Anyone into homebrewing beer here???

[Verminaard]

Just curious if theres any other plantgeeks who happen to brew their own beer out there. I just brewed my first batch this past weekend. I had been wanting to try homebrewing for a very long time.(All I need is another hobby) . I thought it would be somewhat difficult but after doing it once it doesnt seem so bad. In three weeks I should be enjoying a very nice English India Pale Ale......heres a look right after brewing yesterday-thats 5 gallons of nearly free beer!

[Momotaro]

Not a homebrewer, but a real beer fan. A real GOOD beer fan.

Anyone else into good beer??

Mike

[rumples riot]

Yeah Homebrewer here, been into to it for nearly 14 years now. Every couple of years I make about two hundred bottles of ale, or stout, or wheat beer or lager. what ever takes my fancy.

Then I let it sit in the bottles for a minimum of two years. The taste will improve out of sight with this duration. So I am nearly heading for the next lot as I only have about 70 bottles left.

This stuff that I brew is more like fine wine than quaffing beer. Best enjoyed one bottle every now and then. For quaffing I buy the commercial stuff.

Paul

[FiberCon]

I love a good beer and I'm interested in home brewing, but I'm not sure if anywhere local to me carries the stuff I'll need. Of course, there is always the internet.


As to what's a good commercial beer? I like the following (in no particular order): Kirin, Hoegarden, Youngs Double Chocolate Stout, and a bunch more but those are my favorites lately.

I've also recently invested in two bottles of Belgium Lambic beer. This stuff is pretty rare, as it comes from a valley in Belgium where the breweries (only a few of them) don't add yeast to their mix but instead let natural yeasts from the air do the fermintation. After the intial sugars are digested by the yeast, they add in fruit (usually cherries or raspberries) and then let it ferment again. I haven't tried either bottle yet (as I said, they were an investment costing $6.50 each) as I'm saving them for a special occasion (when I get a job which I hope is soon.)

Oh, and there was one other very cool beer at my local wine / beer shop. Oraveil or something like that. Another beer from Belgium (as is Hoegarden) that is made by a monastary. The monks at this monastary have been making this one type of beer since 1070, so it must be good. Only problem is, I can't buy it in NC because this state has a stupid "beer can not contain more than 6.5% alcohol by volume" law. Supposedly this is being repealed this fall so maybe I can get some then.

[rumples riot]

Hey mate, here in Oz we have a limit on how much alcohol you should have in your beer. It arn't beer unless it is at least 5.0% anything less is dogs P**s or at least they call it light beer.

Paul

[Geo]

I <3 Beer.

Big fan of the microbrews here in Wisconsin, and I just got back from Germany a couple weeks back and had some WONDERFUL beers in Koblenz and Heidelberg.

But then again, I am a college student so I'm not against quaffing beer either

Nothing like Milwaukee BEAST in a beer bong ... ... ... *shudders*

And who can pass up $1 PBRs at a bar? I mean ... really

[you]

I'm into distilling what doesn't work out from my friends brewing. It ends up tasting the same as it did to start with, but at 60-70% alcohol.

Unfortunately he figured out how to brew so there's not much for me to do anymore.

[Momotaro]

Belgian beer...my favorite! It must be all of the candy sugar they put in it that I love. My girlfriend and I drank a 64oz. growler of Piraat, a wonderful Belgian beer last Saturday night. At 10.5% alcohol, we felt pretty good about or accomplishment!

My girlfriend has turned me into a major beer fan. We drove an hour and a half to get to the shop that sold the Piraat on tap. She has travelled the world tasting beer and visiting breweries. My gosh, the places she has been!

You name the beer, I bet she has tried it!

Mike

[Jesse]

Geo-
Have you tried the New Glarus Belgian Red? In my mind it's an ideal lambic. As a matter of fact, I am flying up to Milwaukee next weekend to buy a case if I can get my hands on some. Do you know any places near Milwaukee that sells it? Oh, and my wife's family is having a reunion or something like that near Sturgeon Bay... Ha! I hope she doesn't read this, very unlikely though...

Has anyone ever tried using the CO2 produced by the fermenting beer??? That is what I call a double bonus... Mmmm... Beer.

Jesse

[Momotaro]

When I think Lambics, I think Lindemann's!!

Mike

[putty]

I love beer. Stella, Heineken, New Castle Brown and Corona are my favs. Okocim and Zywiec come from my home land and are quite good as well.

[channafreak]

Hook a hose up to that for some DIY CO2...........

[Verminaard]

Originally Posted by channafreak

Hook a hose up to that for some DIY CO2...........

With the amount of co2 being released from primary fermentation it would probably kill the fish!!! . It does bring up a good point for the DIY co2ers. They sell liquid yeast starter packs (for brewing beer) that are reasonably cheap and each packet has over 100 billion active cells. Feed it enough sugar and you could probably have a decent co2 concentration. It is a much higher quality yeast (when compared with dry packet yeast) so who knows.........