Video: Home brew beer, the basics of beer brewing

The step by step process used by Jordan M. Wright, to brew a malt extract recipe beer. This is a great video to watch if you’re brewing for the first time, or want to know more about how to home brew.

Home brew beer, the basics of beer brewing

What to brew… what to brew?

The basic home brew kit

For Christmas or for your last birthday your wife/parents/kids bought you a homebrew kit. Maybe you treated yourself to that collection of the odd assortment of equipment: a bucket, a kettle, a thermometer, a hydrometer, maybe a couple of carboys. You want to brew a beer.

You love beer. You especially love that Pale Ale brewed at your local brewpub or that Kölsch brewed at the microbrewery just down the street. You want to make beer that tastes as good as that, or better. You know you can do it. You are all psyched up for that first brew day. You’ve read Papazian; you’ve read Palmer (twice); you’ve digested Brew Chem 101. You are ready to make your first batch.
For a minute or two you contemplate making some Goat Scrotum Ale just so you can hand your buddy a bottle and say, “Here suck on some Goat Scrotum,” but you start to think you need a better reason to pick a recipe than the potential for beer-belly laughs from your mates — you’re going to make 40 pints of this stuff after all and you want it to be good. What should you brew? Read the rest of this entry »

Getting into Home Brewing on a Budget…

Article by Aaron Wittenberg, re-posted from The Home Brewers Knowledgebase »

Money is a concern for just about everybody. While making beer is cheap, buying the initial equipment is not necessarily the cheapest part. This can run under $100, to over $500. That is a big chunk of money when you live on a budget.

Here are some tips I have learned over time to help save money. These can be used by anybody to save money. You will find these especially useful if you don’t have any equipment yet, and want to get it very affordable.

- Check craigslist or even post a message asking for equipment.
Buckets, carboys, airlocks, bottles, anything. Some brewers are getting out of the hobby and want to ditch their stuff at a fraction of the price.

- Look at pawn shops, second hand stores, garage sales, and other places for things. I have seen old water jugs (carboys) sold for less than half retail price. I bought a used carboy at an auction for $7, and it already had a thermometer on it! Read the rest of this entry »

Hops Style Guide – What hops in what beer….

One thing I love about home brewing is that when it comes to recipes, anything goes, you can add or do what you want.

Recently while taking inventory, I found that I had several ounces of random hops; Saaz, Styrian Goldings, Argentinian Cascade, Cascade, Hallertauer… I decided to throw some recipes together that were indicative of the representing hops. Short of reading the BJCP Style guidelines, I compiled information for the list below for an easy quick reference. I’ll be cleaning it up and adding more info as time permits. Read the rest of this entry »

Making a yeast starter for home brewing

How to make a yeast starter for home brewing…

I had posted a previous article on yeast starters, but here is a more focused methodology (I hope) on the why and how.

The prepared liquid yeast you buy (Wyeast smack packets, White Labs vials) really don’t contain enough yeast to get a fermentation going as quickly as you would want it to, especially for high gravity worts and lagers. For low gravity brews (Lower than 1.058) the smack packs or vials are fine, but sometimes you just really want a vigorous fermentation that starts rapidly in a couple hours rather than the next day!

The benefits of a starter culture are several-fold: Read the rest of this entry »

…Yet another Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (SNPA) home brew clone recipe.

Here is another Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (SNPA) home brew clone recipe. Though I’ve not brewed this recipe, several people who have tried it really liked it!

Fermentables:
6 lbs. light malt syrup (or 6.6 lbs if you are using cans)

Specialty Grains:
1/2 lb 30L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Carapils Malt

Additional: Read the rest of this entry »

When a good recipe goes bad…

It was bound to happen eventually… After nearly a decade of home brewing, I’d never made a “bad” batch. By bad, I mean something so foul nobody could drink it and you dump it down the drain. Now I’ve made beers I didn’t care for, but always has a guinea pig, er, friend I mean, that liked it.

Winter here was slow to arrive here, but when it did, it came cold and fast.I take back to extract brewing during these cold dark months, as I can do so indoors. A couple of months back I gathered up supplies from my LHBS. Read the rest of this entry »

Coopers Micro-Brew Kit: Instruction Booklet

I frequently get requests for the instructions to the Cooper’s Micro-Brew kit. Click the link below to download a PDF version of the instruction set:

Coopers Micro-Brew Kit: Instruction Booklet

Home Brewing: Fermentation Stopped Early (Stuck Fermentation)

A “stuck fermentation” is a fermentation that has stopped before completion, more technically – before the  expected percentage of available fermentable sugars have been converted by yeast into alcohol.

Often in beginning home brewing, a stuck fermentation is perceived when activity in the primary fermenter ceases or declines rapidly within the first couple days. More often than not, it’s not stuck, it’s done. In a more accurate scenario of a stuck fermentation, the wort ferments for several days but the final gravity gets “stuck” at a higher level than the true final gravity of the wort. Read the rest of this entry »

My beer isn’t fermenting, what do I do?

Beyond a few days and no fermentation – What to do!?!
Let’s say you’ve gone over 36 hours and there are no signs of any activity what can you do?

First off – Don’t worry! If your wort takes up to three days to show signs fermenting, don’t panic.
This is especially true if you used liquid yeast and didn’t make a large (half-gallon+) yeast starter and aerate well. It is also worth noting that no bubbles in the air lock does not mean it isn’t fermenting.

After the third day, if nothing seems to have happened, take a gravity reading to make sure you haven’t missed the fermentation. Most brews see activity in 6 to 18 hours after pitching. If this doesn’t happen then it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. You may just not be seeing it or it’s taking it’s time. If this is among your first few brews, it is quite easy to get worried after 12 hours to 24 hours. Relax and don’t panic.

Getting beyond the third day…

If you are fermenting in a bucket, wash your hands and wet a paper towel with a little sanitizing solution. Wipe down the lid around the rubber stopper/airlock, pull out the rubber stopper and peer into the bucket, if you can’t get a good look through the hole in the lid, wipe down the edge of the lid with sanitizer and then carefully pry open the lid (careful not to get anything in there; hair, spittle, etc.). If there is no sign of a sludgy foam (krausen) and the surface of the wort is free of any signs of bubbles, check the temperature of the room (I recommend the adhesive thermometers that stick to the outside of the fermenter , that way you know the temperature of the wort). If the room temperature (or wort temp.) is below 62 degrees F, put the lid and airlock back on and move it to a warmer room. – If you feel the need to stick a thermometer into the wort to get the temperature – remember to sanitize it first!

If after 12 – 24 hours of moving your fermenter Read the rest of this entry »