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but it is not a hobby for the impatient, as the process takes many weeks before you have drinkable beer. My advice would be to start by locating a good brewing supply shop. They will be able to show you the equipment you'll need (kits start as low as $30-$50), explain all the steps, and help you choose and measure your ingredients.
I've never used a starter beer, always brewed from scratch. You boil your grains, then add your malt, then boil for a loooong time, adding hops and any other ingredients along the way, then you go to primary fermentation for a week or so, then secondary fermentation for however long is recommended for that style of beer, then finally you bottle. Then after more excruciating waiting, drink and repeat as necessary. :o)
Here's some random advice collected over five years of homebrewing:
-use bottled water. Even if your tap water is great for drinking, you'll discover an off taste to your beer after the water has been through the whole brewing process. It took us about four batches before we figured this out.
-unless you're a very skilled cook/chemist, I'd suggest using already-prepared recipes for your first few batches. That will give you a sense of how the different combinations of ingredients taste, then it will make experimenting more successful. A bad batch of beer isn't a disaster, but it does represent a waste of time and ingredients.
-if you want to cheat and make your beer higher in alcohol content, add extra sugar (or honey or syrup) during the boiling. I like my homebrews very strong so I'm always dumping cups of honey in there.
-it's best if you can control the temperature of the site where you plan to ferment. Lager style beers need lower temps, ales can handle higher temps, but it's most important to try to keep that temp constant.
-don't forget to sanitize everything that's going to touch the beer! That's probably the most exhausting part, the huge amount of cleaning, boiling, bleaching, etc. that's required.
E-mail me if you want, but I bet your local brewing supply shop will be able to answer all your questions. Good luck! It's an enormously satisfying activity.
posted by 206.40.162...
, Fri, 25 Jun 2004 11:17:42
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