finally got around to making my own beer
 

i've had the stuff and a book for over a year now. i took a weeks vacation the first week of the year because my parents were home and i took the time to get this done. took about 2 weeks to ferment, and about 2 weeks in the bottles, and tonight....the first taste.

i was a bit scared at first, they really scare you about how clean you have to keep everything during the process. i was also worried about keeping steady temps and then i was scared they wouldn't carbonate. The stuff actually came out damn good, much better than i would have expected. gonna see i can find the time tomorrow to pick up some supplies for my next batch!

awesome. I used to get all my beer from a guy who made it at home. best stuff ever. one day I will try it.

Good homebrew is all about proper sanitization.

And, it's a gear sport. Always something you can pick up to improve your beer equipment. I'd recommend you get a carbonation stone, and an O2 bottle from home depot, and oxygenate the wort with it when you're first starting fermentation. Shaking the carboy around only gives you so much O2 in the wort; the yeast needs basically all it can get at the start of fermentation.

hmm, the direction i was following just said to give the wort a decent shake around in the bucket, seemed to work fine, but i surely could go at it more. how will that change the final result? i know i need to pick up a bottle washer i'll see what else they got. it's a homebrew supply store Keystone Homebrew Supply and they got all kinds of stuff.

Meg and I recently finished our second beer. The first was a hefenwiesen (sp) boxed recipe, pretty simple and came out great. This most recent one was picked from scratch, we went to the homebrew place (Princeton Home Brew) and the guy helped us pick ingredients. We used freshly cracked grains in the boiling wort? and liquid yeast in the fermentation, but not with extra O2, that seems like a good idea. Fermentation was about 7 days, then we did a 5 week secondary fermentation/aging with vanilla beans and wood chips soaked in johnny walker black. It spent 4 weeks in the bottles before we tried it...OMFG. It gets better the longer you have it sit in the bottles. It's been about 10 weeks now, maybe I'll have some more tonight.

It's a blast, and we use the inexpensive plastic carboys. Makes cleanup and sanitation easy.

Oh, we use a turkey frier to boil the wart in our garage. Works awesome.

Having enough O2 at the start of fermentation has two important effects. One is that it will result in a more complete fermentation and thus a higher % alcohol in the final product, which I think we can all agree is a good thing. This is because as the % alcohol increases, the efficiency of fermentation of each individual yeast cell decreases. The extra shot of O2 supports/boosts the replication of the yeast cells at the beginning so you have more of them around later on when the alcohol rises. Incomplete fermentation is not usually anything to worry about until you start brewing bigger beers, but there are really no downsides to having a shitload of viable happy yeast cells working for you.

The extra O2 and the boost it gives the yeast also helps protect against infection by undesirable microbes. The sugary wort is nutrient-rich for any bug, including ones that will make your beer taste like crap. A vigorous yeast culture will outcompete any other microbes that happen to make it past your sanitizing efforts.

The sintered brass stone, valve, and tubing can be bought at your brew supply shop and the O2 cylinders can be had at HD/Lowe's. After you get the wort in the fermenter, give it about a 45-60 second dose of O2.

Keep in mind that while lots of O2 is good to start fermentation, you want to minimize the air/O2 exposure of your finished beer. Oxidation will wreck hops flavor and generally make the beer taste old and stale, so when racking to a secondary fermenter or bottling/kegging you want to disturb the liquid as little as possible. Keep your siphon ends submerged at all times and keep the sloshing to a minimum. :beer:

sounds good, i may try something like that for the next time around, but i wanted to use premade stuff for the first time around. and i just used a 20qt stock pot on my stove, didn't stink up my house like people said it would. oh and i'm using the plastic stuff right now too. the guy at the store said that's what he's been using since he started years ago.
.

lol. ok well you make a good case. more stuff to buy i suppose:sadwavey:

I can't wait until I have the space and time to start home brewing. Damn barracks and Army.