My First Brew!!
 

The boys and I are trying our hand and home brewing, found a great supplier close by we got set up with a middle of the road starter kit and went to work. Its suppose to be a English Brown Ale it was a learning process but great fun especially with the boys. We will be bottling in two week.
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my first homebrew was a brown ale. enjoy!

Looks good! Just remember, "sanitize, sanitize, sanitize". Nothing like enjoying your own homebrew, the toughest part is waiting for it to "bottle condition".

Same here!

My first brew ended fermenting while I was in the Hospital. I think the house reached into the mid nineties all that week. The beer tasted like bananas....

oh my god thanks for the laugh and flash back to my first batch of homebrew 25 years ago..................your friend looks baked......"woooooooowwwwwwwwwww, look at the bubbles..........." grins.


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“Not necessarily stoned..but beautiful”

BYOB Jimi Hendrix quote

I'd put that in my sig line, but I'd lose my grandfathered link...

Looks like a good winter ale. Enjoy! Make sure your bottles are really clean before you bottle, a little wrong bacteria and it will foam forever.

I'd like to get into the home brew thing if for nothing less than having REAL ALE. The only home brew experience so far is a brew-it-yourself business in Staunton VA.

Right now my favorite beer is Yuengling Lager. I just finished two off in a large stein pared with a breaded schnitzel, warm kraut, lemon slice, and freshly made spaetzel.

The first brew looks good!!

keep the carboy wrapped though...light kills the yeast..

It is pretty cool to watch the action in while fermenting.....

Hints of Banana are a tribute to a good DunkelWeizen...

weihenstephan yeast, FTW.

It was Whitbread dry ale yeast. Fermenting at too high a temp leads to excess esters, typically bananas and strawberries.

Also, direct sunlight leads to "skunk" beer.

I have a root cellar in my house...

I can brew lagers in the middle of summer :-) its a good thing to go into my basement when it is 95 outside and the root cellar is 60..

Ale brews are easier..

Fermenting a Lager at 55 not so much...


Anyway lets see where this first brew is in a few days..

Over 103 batches ago, my 1st brew was a brown ale. Great start! Congrats!

Thanks for the pointers we have out fingers crossed, I will use a wort chiller next time. It took a day or so before the yeast became active but then it went like crazy as the video shows. Pointers on sanitizing bottles for bottling?
First Home Brew - YouTube

Congrats and welcome to the fun!

I started out simple about 2 years ago - since moved to all grain, just finished building a temperature controlled fermentation chamber and am picking up ~250 lbs of grain next week to get me through the summer.

For bottling - one of the best discussions I have come across can be found here:

Bottling Tips for the Homebrewer - Home Brew Forums

Using the methods described there, I find bottling to be a relaxing way to wind down a day.

-Weston

I used to soak my bottles in a tub of water and bleach for 20-30min. Then rinse well w/ hot water and drain. You can buy a fitting for your faucet that rinses the bottles and a drying rack. makes things a bit easier. Oh, and boil your caps.

You are better off with a contact no-rinse sanitizer like iodophor or star-san. Simply wet the surface (as long as the bottles are clean) and you are all set. No soaking, no rinsing and no need to boil caps - a quick dunk in the sanitizer and they are ready to use.

I paid $13 for a large bottle of iodophor concentrate 2 years ago, I've done at least 50 batches and still have half the bottle left.

Also - keep that better bottle covered as much as possible! Light causes skunking. And when you go to clean it out - a dishrag and some oxyclean is the key - using a carboy brush is likely to cause scratches.

I love Wiehenstephen! World's oldest brewery.

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Looks great! Have done wines before, would really like to do some beer this summer... I am unsure of what my first brew would be... I was thinking of starting off with a Coopers Mexican Beer starter kit perhaps...

Just caught this on PBS...

Colamecos Real Food episode on craft brewing and a bit of brew history in NYC...

I had read somewhere else that at one point there were around 120 breweries in NYC... then prohibition shut the whole thing down..

I like this guys show.. and I like brewing beer LOL

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25255265?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25255265">Mike Colameco's Real Food Episode 5- The Beer Episode</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user6940906">Edit Beach</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>