home made beer

[slakjaw]

anyone here ever drink home made beer. My friend made some he gave me about a case of this stuff. its kinda dark but is supriseingly very good; and gets you plenty drunk

i plan on useing it to help get me through the holiday while at the parents house!!

[dporsche74]

Home make is the dank... tastes better and more potent...

[cstreit]

Used to do it all the time. It's relatively simple, but sterility (of the equipment, the BEER equipment) is CRUCIAL!

[TimT]

Home brews are great!!! I do a few batches a year. my favs are using belgian yeasts. A nice crisp Lager is great too.

[slakjaw]

is the equipment expensive?

could I make something tasty? even though i have never tryed it before?

[TimT]

The equipment is cheap (large stockpot, some glass 5 gal water bottles, copper tubing to make a cooler, etc)

You will make a batch or two of truly nasty beer while you learn the finer points of brewing. However as you progress and learn how the yeasts, hops, and various malts interact, you will brew some transcendant beers. There is a bewildering array of available ingredients , dozens of hops varieties, dozens of malts, hundreds of yeasts.

You may walk the beer selection in the market and wonder what ever posessed you to drink that crap.

do some web searches there are tons of resources for homebrewing

Like

[Doug Zielke]

I tried to home-brew.
I mean, I really tried hard to turn out something half as good as a friend of mine once bottled.
Every recipe I made tasted like Bud Light. Yechhhh!

[DonDavis]

Originally posted by slakjaw
is the equipment expensive?

You can start out fairly inexpensively. My Father-in-law has the kit from http://www.mrbeer.com/
The first batch he made was pretty good (just a bit flat) and has 2 more that are going to be ready for Christmas. One of which is a hard cider.

A guy I used to work with had a very elaborate system and he bottled and kegged his brew. He had half barrels that were cut in half to cook in. He made all types and was darn good at it. Man, that was good stuff.
Someday I'm going to try to make some.

[cstreit]

Guys,

Any easy way to begin is the pre-made mixes that come in a 1 qt can. Now I expect that TimT is more of a purist and thumbing his nose at me....right....now... But you almost can't screw those up.

Follow the recipe' closely, make sure everything is very very sterile, or your beer will taste like it was strained through that Gym sock you found at the bottom of your locker before summer vacation.

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

I dont know about beer, but me and my idiot teenage friends used to make homemade booze with Jucy Juice and brewers yeast in the garage.

On another note, DO not try to build a still unless you really know what you are doing... We thought it would be easy, like on M.A.S.H.


It isnt..

[DonDavis]

Originally posted by Jared at Pelican Parts
me and my idiot teenage friends used to make homemade booze with Jucy Juice and brewers yeast in the garage.

ooohhhh. Now I understand the sticker in the back window of your BMW.
j/k

My teenage friends and I would swipe their Dad's home brew and wine. He had lots of the stuff in his garage. We thought "He won't miss a few bottles here, a few bottles there."

In reality, he probably had them numbered and just thought "Those idiots are gonna get sick." He was right.

[Hugh R]

Try using the small kegs instead of bottles. Cleaning the bottles and capping them is a lot more work.

[Drago]

I'll second Chris' comments on sterility.

I have a handful of friends who home brew. Two of them are neighbors and usually make the same type (recipe) of beer.

One of them makes GREAT tasting beer and is very aware that cleaning the equipement thoroughly is quite important.

The other guy is a bit more lazy and is not as careful when cleaning the equipement. His beer tastes awful...I'd sooner buy my own beer than drink his homeade swill.

[cstreit]

Juicy juice and brewers yeast? Good Gawd!

That's about 50 cents away from prison hooch. Apparently cons would/will put water, bread, and fruit/sugar in a jar and place it somewhere to keep warm... Ferments to what I imagine is a foul, dangerous, but intoxicating substance.