Home Brewing

[Hippie Dad]

Fritz Monroe's profile mentioned that he had an interest in home brewing. i could use some general advice on that. I have mad homebrew once or twice, but I consider all those little 12-ounce bottles a pain in the neck. I would rather use some kind of jug or keg and gradually drink one of those down than to muck around with a bunch of bottles. I don't know if Fritz or any other brewers and/or beer-drinking males(?) out there has any insight on that...I have actually seen an ad for a German brewing pail with a spigot built in part way up the bucket, so that when the liquid has brewed and the yeast has settled, you just drain off the beer without using plastic tubes. I've always felt that beer brewing is more elaborate than it needs to be, unless one likes fiddling with all the details...

[PoGo]

I once bought my husband a small jug of a special beer he likes from a brew pub we have in town. I think it was something like a half gallon, anyway, it took him about a week to get it drank and by that time the beer had gone flat.

 

Of course, it wasn't sealed, they just filled the bottle from their tap. But, even sealed jugs will need to be drank quickly once opened. Unless of course, you like flat beer.

[Fritz_Monroe]

I bottle mostly into 12 ounce bottles. However, I also have several growlers that I bottle into. Those are what PoGo is talking about, they are 2 liter glass bottles. The ones I like have a porcelin lid with a rubber gasket. There are some others that have screw caps, but I don't like them.

 

You can get a basic kegging system for about $100 plus the CO2 bottle. I've actually seen a homemade kegging system that used a large mylar to collect the CO2 while fermenting and used a hand pump, sort of like a tire pump, to put the pressure into the keg.

 

There are also small keg like systems called a Tap-A-Draft. These make use of a 2 or 3 liter bottle to hold the beer. These are pressurized with small CO2 cylinders like in a BB gun.

 

I've never seen the buckets that you are talking about, you wouldn't happen to have a pic or a link, would you? The problem with things other than smaller containers and kegs is you lose the carbonation. If you don't mind flat beer, then they would work great.

 

As for being too elaborate, I don't really see that. For me to make a batch of beer, takes about 2 hours of actual work. There are about 3 weeks of waiting. You can really get as complicated as you like, but I use a bucket and a 5 gallon glass bottle. Not very complicated.

 

Obviously this is a subject I like to discuss. I'm not an expert, but I'd be glad to answer any other questions.

[Brewguy]

I also use a keg setup. I have the ball lock pepsi kegs and it is quite easy. flip top bottles also work great. Most are 16oz so you need less.

[Fritz_Monroe]

I also have some e-z caps that are 16 oz. I don't use these very often because of them being 16 oz. I usually just have 1 beer at a time and the 12 oz. is just right for me. But they are really easy to bottle into, fill with the bottle wand, flip the top up on top and use the bale to seal it. You do have to sanitize the rubber gasket, though.

[Hippie Dad]

Garsh, what is a ball lock pepsi keg? Or a flip top bottle? Home brewing is an arcane art with its own language, but that sounds very promising. Though I have made home brew a time or two, and fruit wine numerous times, there is a lot I don't know

 

[Hippie Dad]

Thanks for the leads on this, I really appreciate it (!), as I am totally ignorant on the subject. Though I was a computer jockey as opposed to a rivet pounder, my background was as an airplane factory worker, where alas, we usually drank more than 12 ounces of beer at a time...those liter bottles or kegs that can be gradually drained sound more convenient than bottles to me...I wasn't even sure that there was an alternative to bottles. Shows my ignorance, as I said.

I guess those buckets are called "bottling buckets with spigots"

see an example at

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...ling-bucket.jpg

Those crazy Germans were doing all their fermentation in the one

bucket, then draining the beer off into jugs or kegs...

sounded good to me...Thanks again.

[Hippie Dad]

Thanks for the kind words, Leah.

I'm struggling along on a crippled spare computer.

 

Folks, Leah calls that avatar of hers a "dutch oven";

don't let her fool you, it's a witch's cauldron.

Speaking as her husband, I can say:

Never get that woman angry during a full moon...

I had hair all over my body last time I did that,

not that I'm not relatively hairy on my head to begin with.

Heh heh...

[Brewguy]

Ok beer 101.

 

This is what I have, http://stores.kegconnection.com/Categories...ABasic+Keg+Kits , it uses a Pepsi soda keg which has a ball lock connector vs coke that has pin lock. The lock just describes the style keg you are using. All the kegs are 5 gallon and work fantastic for beer.

 

next I'd get a book called "how to brew" by John Palmer, it is fantastic and will walk you through everything you need to know.

 

The bottling bucket is only good for priming your beer with sugar to make it carbonate, they won't hold pressure. You could also use them as a fermentor and transfer from there into the keg.

 

How to brew also has a website with the old vs of the book for free!

 

Anymore questions?

[Darlene]

Originally Posted By: Hippie Dad

Thanks for the kind words, Leah.
I'm struggling along on a crippled spare computer.

Folks, Leah calls that avatar of hers a "dutch oven";
don't let her fool you, it's a witch's cauldron.
Speaking as her husband, I can say:
Never get that woman angry during a full moon...
I had hair all over my body last time I did that,
not that I'm not relatively hairy on my head to begin with.
Heh heh...

I can't believe that you'd say such things about our dear, sweet, innocent (like me) Leah...

[Hippie Dad]

No more questions at the moment. I have to go look at pictures of those kegs first, so I can get a frame of reference. I hate messing with bottles, I would rather have flatter beer towards the end of a keg, if that happened...

[Jewlzm]

I though you home brewers might get a kick out of this

 

http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/235coffee.html

 

You might even find it useful.

home brewing in your coffee pot

[Brewguy]

The kegs use a 5 pound co2 tank to keep the pressure and carbonate the beer. You can get them filled at beer distributors for pretty cheap.

 

How fast do you drink? You could always look into a beer engine and 3 gallon kegs. A beer engine is basically a pump which foams the beer, think real irish stouts.

 

The beer will get stale after a while but you would probably have a couple weeks.

 

There are also 1 liter and 2 liter ez cap bottles. You could sugar prime them and as long as you drank the entire bottle in one sitting it won't go flat. also it is a lot less to do eacy time and no caps.

[Fritz_Monroe]

Here you go. This is a flip cap bottle. They come in 16 oz., 22 oz. and I think 32 oz.

 

You can also use a growler, they are the 2 liter bottles. If you go this way, you will want to get these from a brew pub. You could buy them for about $30, or buy them filled at the brew pub for about $20.

 

[Hippie Dad]

Interesting. Reminds me of the stories I heard about people putting up home brew in mason jars, I have a stout mason jar or two with that kind of snap-tight lid, hope they wouldn't explode like in the old country song "uncle hiram"

When I retire in a few months, I want to get more serious on the idea of brewing, and small kegs or vessels with closeable lids seem like an easy way to handle it. I want to grow some hops when I retire as well, I live in Washington State, and hops do incredibly well out here...I have my little brewing kit in the garage, and if the storms from the Pacific Ocean ever stop hammering us here, I want to brew something up...

[Cowgirl]

I've known some folks who brew their own beer. Some of it turns out pretty palatable, others ... are interesting experiments.

 

What I'm interested in learning to do is making wine. Anyone here know about that?

 

 

[Necie]

 

 

http://www.mrssurvival.com/forums/ubbthrea...=true#Post76471

[Fritz_Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Cowgirl

I've known some folks who brew their own beer. Some of it turns out pretty palatable, others ... are interesting experiments.

I've never had a batch of beer turn out bad. As long as you make sure everything is clean and sanitized, and you use a recipe, the beer won't be bad. But some people like to figure out their own recipes and those batches can turn out not great, but that's due to the ingredients, not a bad yeast causing it.

Originally Posted By: Cowgirl

What I'm interested in learning to do is making wine. Anyone here know about that?

Yep, I do wine also. If you just want to try out making wine, use one of the kits first. It will teach you about what you need to do. Then try making your wine from fresh fruit.

If you want to try making wines from things other than grapes, take a look at Jack Keller's site. He is the name in home winemaking. His site is packed with information and many recipes. I've made a couple of his recipes and they are good. The best wine I've ever made was an orange wine and I can never repeat it because I didn't stick to the recipe, but I didn't keep track of what I did.

If you want to make 1 gallon batches, you need very few pieces of equipment, and if you can find apple juice in glass bottles, those bottles work great for a 1 gallon batch.