Home brewers?
 

So who's into home brewing? And what are you brewing?

I got a one gallon kit over the holidays and getting into it after brewing a batch with a cousins husband over Thanksgiving.

Went with 1 gallon over 5 mostly because of the space of gear, time and cost.

Plenty of forums and what not out there, but any recommendations? What about supplies? I've got a pretty decent supplier a town over, but nice to see other options.

And is it worth trying grains over syrup/powdered extract? I'm looking into it next, mainly because there isn't going to be the need for so much grain and cooking time on a gallon brew.

Re: Home brewers?
 

Somewhat tangentially related... I was looking for the kind of liquid malt extract that is used in sticky malt loaves so I could make one for my husband, but you can order it only in bulk quantities online and I can't find it locally. Will a brewer supply place sell me only a pint or so?

Re: Home brewers?
 

I'm a homebrewer. Start with the syrups (liquid malt extract) or powder (dry malt extract). I prefer the dry because it is easier to work with, and I use it instead of sparging huge amounts of grain (basically a way of extracting sugars by running water through it). I use a much smaller amount of grain to add flavour and aroma. I lot of places sell complete kits of ingredients, but mostly for 5 gallon brews.

Northernbrewer.com is one of the bigger and better forums, although i haven't logged in for a few years. Morebeer.com and homebrewheaven.com are fairly decent online stores.

Many homebrew shops sell the liquid malt extract by the jar, and have big tubs with sticky taps you can use to fill a container with exactly the amount your require. In others you can only buy it in 2lb tins. Phone ahead, but you are likely to find somewhere.

Re: Home brewers?
 

Does using Mr Beer kit count as home brewing?

I do a couple a year and it tastes disgusting.

Re: Home brewers?
 

My local brew store does I think, enough for small one gallon brews.

Re: Home brewers?
 

I got a 'Mr Beer' cider kit for my birthday and have made one batch.

It's a bit weak.

Re: Home brewers?
 

See, that's the thing, I was wondering if the time/ballache ratio of the pure grains made it so it wasn't so bad to try in a one gallon brew...but is that not the case?

Just browsing around, loads of info on 5 gallon recipes and what not, but not to much on one gallon and some places seem to get very precise for cutting down the recipe while others aren't, certainly with grain/hops. Don't seem to be much difference in yeast though and they all seem fairly similar in sugars for the carbonation stage as I think it'll be a long time before I go beyond carbonating in bottles themselves :D

Re: Home brewers?
 

No.

Even a pro would have trouble making them taste better than "okay I guess".

The amount of time it takes to brew means that a 5 gallon batch doesn't really take much longer an a 1 gallon batch. You're only really saving on the heating up and cooling down times, which is 30 minutes at best while you do something else.

Recipes are all proportional, so you can scale any recipes up or down by dividing by the same amount. You'd need extra yeast for 10 gallon batches but don't worry about adding too much to a small batch - it makes no difference.

The key part to making homebrew not get the weird homebrew taste is to get the temperature down to 65F before adding the yeast, and make sure it doesn't get much warmer than that while it is fermenting.

Re: Home brewers?
 

I'm going to give up with the Mr Beer, i keep trying different beer thinking i can get better results but its always been horrible. Maybe because i brew in my house which has the thermostat set to 80F before any a/c will come on in the summer. It looks like i might need to brew in the garage during the winter or can you brew in the refrigerator?
I've borrowed a friends proper setup once although i can't remember if it had a carboy or not, but it definitely tasted better than the Mr Beer.

Here in Arizona everyone tells me of a home brew shop with two experts called what ales ya. Its not far from my house i keep meaning to go there but the wife wants me to finish the bathroom first before i take anything else on.

Ideally what i'd like to do is brew a pin sized cask conditioned real ale. I know it has to be consumed within a few days. I normally show up with something British when i go to a superbowl party. Last year i took pork scratchings and all the guys loved them. This time i wanted to take a cask of real ale but it looks like I'm too late.

Re: Home brewers?
 

that's a bugger about the brewing, was hoping it might be easier. Haven't really looked into it all that much, but grains seemed cheaper than extract, though that's certainly a easier option.

As for proportional, that's the problem. When things are shrunk down by a fifth for a one gallon brew, we're talking weird percentages of a ounce for hops and the like and I thought hops was one thing to not stray to far off the mark from?

Re: Home brewers?
 

Northern Brewer (northernbrewer.com) sell 1 gallon recipe kits. They're kits in general are decent. If you are only brewing up 1 gallon all grain would be easy enough to do with basic kitchen equipment. I like extract, liquid and dry, or partial mashing mostly for time but partly because of equipment.

It's very hard to make bad beer and exceptional beer but very easy to make good beer.

Re: Home brewers?
 

If it is a little hoppier, then so be it! I have completely screwed up recipes before, adding the hops at the wrong times, getting the wrong ingredients, even discovering that the recipe printed was wildly off. Every time it still tasted good. Maybe not was I was aiming for, but still good.

The only time you really want to throw it out is if it gets infected by bacteria or a wild yeast, and you'll know from the first taste.

Re: Home brewers?
 

I got a 5gallon kit with one of the syrups to make a Yorkshire bitter. Couldn't be much easier and had great results. I got a nut brown ale syrup in my stocking so I'll make that one next but I'm sure it'll be just as good.
I do eventually intend on making some kind of elderflower beer but we'll wait and see how that works after finishing the first 2 lots.

Re: Home brewers?
 

One nice thing about Maine I've discovered, you can sell, without a license, glass samples of beer up to max of 9oz each but they have to be drunk from a glass, you can't give out the bottle.

Seems quite a lot of mini home brew folks are doing summer stalls apparently.