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Going to give homebrewing a try

Anthony

Anthony

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May 18, 2007
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So a friend of mine is giving me his hydrometer, floating thermometer, bottle-capper and a couple books on home brewing. And I'm going to use some of my christmas money to purchase the other supplies.

Any advice or tips as I get started ???

I've been lurking over at HomeBrewTalk forums, and read some of Palmers howtobrew.com, so I've got a handle on the basics. Just looking for some pointers to get me started off on the right foot.

Thanks!
 
Sanitize, sanitize, and sanitize!!

Oh, and patience too. ;) Best of luck!
 
The resources you have are pretty good to start off with. The best resource, depending on his skill, would be the friend donating the stuff to you. I have made some great beers by myself, but it is much more fun with someone else helping. You can learn a lot from other people by how they do something a bit differently than you might've thought possible. Plus it's just good fun and makes the long day go faster.
 
I would suggest starting off doing this: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/

Definitely don't be afraid of all grain. It's easy, versatile and will give you much better results IMO.

Decide how big of batches you want to do. I do from 2-3.5 gallons, so most of the time I can get away with a 5 gallon pot.

Stuff you'll need:
Pot of some size
Bucket (go to your local bakeries and ask for icing buckets)
Autosiphon, racking cane, or this replacement
Some tubing
Bottling wand
Paint strainers from ace hardware
Bottle caps

That should be all you need to brew besides ingredients as cheap as possible. I highly recommend www.brewmasterswarehouse.com for ingredients. Their crush on their grain is amazingly good and the prices are unbeatable.

If you want to get a bit more fancy, you can buy a bottling bucket, but recently I've just been bottling with my autosiphon.
 
Watch your fermentation temps closely, always know what temperature the style of beer you are making requires and strictly adhere to it.
 
I dabbled in this back in the day as well. Just like cigars, read a lot, ask questions, read (a LOT) the forums (homebrewtalk) and then, relax! Have a homebrew! (and a good smoke.

Sanitize the shit out of everything, spend waaay too much on a new hobby and go to town. You'll do fine. Buy every shiny thing made with all the bells and whistles, come to your senses and throttle back. Your brew will be fine. May taste like ass; may be flat; may be too fucking fizzy; may get you drunk as hell; may be kool-aid, (but you WILL make a masterpiece, I promise ;) (Take good notes of every silly detail..you'll use them later). Regardless, you too can do it and do it well. Use glass, not plastic for the important parts and just have fun. After all, you ain't gonna hurt yourself, and you may just impress the hell out of yourself! (Your family and friends may beg to differ, but...eh...they ain't the ones doing it!) Send me some when it's ready! Good Hunting!

Trey
 
Spad31 said:
I dabbled in this back in the day as well. Just like cigars, read a lot, ask questions, read (a LOT) the forums (homebrewtalk) and then, relax! Have a homebrew! (and a good smoke.

Sanitize the shit out of everything, spend waaay too much on a new hobby and go to town. You'll do fine. Buy every shiny thing made with all the bells and whistles, come to your senses and throttle back. Your brew will be fine. May taste like ass; may be flat; may be too fucking fizzy; may get you drunk as hell; may be kool-aid, (but you WILL make a masterpiece, I promise ;) (Take good notes of every silly detail..you'll use them later). Regardless, you too can do it and do it well. Use glass, not plastic for the important parts and just have fun. After all, you ain't gonna hurt yourself, and you may just impress the hell out of yourself! (Your family and friends may beg to differ, but...eh...they ain't the ones doing it!) Send me some when it's ready! Good Hunting!

Trey
Click to expand...

Gotta disagree on that one, buckets are fine.

Like Niko said, figure out a good way to control fermentation temps (maybe use the money you saved using buckets :p ). Also, get a brewing program such as Beersmith. Most of all though, have fun and enjoy the new obsession.
 
smellysell said:
Spad31 said:
I dabbled in this back in the day as well. Just like cigars, read a lot, ask questions, read (a LOT) the forums (homebrewtalk) and then, relax! Have a homebrew! (and a good smoke.

Sanitize the shit out of everything, spend waaay too much on a new hobby and go to town. You'll do fine. Buy every shiny thing made with all the bells and whistles, come to your senses and throttle back. Your brew will be fine. May taste like ass; may be flat; may be too fucking fizzy; may get you drunk as hell; may be kool-aid, (but you WILL make a masterpiece, I promise ;) (Take good notes of every silly detail..you'll use them later). Regardless, you too can do it and do it well. Use glass, not plastic for the important parts and just have fun. After all, you ain't gonna hurt yourself, and you may just impress the hell out of yourself! (Your family and friends may beg to differ, but...eh...they ain't the ones doing it!) Send me some when it's ready! Good Hunting!

Trey
Click to expand...

Gotta disagree on that one, buckets are fine.



Like Niko said, figure out a good way to control fermentation temps (maybe use the money you saved using buckets :p ). Also, get a brewing program such as Beersmith. Most of all though, have fun and enjoy the new obsession.
Click to expand...

edited to fix my lame ass HTML tag issues. Sue me!

:cool: Buckets, schmuckets. :p

Trey
 
John Palmer is in my local brew club. Nice guy. Pretty unassuming demeanor.

I'm no fan of buckets. I also prefer glass. Until it breaks. I can't stand bottling either. Life is a sigh of relief once one starts kegging.
 
Just curious if either of you have had any negative personal experiences with buckets and if so, what they were?
 
I used a bucket for my first brew and it didn't hurt the brew at all. Personally, I really like the Better Bottles. Lightweight, very difficult to break, and allow you to keep an eye on fermentation very easily.

I just connected with a guy up here that's been brewing for 25 years. He switched from glass carboys to buckets and now better bottles after dropping a glass carboy 8 years ago and sustaining a fairly serious injury.

I think it's a matter of personal preference. As long as you are sanitizing properly and taking good care of your equipment so it doesn't get scratched up, food grade plastic or glass is a non-issue.
 
I read the first three posts before coming to this: RELAX!

Beer making is not hard in the pure essence of what your doing. Follow the instructions and you'll be fine. You'll eventually want to start doing all these cool things you read about like all-grain and using lots of fancy tools like other people have said. So, other then relax just dont add more then 1 MAYBE 2 new steps to each brewday. Get your process nailed down then start adding new techniques and evetually you'll be an awesome homebrewer!

Welcome to your second addiction ( but luckily no where near as expensive as this one)
 
Wow, thanks for all the responses! I just ordered some supplies and ingredients. I decided to go with buckets for now, but the plan is definitely for Better-bottles in the future.

We'll see how it goes.
thumbs-up.gif
 
Better Bottles are sweet, but all of mine have because my sour fermenters, so they're always tied up.
 
x2 on the Better Bottles, especially the ported ones. Makes transferring/bottling a snap.
 
Those Better Bottle things look way cool. I would definitely opt for those if I were starting up today. As it is, I started out with glass carboys and used those until I lucked out on a private sale from one of the beer forums and got myself a stainless steel conical fermenter for a relatively cheap price. One of the models sold by 3B. Soooooo easy to use and now I'm just spoiled lazy.
 
badhangover said:
Those Better Bottle things look way cool. I would definitely opt for those if I were starting up today. As it is, I started out with glass carboys and used those until I lucked out on a private sale from one of the beer forums and got myself a stainless steel conical fermenter for a relatively cheap price. One of the models sold by 3B. Soooooo easy to use and now I'm just spoiled lazy.
Click to expand...

I can't wait to someday have a couple conicals. :jealous:
 
Well I have all my supplies together now. I put the kettle on the stove to time how long it would take to boil my 2.5gallons (an hour and 45 minutes fwiw).

Went to use the stove again - nada. I killed it. It's a 1963 or 64 GE Electric range, and I've repaired it twice before. It was down to 2 burners and now it's down to one - not bad for 47 years old though.
unsure.gif


SOOOO, that puts a bit of a hold on this endeavor as I don't want to kill the last burner. Luckily, my parents have agreed to help us pay for a new GAS stove (finally - I hate electric). So tomorrow or Friday, my friend is gonna come over and plumb in the gas line (we have natural gas heat and dryer already). And the new stove should be here early next week.

5 burner gas range, with 2 high-output burners - 13,500 btu's each (THAT should boil the water a bit faster, eh?)
 
Why not one of those butane turkey fryer setups? Inexpensive and mobile. I'd prefer to sit outside and brew the wort.
 
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