The Budget Brewmeister

The Budget Brewmeister

For a beer lover, one of the most enjoyable hobbies you can pick up is to brew your own beer at home. Once you get set up with the equipment and basic supplies, it’s a fairly affordable hobby and you will get a lot of entertainment out of going through the brewing and fermentation process.

Then once you start bringing out your own home brewed beer, you get the sense of pride because this beer made entirely by you, not to mention the enjoyment of sucking down that hearty blend that you created yourself.

One of the hold ups that may have kept you from getting into making your own beer may have the cost issue. If you have ever taken a tour of a brewery and you see the huge machines and storage tanks, it's hard to see how you can do that in your kitchen with just a few simple devices. But there is an entire home brewing subculture that has risen up based entirely on being able to make beer yourself at relatively low costs. Its legal, its fun and brewing beer can become a major hobby as well.

All that said, it's true that the initial costs can be pretty intimidating. The cost of the pots, fermenters and other specialized equipment can run into several hundred dollars. It's risky to sink that kind of money into a new hobby before you even know if you will enjoy making beer, whether the beer you make will be drinkable or if you will stick with it. And during a time when we need most of what we earn just to get by, that is a risk that may be holding you back from getting into the hobby of home brewing.

Of course one natural solution is to get your first exposure and training in making beer with someone Else's equipment. Once you start poking around home brewing web sites and places where the equipment and supplies to make beer are sold in town, you can find out about clubs and societies that are full of people who have taken the plunge and are making beer all the time right at home like you want to do.

These people not only love home brewing, they can become real evangelists for their hobby and with very little encouragement, you can enjoy some Saturdays in their shop or kitchen learning how to brew beer with someone that already knows how. This kind of experience is priceless because you learn what to look for in equipment and what is essential and what is optional. You can go through the brewing process and learn a lot about how to make actual beer that is drinkable and what pitfalls to avoid. Meanwhile, you may not have spent any more money than to buy your new friend lunch or to bring the pretzels for the tasting party when the beer is done.

But then when you are ready to get started, your knowledge of what you really need will pay off big time. You still don't have to pay top dollar for the equipment to get up and running. Lots of people get started with making beer and for many reasons, their hobby stops suddenly. The outcome is that there is a pretty brisk used home brewing equipment market out there. You can find discounted equipment in new or like new condition out on eBay or Craigslist all the time. But don't overlook the local sources as those home brewer clubs and associations may have bulletin boards with listings of people who want to sell their equipment. Pawn shops in the area are another great resource.

Another great way to save money is to go together with a friend and buy the equipment together and split the costs all the way down the line. This makes brewing beer more fun and social and each of you can have the equipment and supplies home at different times to get to know it and learn to make good beer separately so you can make great beer together. And who knows, you may get so good at it that you start selling your beer to local pubs. And when the big bucks come rolling in from that, your investment in learning to brew beer will really look good to you.

Troubleshooting Home Brewing Stuck Fermentation

Troubleshooting Home Brewing Stuck Fermentation

Stuck fermentation occurs when your beer fails to ferment to completion. This can result from the use of old yeast or poor ingredients. The best way to take care of this problem, is to prevent it from starting. To do this, you should:

1. Re-hydrate the yeast by adding it to some water and adding wort to the yeast an hour or more before you pitch. This will help ensure that your yeast is still active.

2. Use an all malt or a recipe that has a lot of it, as yeast needs nutrients to stay alive. Corn and sugar lack these nutrients. If your yeast still fails to survive, it cannot reproduce. For this very reason, distilled water shouldn't be used when making beer.

Under carbonation If you've used the proper amount of priming sugar and your beer is still flat, it's probably due to the fact that you didn't properly rise the sanitizing solution from the bottles. If too much sanitizer is left in the bottles, it can kill the yeast, which results in flat beer. The only way to prevent this is to stop it from happening.

Over carbonation can cause your beer to turn into a foam disaster. It can result from these causes:

1. Too much or uneven priming sugar. You should measure your primer carefully and dissolve it thoroughly in boiling water and allow it the proper time to cool. Before bottling, make sure to stir this into your beer.

2. Bottling your beer too early can also result in too much carbonation.

3. Poor sanitization is also a cause. If you allow your beer to come in contact with wild yeast, it can result in over carbonation and possibly even off flavors.

4. Bottles that are under filled can also contribute to over carbonation. You should allow 1/2 inch of head space to allow your beer time to pressurize. By taking the proper time to fix problems, you'll ensure that your brew comes out great every time you brew it.

If you happen to run into a problem, always take the time to rationize it before you rush into fixing it. If you rush into fixing a problem, you may start another one. You should expect problems, especially if this is your first time brewing. Even for expert home brewers, problems can occur from time to time - which is something you'll learn to deal with.

Kegging

Kegging

When you first learn the craft of home brewing, one of the big steps is the transfer of the beer into larger bottles for fermentation and then smaller bottles for storage and to serve guests your delicious brew. This can be messy but it is an important step along the path to great tasting beer. And learning the beer transfer and bottling skills will be a big step as your sophistication at home brewing comes along.

There comes a time though that you can consider the next big step in becoming more skilled in your home brewing talents. And that next big step is into kegging your home made brews. But before you make that step, its good to know what you will need and the costs and efforts involves so you go into the kegging step with eyes wide open.

For one thing, kegging your own beer can get a bit expensive. There is another level of equipment including CO2 storage tanks, the kegging canisters and even a kegerator that can all add another level of cost to your home brewing hobby. But hopefully if you have been making your own beer for a few years before you make this step, you can see that the money you have saved on beverages has been significant enough justify making the next big step into kegging.

The first step perhaps of moving into kegging is to get the family on board, especially your spouse, as you may have done when you first started brewing in the first place. A natural progression, though, is to start your hobby of home brewing for the fun and the savings and then to go toward brewing when you become a serious home brewing zealot and you know the quality of your beer demands this step. So if your family has evolved and you are a home brewing family, they will be as excited as you are to learn this next step.

Along with the costs get a good feel for the additional storage space kegging will add to your beer making needs and requirements. Along with the equipment for kegging, you will also need additional refrigerator space. This might be the time to consider the purchase of a specialized refrigeration unit called a kegerator that is made just for chilling and serving your fine beer from the kegging setting. But if you entertain a lot and you are getting those rave reviews for the quality of your home made beer, such a purchase is a slam dunk decision.

The upside of kegging is that it does reduce much of the fuss and mess of using bottles and always having to clean and make sterile those bottles for the next use. And kegging gives you a lot of control over the levels of carbonation in your beer. That gives you even more options and freedom to adjust carbonation to use in the creation of unique styles and tastes in your beer. That is just one of many ways kegging improves the over all quality and diverse flavors you can achieve with your home made beers.

Of course there still will be a place for bottling your beer even if you have overhauled your storage and at home serving method to move to kegging. There is a real fun and pride when you can serve family and guests great tasting ice cold beer directly from a keg like you could get it in the pub. Btu you will want to keep some bottles around to create bottled beer for gifts or to take with you to a social outing. When you show up for that next big barbeque with bottles of your own home made and kegged beer, you will be the hit of the event.

Process Of Home Brewing Micro Brews

Process Of Home Brewing Micro Brews

The normal batch of home brewed beer is five gallons in volume, which is enough for 2 cases, or 48 12 ounce bottle of beer. The typical home brewed beer is produced by boiling water, malt extract and hops together in a large kettle and then cooling the resulting wort and adding yeast for fermenting.

Experienced home brewers will make their own extract from crushed malt barley by a more complicated process of mashing the grain in boiling hot water. With both cases, the wort is boiled for 15 min to an hour, to help remove some impurities, dissolve the character of the hops, then break down some of the sugar. The wort is then cooled down to a pitching temperature. The cooled wort is then poured into the primary fermenter in a manner of aggression, as to aerate the wort.

Sufficient oxygen is also necessary for the yeast's growth stage. The yeast is then put into the wort. The primary fermentation will take place in a large food bucket or carboy. Sometimes it is left open but often stoppered with the carbon dioxide gas that's produced by venting through a fermentation lock. The process of making micro brews takes a lot of time indeed, although you can take the necessary short cuts once you learn more about how the process works. If this is your first time brewing, you should always use common sense and know what you are doing.

One of the best things about making your own home brews is the fact that you can experiment with ingredients and brew your own creations. You can brew almost anything, providing you have the right type of equipment - which can easily be found.

The Right Home Brewing Kit for You

The Right Home Brewing Kit for You

There is always an urge when you get started in a great new hobby like home brewing to go out and buy the most expensive equipment and supplies and dive in head first. That instinct may come from watching an "old pro" at home brewing working his or her own elaborate set up to make some great beer. So naturally when you start learning how to brew beer at home yourself, you want to strive for the best which is to make beer as good as the old pros make. But the instinct to over commit should be resisted.

The home brewing industry is a big one and it has gotten much more able to support new recruits to this exciting hobby and passion to get you just what you need when you need it. And if you go out and spend a fortune on equipment that is just not right for you starting out, not only can you get frustrated but if your love of home brewing doesn’t "stick", you can end up feeling badly about such a huge investment. So, as is true of a lot of hobbies, its best to start out slow, use some very basic "starter equipment" and get a few batches of beer under your belt and grow from there.

That is where getting started with a home brewing kit is a good move. In that way, with one purchase, you can bring home the basic equipment you need, the supplies for your first few batches of beer and, probably most importantly, some instructions on how to get started making beer. You can find a pretty wide variety of beer making kits to choose from just to get started. And because the diversity of the types of starter kits that are out there, its good to know what you want as you start shopping the web sites, catalogs or at the local beer brewing retailer.

As with everything else, you can find low priced options when you are buying a beer brewing kit and other kits that have a lot more accessories and supplies to offer. The things to look for in the way of equipment in your very first kit are sanitizers and bottles as well as containers for fermentation once the brewing process gets underway. Keep in mind that once the beer is in production, you will be moving it from container to container and you will have the opportunity to step in and remove unwanted residue from the last step. So various siphons and strainers can really help you as the master brewer of this batch of beer to purify your brew as it moves from the boiling pot to the fermentation containers.

Take some time and evaluate what each one has to offer to determine if the more expensive ones come with a more in depth assortment of supplies which can keep you from having to run out and supplement the kit fairly early in your beer making career. Those kits might cost a bit more but compared to buying each of those items one by one, it’s usually a very good deal.

In addition to the assortment of brewing tools and accessories, look at the physical size of the equipment you get. The best size for any batch of beer is a minimum of five gallons. Brewing in that quantity gives the wort a sufficient room to brew well. So make sure you read the fine print that the pots and storage containers you are getting with your kit will allow you to make batches that fit your expectations. But also keep in mind storage issues as you don’t want equipment so large, it's hard to keep it all handy for your next brew.



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Getting Set Up to Make Beer

Getting Set Up to Make Beer

The hobby of brewing your own beer at home is growing steadily as more people discover how much fun they can have making their beer at home and how great absolutely fresh beer can be. There may be no more gratifying moment for a home brewer than to serve your own fresh beer to your guests iced down in your favorite beer mugs and hear the rave that your beer is as good as the store bought beer they like best or maybe even better!

Part of the reason for the huge popularity is that getting set up to make beer and finding good supplies and equipment is neither difficult nor overly expensive. You can find or create the equipment fairly easily or get it discounted from others who have retired from the brewing business. And right now there is probably a home brewing store in your town ready and able to provide you with the ingredients as well as instruction books and recipes for all kinds of wonderful tasting beers you can make right at home. And with the explosion of web sites, ebooks and articles out there on the internet about home brewing, all the help you could ask for is at your fingertips to help you get started.

The reason different people get into home brewing vary. Some love the social aspect as you join a large local and international community of brewers. Another reason is that it is just great fun to assemble the equipment, learn the recipes and take a stab at making your own home grown batch of tasty beer. Even if you "botch" a batch of beer, its all in the spirit of learning and it just drives you on to learn from your mistakes to make even better beer next time.

A third great reason is you have so much more control over your beer when you brew it yourself. Because you are not dealing with a beer that is mass produced and shipped from hundreds of miles away, you can control the taste, the consistency and even the level of alcohol to make your beer as strong or mild as you want it to be. And you can make changes with each batch with virtually endless variations on the recipes that are available to the home brewing community.

The supplies you will need to get started are easy to find and not very expensive either. Probably the best way to get a feel for what the best equipment is and who are the suppliers to favor would come from becoming a regular at home brewing clubs and gatherings and making some friends there. If you make it well known that you are a "new recruit" and need some mentoring in how to get set up, you will be overwhelmed with offers for you to sit in on a brewing session or two to get a feel for the process. If you take advantage of their zeal to help you get started, you will be way ahead on the game when you go shopping for the stuff you need to get set up to make your own beer at home.

The equipment you will need is pretty much only used for brewing beer so you will need to think of storage. The pot for boiling your initial wort and the equipment to handle the beer, filter it and ferment it are all made in sizes and at prices to encourage the home brewing markets. You can find them at retail prices at your home brewing retail outlet in town. You can use the internet and shop second hand shops to get better prices. But many like to patronize the home brewing store that helped them get their start just to make sure they stay in business to keep selling you great fresh ingredients.

That same retail outlet will be a good source for the grains, yeasts and hops you need for the actual production of beer. Freshness is the key so communicate with the management of the store to learn of just how fresh those things are. As with the equipment, you can buy these things from the internet and that is fine. But get to know your supplier whoever you use and make sure you are confident you are getting the highest quality materials to make your home made beer. It will make a big difference.

Paths to Great Home Made Beer

Paths to Great Home Made Beer

Before you really get oriented to what home brewing is all about, it's easy to think it is a process that is set in stone and there is only one right way to do it. And it is true that the brewing and fermenting process has some steps that must be followed with some discipline if you wish to enjoy a great home made beer. But one of the reasons that home brewing is such a passion to many people who enjoy this way of making beer is that there as so many varieties of recipes and styles of making.

You can easily get a feel for what a huge variety there is in ways to brew beer and in recipes for ingredients when you visit your local beer supplies retailer, go to home brewing web sites or sit in at home brewing club meetings in town. And the great thing about the social side of the home brewing culture is that you will come home with a notebook full of ideas of things you can try on upcoming batches of beer. The odds are you will have months of ideas to try out and you may never run out of new approaches, blends and recipes to try to make your home made beer interesting and tasty for yourself, your family and your friends.

For that first time home brewing recruit, one of the best ways to help him have the fun of making beer at home without so much investment and mess that will come in due time is to go with a home brewing kit or machine. Beer making machines literally take all of the thinking and planning and risk out of trying out home brewing to see if you want to make the investment in a full set up. The machine comes with a full set of ingredients for one batch of beer and the equipment is automated so the novice home brewer can make the beer and move it through the fermentation and aging process and know the fun of having real home made beer a few weeks later.

Similarly kits simply the process of buying and using the equipment and ingredients to get started in home brewing. Unlike the beer making machine which is used once and discarded, the beer maker's kit gives you the basic equipment which will be the beginning of your collection of the tools of a beer maker to be used over and over many times. But the kit provides the ingredients and the instructions to make the process of learning to make your own beer easy and fun to learn.

Even for seasoned home beer makers, there are variations on the home brewing method that will give you more flexibility and range of choices that will affect how unique your beer will be. But each may have a greater investment of work and effort to use effectively so it's worth getting familiar with them in advance so you know your investment of time and effort and what you might expect with a new brewing method.
Probably the most common brewing method most amateur brewer's use and the one that is taught in most home brewing guides is the extract method. And even though it is well known, because you are truly brewing beer yourself as opposed to using a kit or a machine, you can alter the consistencies and flavors of your beer and get a wonderful brew each time you use this approach.

You can settle on the extract method for a long time or perhaps use it exclusively for your brewing career and get great beers with it every time. But if you want a greater challenge and the possibility for even more unique beers as a result, you can explore the Mini-Mash method and the Full Mash Brew styles of home brewing. Each is more complex and takes longer to finish the brewing process. But they also give you a lot of flexibility and even more ability to make your own beer unique and distinctive.

It's up to you where to start in your beer brewing hobby and the paths you take. You can explore new approaches through networking with other brewers. But you will never get bored brewing beer at home because the variety of methods and ingredients are virtually limitless.

The Heart Of Home Brewing

The Heart of Home Brewing

Can you remember the moment you first got the idea in your head to take up brewing your own beer at home? For many it is a tour of a brew pub or some other behind the scenes exposure to all that happens when good beer is made. Before that one pivotal moment, you may have never even thought about beer being made at all.

The origin of beer was the liquor store or the market and that was that. But when you realized that not only does beer go through a fascinating transformation from grains, hops and malts to this delicious brew you enjoy but that you can make your own beer if you want to, that is when the idea of becoming a home brewer started to become a reality in your mind.

For others that moment of realization that home brewing could be a whole new world may have happened when you first were exposed to "real" beer, as the home brewing enthusiasts call it. That is when you sampled a brew that was not made by one of the big retail beer makers like Budweiser, Coors or Miller and you discovered what beer tasted like when it came directly from the keg to your glass. That may also be the day you found out what an amazing diversity of beer types, textures and flavors there were. And for many when you realize that you can find a diversity of beers that is almost as extensive as in the wine world that it is often very difficult to go back to boring old pasteurized beer again.

So if you are about to "make the leap" to become a home brewer yourself, you are about to step into a rich and full world that is full of history, culture, tradition and new friends and associates. You won't just take up the hobby of brewing beer, you will "become" a home brewer which is a unique kind of individual indeed.

It isn't hard to "define" home brewing because the term is self explanatory except to go on to say that it is entirely possible for you to make high quality beer right in your own home with a small investment in equipment, the base ingredients that are readily available as well and the love and patience it will take to learn the process. But the process is not difficult which explains why home brewing is a passion and a hobby that is growing in popularity more and more every year.

You might be surprised who you know who has a love of brewing beer because it is not just the hard core beer drinker you might know. Because brewing beer at home is as much about the art and the craft of making a quality beverage, home brewers come from every walk of life there is from bartenders to ministers and from college professors to librarians.

The heart of home brewing is the fun, the excitement and the fulfillment creating your own batch of delicious beer can bring. But what transforms home brewing hobbyists to life long makers of beer is the challenge of always finding new blends, new methods and new ways to make their beer even more flavorful than the last batch.

Be forewarned that a zeal for becoming better and better at home brewing can be habit forming. But if you get hooked, you will meet thousands of others in your town and around the country and the world who have the same addiction as you. It’s a wonderful addiction that you will never regret catching because brewing beer at home can provide decades of fun and enjoyment making your own blends of beer. But it provides something else just as good which is really great tasting beer. So enjoy.

Looking Before You Leap Into Home Brewing

Looking Before You Leap into Home Brewing

Whenever you start a major new hobby, its best to take a few minutes and think about what you are getting into. A lot of new hobbies require a significant investment of time and money. This is certainly true of golf, skydiving, scuba and home brewing. So along with a plan on how to get started, its good to have a good plan for getting ready to plunge into home brewing full scale.If you have a road map for "checking it out", you can determine if home brewing will fit into your lifestyle and your budget.

"Looking before you leap" means that you find out what it means to be involved in the hobby or sport as a full time member of that hobby community. When it comes to home brewing, that will only happen when you too can make your own beer at home. And when that time finally gets here and you can play with the recipes and make the taste of your own beer very unique, that will be an exciting moment for you. But a mature approach to this very adult hobby means checking it out and knowing the investment of time, money and space in the home before you spend your first dollar to get set up as a home brewer.

An easy and fun way to ease into the hobby of home brewing that doesn't cost a cent is to begin to network with those who are already well into their passion for making beer. You can find forums online to use to learn more about getting started. And there are almost certainly a number of home brewing societies and clubs in town that you can find out about online or through your local retail brewing supply store. These social connections will be people who are very much "evangelists" for home brewing because they know the fun of it.So you will get plenty of chances to sit in with a new friend to step through the brewing process and not only learn what equipment you will need but how it is used as you get training from an "old pro" in home beer making.

Once you have gotten some basic training the free route through home brewing gurus, the time will come when you are ready to consider buying your own equipment and taking a stab at it yourself. But you have already witnessed that home brewing is a big event in the house filling up the kitchen, the refrigerator, making a mess sometimes and requiring places to store, refrigerate and ferment the beer in the various stages from ingredients to finished product.

So it is important that the hobby of home brewing not just be your solitary passion but if at all possible you get the family into the act. If they can attend meetings at the home brewing club or go to competitions or other events that are all about home brewing, they can catch the same enthusiasm you have. That enthusiasm will be very important particularly in your significant other because each brewing session will be a major event in the house involving the kitchen with lots of pans and bottles and equipment. So having your wife or husband fully onboard with the process and even working on it together makes the fun of home brewing even more fulfilling.

Another area of looking before you leap is to plan out not only how you will use all of the equipment you will buy but how you will handle issues of storage. It’s a very pragmatic concern but if you bring in this arsenal of beer making equipment. Between batches it is going to have to be somewhere. And while you will enjoy that equipment a great deal, you don’t want it to dominate the home.

By getting a feel for the equipment when you are preparing to start your home brewing hobby, you can prepare a storage space for the equipment when it is not in use. Think ahead about storage for the fermentation phase of brewing as well as storing up to five gallons of beer per finished batch. But by thinking ahead, when you become a very active home brewer, you will have your family and facilities all ready for the changes. And that is looking before you leap into the exciting world of making and enjoying your own home made beer.