any homebrewers here?

[clovisc]

got into homebrewing a little while back, and i gotta say, it's a tie with fly fishing as "absolute best hobby ever." i use the extract method with specialty grains, buy fresh hops from oregon, and with very little fuss, can make some KILLER beers, even in my small apartment! it's great for if you have lots of visitors... :D

anyone else experiencing the joys of making your own beer?

i have quite a variety of beers on hand. let's see...

-- Alaskan red huckleberry lambic (with lambic yeast strain) currently fermenting
-- Scottish Ale/Fraoch (amazing smokey taste with a bit of herbiness... this has become one of my favorite beers of all time!)
-- Finnish Sahti (Juniper beer) about to be ready to drink
-- Black IPA (oatmeal stout base with lots of hops, a little coffee, and some home-grown mugwort...)
-- Russian Imperial Stout (absolutely KILLER)
-- a couple bottles left of a baltic porter
-- Gruit/IPA with an IBU of 141 (yeow!!!!)
-- Sarsparilla IPA with a dark wheat base, IBU somewhere around 100
-- American brown ale very similar to Arrogant Bastard... but more hop complexity
-- Salmonberry Stout (none left... had some guests, and these didn't last very long at all...)

Only duds have been a spruce barleywine (decent, but I just don't like the taste... need to give it more time, though), and a smoked porter (might get better with more time, but I think something weird happened... strange green appley esters...)

Now that I've found a couple beers I really like, my focus is going to be on refining them by brewing them repeatedly over the course of a couple years. The Sarsparilla IPA, Russian Imperial, Scottish Ale, and American Brown are the leaders of the pack. Bet the Lambic will be up there, as well... :D

[CanisMajor]

Hey clovisc,

Sounds like you have some killer beers being/been made. I haven't tried home brewing, but I would really like too. I would basically just make IPA's, Pale Ales, and American Ales all day long. Your Gruit/IPA sounds insane, something like Stone would make. Nice call on refining the ones you like the most.

Canis

p.s. I read your post about my avatar in another thread, I'm a HUGE fan of Stone. They released their Double Bastard a little while ago, simply amazing :) .

[FLYBYU44]

My parents made their own beer and wine for years. I never really cared for the whole beer making thing mainly because they used to get my brother and I to help. Wine making seemed a lot easier and since my Mom's side is all French I've had some amazing home made wines. My Mom's aunt made a strawberry wine for Christmas one year, amazing, so tasty. I do remember my parents had a vat of red wine fermenting upstairs in our house and my brother and I were wrestling and knocked it over. :D It leaked through the ceiling and into the room below, which happened to be my parents bedroom. So they had their bed, sheets, etc completely covered in red wine, as well as everything else. :) Both my brother and I are still alive in case you were wondering... I'd love to take up wine making when we get a house, the basement suite is just too small, especially with our kid roaring around.

[Brad S.]

My roomate and I brew our own. Generally we have a least two in process, and hopefully two from the past still in bottles. Always a good time.

Working on a double IPA, and an imperial stout currently. Had some good ones in the past. Had some that turned out ok. I did a cider over the past prob 8 months and thats gonna take a long time till its good, probably a year or more in the bottle ageing.

[clovisc]

CanisMajor -- the IPA gruit has 5 different types of hops, mugwort, and woodruff. it's about as bitter as i can handle and still enjoy. it's 40% more bitter than Stone's Ruination (and that's only the bitterness as calculated from the hop content... not the other bittering herbs). my taste in IPAs has since begun gravitating towards more balanced concoctions. Deschutes' Hop Henge, Port Brewing's Wipe Out, and Sierra Nevada's Torpedo are my fave IPAs. :D i've found that buying and using fresh hops really helps increase the quality of an IPA... i buy from freshops.com :D

FLYBY -- nice winemaking disaster. fortunately, i've only had a couple bottle explosions... just enough to encourage me to give the fermentation process extra time. my girlfriend hasn't killed me yet. :D

[O,just,O]

My wife does the brewing, the bottle washing, fermenter washing & 1/2 the drinking. NO she is not for sale. I sometimes put on the lids & oft times take them off again, sometime later. I however am for sale, so she says. CHEAP :D
Coopers Lager, a well known Aus. beer is what she concetrates on & says, cleanliness & routine is what makes consistently good home brew. Getting a wild yeast in there can make it bad to undrinkable. Often visitors comment that they cant tell the difference from the bought stuff.
Come visit sometime, you hear ?
O.
Barbeque some of those cattle walking around everywhere outside. :)

[Switchback]

I was into homebrewing for a while about ten years ago. I brewed several batches over the course of 18 months or so. I stuck with just plain old American Pilsner, or Lager, can't remember for sure.

Every batch I brewed turned out excellent and my friends all liked "Rick's Homebrew". The last batch I tried to make I added some fresh ginger. I was anxious to find out how it tasted so, on the day I was going to bottle it, I tasted some of the uncarbonated, fermented beer.

It tasted really spicey and was way too strong so I threw it out right then and there. I thought I added too much ginger and ruined it.

The next time I went to go buy supplies I told the store owner what happened and he told me that it probably would have been an excellent batch because the carbonation process takes away the spicyness and leaves a pleasant ginger flavor.

I gave up after that. My wife has been asking me for years to take it back up again but I'm just not into it anymore. It was fun while it lasted though.

[drf]

I've brewed with friends alot this year. We've done an American stout, smoked porter, apa, wheat beer, saison and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. I knew my friends were getting serious about it when they went in halves on a ton of grain (literally a ton). So yea we've done alot of brewing. Fun hobby.

[tonydahose]

any of you guys try making rootbeer? i know, no alcohol. i am not much of a beer drinker and since i am on meds for my back i haven't had any for awhile but i love rootbeer. do you have to keep it refridgerated while it is brewing or just after it is bottled? i would like to try it if i could get a good recipe.

[clovisc]

i don't drink soda anymore... but tony, this might be a good place to start... http://www.homebrewers.com/category/winel/ :D

[KP]

Never done it before, but the idea crossed my mind at times.

If situation permits, considering getting the "brewing kit" for holidays.
Heard from others that it takes up to 90 days to brew and it's hard to wait :)

clovisc, might ask you for some pointers once get into this.

Thanks for the topic.

[clovisc]

Never done it before, but the idea crossed my mind at times.

If situation permits, considering getting the "brewing kit" for holidays.
Heard from others that it takes up to 90 days to brew and it's hard to wait :)

clovisc, might ask you for some pointers once get into this.

Thanks for the topic.

KP -- the amount of time depends heavily upon the style. i usually leave beers (unless they have higher alcohol content) in the fermenter for 2 weeks, then bottle... then it's another week until the bottles are sufficiently carbonated. depending on the style, you can start drinking... or let it age. or drink some, and let some age. :D

i was EXTREMELY intimidated about getting started, but after my first two batches (which were huge successes), i couldn't believe how easy and rewarding brewing is!

the brown ale, finnish ale, and scottish ale were ready to drink after only 3-4 weeks. fruit beers (like my salmonberry stout) tend not to keep as long, so you actually want to drink them sooner. (unless you're making some sour lambic... :D ) the russian imperial is supposed to age 6 months, but after only 2 months, i found it to be AMAZING, and tastier than even old rasputin. :D

other beers have show great improvement through additional aging... especially the IPAs, and the more complex stuff. it smoothes out with time.

i usually set some bottles from each batch aside for future months, marking the caps with a date. that way, each month, i open up a new box of extra-aged "reserve" beers to enjoy.

it's interesting to note... you don't really "save money" by brewing your own beer unless you're brewing the super fancy stuff (russian imperials, belgian ales, gigantic IPAs) all the time... but who normally drinks that kind of stuff daily anyway? by the time i pay for shipping, distilled water, hops, and other extras, it ends up being around $1.50 or so per bottle. i have become a serious beer snob, though... and homebrewing lets me enjoy better beers that i couldn't afford to buy routinely.

[tonydahose]

do they tell you to use bottled water? can't you get some good tasting water up in Alaska without paying for it? thanks for the link to the rootbeer, Jason, i might have to try that.

[clovisc]

do they tell you to use bottled water? can't you get some good tasting water up in Alaska without paying for it? thanks for the link to the rootbeer, Jason, i might have to try that.

some crazy chemical changes occur during brewing... and the chemicals that are in regular tap water can form weird molecular bonds with other stuff in the beer, and create strange off-tastes.

the biggest problem with our drinking water here is (usually) the pipes. while the drinking water supplies are relatively safe (although we have reoccurring halocetic acid issues... whatever that is), sometimes the pipes are not. metals (including lead) sometimes get into people's drinking water from pipes and soldering -- ick. i try to never drink tap water... and when i do, it's been Brita'd. also, we're a small, rural community, and i don't really know or trust what kind and quality of water testing goes on in the reservoirs...

ironic, huh?

[gac]

I've been interested but the time requirement sounds too big for me now.

[clovisc]

I've been interested but the time requirement sounds too big for me now.

about 2 hours to brew, a couple weeks of waiting, some bottle-cleaning, then an hour of bottling. :D

[O,just,O]

Wow, never thought about the water issue you guys have. Here we live 35 k's from town in cattle grazing country and collect rain water on our roof's. Between the shed's & house we have 35,000 gal's in tanks. While this rain water has no chemical pollutants in it, it does have the odd frog swimming around plus bird droppings, dust & leafs from the roof. This is our total & only water source for household use.
A friend who brews says that the water can be too clean & pure to get a proper fermentation & good brew, so he uses creek water. Now he is no scientist but it all works good, our rain water & his creek water. After 3 or 4 bottles the water is no longer a concern :D .

[Freediver]

A couple of friends and I have experimented with banana beer (horrible) various wines and meades (amazing), cider and various beers ranging from coffee stouts, chocolate oatmeal stouts and ales.

[clovisc]

A couple of friends and I have experimented with banana beer (horrible) various wines and meades (amazing), cider and various beers ranging from coffee stouts, chocolate oatmeal stouts and ales.

just don't try pineapple beer -- i hear it creates deadly toxins after it ferments... seriously!

chocolate oatmeal stout is the next beer i'll be brewing... how did yours come out? and what kind of chocolate did you use, and how?

[clovisc]

O, just O -- as soon as I'm a homeowner, I plan to do the rainwater thing. Need to ensure I have the right kind of roofing, though.