Your Questions About Homemade Beer

Brian answers:

Malt is available in freeze-dried crystal, or liquid form. Do a Google and see if there are any mail order sources for it. It shouldn’t cost that much, but the shipping fees could kill you. To make 5 gallons of beer, you’ll need about 3.5 to 5 pounds of malt.

You could also make your own. Malt is not a grain, it is a process. Beer is usually made from barley, but any grain can be used. Place the grain in water, and let sit. After 3 to 5 days, it will start to sprout. The water starts the growing process. The grain is mostly carbohydrate in its dry form. When it starts to grow, the carb is converted to sugar which is what you want. Let the soaking grain continue another 1/2 to 1 day. Pour the water out, and put the grain in a warm oven to dry it. This can take some time. I’m not sure about temperatures, but the hotter you “cook”, the more amber the beer will be. I’m guessing, but I think if you started at around 300F, it should be OK. After it is dried, crush it and start your process. Boil the malt adding hops. When it’s cooked, let it cool. When it reaches 70 – 75F, pitch the yeast.

Brian answers:

I ferment from 7-14 days in primary, and another 7-14 days in the secondary. Then you have the agonizing wait for bottle conditioning, unless you keg and force carbonate. All in all, the wait is always worth the end result, a good beer that you can proudly share with friends. And after the initial investment for the equipment you save substantial amounts of money over buying expensive microbrewed beers.

Brian answers:

From supermarkets or home brew shops you buy a tin with the recipe base. It tells you how to make it on that tin. If you buy it from a home brew shop, you will be able to quiz the store person too.

Brian answers:

If you are interested in picking up homebrewing as a hobby, I would recommend you check out http://www.howtobrew.com and http://www.homebrewtalk.com//index.php?referrerid=11145 , these are the two best online sources for homebrewing information. I would also recommend you pick up a copy of Charlie Papzian’s book ‘The Complete Joy of Homebrewing’, this is the quintessential bible of homebrew.
As far as equipment goes, you can find a ‘starter kit’ at your local homebrew shop or online at http://www.midwestsupplies.com or http://www.austinhomebrew.com . These starter kits will include all of the equipment you need to start brewing.
As far as recipes go, the homebrew shops will also carry recipe kits (I would recommend an extract brew kit for your first couple brews) in just about any flavor you could want. If you have access to the raw materials (malted barley, hops, yeast) then there are numerous recipes available on homebrewtalk.com (link above), or there are tons of other websites full of recipes. To give you a specific recipe without knowing what style of beer you want to brew would just be silly. Check out http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/ for style guidelines.

Feel free to email me anytime if you need help or have any further questions.

Brian answers:

You don’t. We use bottles and capers.

Bottles –

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/12-oz-bottles-amber-case-of-24.html

Caps –

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/plain-gold-caps-144-count.html

Caper –

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/red-baron-bottle-capper.html

Canning is to expensive for home use. Besides bottles are re-usable and better for the environment. The cost less energy to recycle and they have a higher recycle rate of returns than cans. Besides, if you save all your pry top bottles you cut your brewing cost in half. I only have to by a case of bottles once or twice a year to supplement the bottles I give away.

Brian answers:

Me and my boyfriend just started brewing our own beer(like the beginning of march) so I’m not too experienced…
But I’ll try to help :]
We use Malt extract recipes(not all-grain)… Since it ends up being cheaper than the beer kits… And you can control the amount of ingredients you put in
Maybe try a malt-extract recipe instead of using a kit… That way you can be creative with what you put in…
We found a really cool website for homebrewing supplies, if you are interested.

Http://www.brewbyyou.com/

Hope that helps.

Brian answers:

If your primary is plastic, don’t leave it for more than two weeks. If glass, you could go a little longer. Plastic gives off-tastes. So does leaving the wort on the spent yeast for too long.

Brian answers:

Less air is better, you could find some 1 gallon jugs and ferment it in two separate batches, but of course you’d need a rubber cork w/ airlock for each.