and most importantly, they taste great to me. lately, I've been doing extract with specialty grain additions due to time. However, I have brewed all-grain. I don't have a great set up for it, but I can do it in a pinch. There is a brew shop an hour away that does a giant wood fired brew once a year. Its something crazy like 250 gallons. They do the full brew and then send it home in carboys to everyone that participated. Its pretty cool. ... you know, there are lots of micro-brews around ... when it hits the fan, a little pillaging will be okay, right?
Brew kits make ok beer, if you follow the directions. I don't use kits, but I do buy my ingredients from a brewers store according to recipes. I am startin to gain enough experiencee that I will soon start branching out on my own and experimenting with my own recipes.
All of these methods are good but unfortunately no help to me. I live in a Muslim country where alcohol and anything to do with it is banned. So there are no brewers kits, no brewers store to buy grains from. We can't even get brewers yeast. So any recipes that are of use to me are ones with only ingredients that you could buy at your local Mom and Pop grocery. We've got the mead and the vino down fairly well but a good beer would be awesome. I have tried some of the concoctions that guys make around here. They take non alcoholic beer and basically boil down some sugar and bakers yeast and give it a kick. Doesn't do much good for the flavor tho.
How are you fermenting the wine and mead? While it isn't a mainstream yeast, you can ferment beer with champaign yeast. I've had a "triple wheat" brewed with it to get the ABV up pretty high. It was very interesting. A nice sipper, not necessarily a session brew. What about trying natural yeasts from the local fruits? Yeast harvesting can be fun, if you have the time and energy.
Some parts of the world have good wild yeasts for open air brewing. Much of the United States is predominantly a sourdough type. Great for bread. Lousy for beer & wine, which is why we have to be on top of controlling a very sanitary environment. Belgium, on the other hand, has fantastic champagne yeasts floating about, which is why the trappist monks can ferment in open vessels with bugs dropping in it and everything and still come up with fantastic beer. Not sure what sort of yeasts are present in your part of the world, mate, but it might be worth an experiment.
right now i have a pilsner and a wheat beer that i'm drinking on. i have a rye beer to bottle and a imperal pale ale to brew up. after that i have 5 more kits to brew. i try my best to keep the pipe line built up for summer monthes. i try my best to have about 20 cases brewed up and conditioning before spring. i'll bottle the rye ale tomorrow more than likely and brew up the imperal ale, another pilsner and a english brown ale. i'll leave the temp down around 55 degrees for the pilsner and let the other two coolers go around 62 degrees. i normally add a few other adjacents to mine to bring the abv on up. the imperal pale ale is supposed to be 8.8% abv. i'll bump it on up to 10.5-11% abv. the english brown ale will run around 8%. i'd love to pick up one more wine cooler to do barley wines in. i want to do one for christmas next year. the brewers best kits are the best bang for the buck in kits. i always do late extract additions at flame out. what i do is put about a 1/4 of the extract in at the first boil(after steeping the grains) and then the bittering hops. i follow the directions on it the rest of the way and at flame out stir in the rest of the extract. my beers have never tasted better and been this light in color. the hard part is keeping friends out of them when they come over!!! but that is why i do it. trying to show people you can make better beer than what you buy in the store in a can.
I think this thread has applied subliminal pressure on me to brew. I've been going through cheap supermarket wine in half gallon and gallon jugs, mostly just to get the jugs... I've got some food storage priorities first, but I expect to be picking up some homebrew supplies soon and a couple dozen pounds of honey.