Home Brewing

[benjaminr]

Some action shots, it just took off this afternoon. I was starting to get worried that the yeast was bad but when I got back from class it looked like this. I shrugged yeast is an odd thing....









This is a Hefe!

 

[thepiro]

Reminds me of my early set up in my first house back in the 70’s. No need to be so technical, a big plastic bucket with a towel over the top is all you need.

With that froth working away, I can almost taste the brew over here.

 

[trashcan]

That's about all you need BenR. I usually use a six point five gallon carboy for primary, because when I first tried a belgian wit (same yeast...) it blew the hose right out of my 5gal and coated all of my decent clothes with kraeusen. Then it got infected and died

.

Test tube/smack pack yeasts usually take a bit to get going (for my usual black beers I just use cheap packet yeast) and a good starter always helps. Hefe Yeast is das ubersoldat of traditional brewing. Some specialty yeasts can be kind of frail but once you get those cloudy beers going they're pretty resiliant. Even with somewhat sizeable temperature fluctuations.

If you're carbonating naturally use a buttload of corn sugar/malt. Cloudy wheat beers (hacker pschorr especially) can have upwards of 3.0 volumes of CO2. Unless you don't want to. Hey what the ****. it's your beer

I'm actually brewing a similar beer this Upcoming weekend. Only with my beloved cascade and willamette hops. God I lovem.

Oh, and for the moment I'm in woodstock (about 12 stops away from chicago via metra).

 

[benjaminr]

Thanks for the tips.

Yeah as for now clearly im a starter brewer but hey, it works. And iv read enough on guys blowing them goofy little tops at the start so I said screw that and my first supply run involved grabbing that large hose.

But its coming along quite well now. I hate waiting, I want my beer!

And I will just hit this sucker with force carb. I dont want to wait that long for it to naturally carb in a keg, that would make me cry even more. Even if it takes a lot more Co2 its only $20 for me to fill up and the last one barely used any so im sure it will be alright. At least I hope.

 

[jon foster]

We are home brewers. We don't do a lot of beer but my wife likes the lighter beer so I make what she wants most of the time. Generally a light American Ale.

My addiction is making wine and mead. We make several batches a year from the grapes in our mini home vineyard and locally grown honey. We also make lots of fruit wines. Peach, raspberry, cherry and anything else we can get to ferment. Flower wines are excellent as well. Dandelion wine is a favorite and Lilac wine is a very popular too.

We make soda for the kids too but everyone ends up drinking it. Sarsaparilla is the best liked but birch beer and root beer are strong runners up.

We do a lot of bulk aging for the wine but also bottle it. Beer and soda get corny kegged and sometimes get bottled in PET bottles. Before the mini kegs got popular we made them up as gifts. They were a big success too.

Edit: Here's our youngest daughter starting on her first solo batch of wine.

Jon.

 

[bigtrain74]

You can never start them too early there Jon! Nice work!

 

[grillin_all_day]

I made the AG jump as soon as I got back from Afghanistan in Sept. Here's a few shots.
The gear


Grains for first brews (from left to right) Pale Ale, Pumpkin Ale, Blonde Ale


Pale Ale fermenting


And Pumpkin Ale sample


The kegerator after the two tap upgrade