Home Beer Brewing--good or bad idea?

[Pei]

First question: is it completely insane to attempt home brewing in a one bedroom apartment? I tend to think the answer is yes, but maybe it's been done?

Second question: where do I get the supplies? Are there beer brewing stores, or do I go to a restaurant supply store?

Third question: what kind of quantities am I looking at? 12 bottles? 24 bottles?

Final question: what's the typical up front cost? I know it's going to cost me more than going to the store for some beer, but how much more?

I found these very basic instructions on line, but was wondering if anyone had had particularly positive/negative experiences with home brewing.

http://www.wyrdwords.vispa.com/heathe...

[noahbirnel]

I've done it in a studio apartment. Now that I'm renting a house, I much prefer brewing outside with a propane cooker and a seven gallon brewpot. But you can brew in a small apartment. You'll want to wipe down the walls afterwards.

Yes, go to a beer brewing store, or find a place on-line. You'll find equipment, supplies, and (variable) expertise. Get the book "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing". A brewing store will usually have a package deal on that book, a few small pieces of equipment, and maybe a starter pack for one brew, for $50-100. It's not a bad deal. Restaurant supply stores can sell you pots, though.

A five gallon batch (the 'ordinary' home-brewer's batch) yields about 30 bottles. So the up-front cost is obviously a lot more than you will recover in one batch, if you get the kit. Your per-bottle cost after you have your basic equipment will run around $0.50, plus fuel for boiling, and time. You may develop an equipment-buying addiction if you ever find yourself in a more spacious house. You save a little money home-brewing, but not a lot.

More equipment and knowledge will allow you to perform more complicated brews at a much lower price. But by the time you get that deeply into it, you will be too much of a beer snob to worry about price.

If nothing else, get the book, read it, and figure out the smallest, cheapest, most space-saving brew you can do in your apartment. Do it just once, just to know that you can. Don't forget to drink the beer.

[Jim Dorsch]

5 gallons yields about two cases (48 12oz bottles).

Homebrewing will teach you a lot about beer; that's what's great about it to me. You can save perhaps a small amount, but that's not the payoff.

[MaineRed]

Great reply -- you should totally do it! We have modified our operation a bit...and bought a turkey fryer for the huge pot and hopefully some outside brewing sometime. it does take some space, but it's worth it...

Google "homebrew supplies" and your town/state...there are lots out there. And next time you are at your local brewery, pick up a Brewing News (http://www.brewingnews.com).

[JMF]

Brewing is a fantastic hobby. I started brewing in my college dorm on Long Island, NY. I cooked up the wort in the dorm kitchen and then stored the fermenters under my desk and in odd corners of my room. I only bottled the brew a few times since it is such a hassle. I got hold of a few soda kegs, called cornelius kegs, which are tall and thin and hold five gallons. Those plus a CO2 tank and I was kegging my beer, which made brewing and drinking much easier and more fun.

In grad school in Seattle I got into it big time and got a job as assistant brewer at an excellent brewpub. At my next grad school in Georgia I had 12 five gallon batches of home brew going at a time, by then I was renting a house. I paid the rent and made money by having $10 a head, all you can drink and eat parties every two weeks. (The food was usually fried catfish and snapping turtle soup since I lived on a cove off a lake and had large fishtraps that provided 5-6, 3-4ft long fish and 2-3 turtles a week.)

Nowadays I only brew a few times a year and go for unique and interesting brews that I can cellar, such as barleywines and Belgian styles. You can get started for under $100 and spend $25-45 per five gallon batch. Have fun!

[liegey]

I brewed while living in a one-room apt with no problem.

That link you have in your post outlines some non-standard procedures & ingredients. You will be much better off starting with info from this site:
www.beertown.org/homebrewing/beginnin...

This is the home site of the American Homebrewers Assoc. & has the most up-to-date recommendations for ingredients & equipment.

morebeer.com is one of many online brew supply stores. They have everything you'd need & you can get a good idea of upfront costs by checking out their complete kits (after you learn more about what you want to brew & at what scale).

[JMF]

pei, I agree with liegey that the site you linked to has non-standard procedures and ingredients and the link liegey provided to the AHA is the way to go. That site is great and very informative, it's like having someone be there and talk you through the whole process.

Also on the AHA site you can look up local homebrewing clubs and you will find folks who love brewing and will help you learn everything you need to know.

[Pei]

Thanks everyone! It sounds really exciting, I just don't know if I have room in my life for so many large containers...I love things that "grow" in the kitchen (yogurt, bread starters, kombucha, mushroom plants, herb gardens) but I might need to hold off on the beer.

[LStaff]

Its a good idea if you don't mind the work. As long as you have enough space for a few buckets and a resonably cool (60-70F)place for fermentation, you can make beer.

Equipment kits go for $60-100, ingredient kits can range from $25-35 depending on style for each batch. Batches are usually 5 gallons and you yield about two cases of 12 oz bottles. You will need a pot to boil the wort, but you can do a concentrated boil with a pot that holds 2 or more gallons and add water to the fermenter to get up to 5 gals.

You can make beer at home cheaper than you can buy it - for microbrews anyway. And with some practice and adhearence to some basic principles, you can make really good beer. My first attempts were poor, but with practice, and research, I now make beer that is on par with some of the best microbreweries in the US. I would suggest reading/buying How to Brew by John Palmer. You can read it for free on the internet here: http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

You may want to read what it takes and the time involved to make beer before you go out and buy some equipment. Or contact a local homebrew club and attend a meeting and meet someone who can show you what it takes. Brewing the beer itself should take you 2-3 hours for extract batches, it will take a week to ferment, then another week or two to condition, then it takes 2-3 hours to bottle it, then you wait 2-4 weeks for it to carbonate and condition in the bottle. At the very least it will take 4 weeks to make beer.

If you decide to make the plunge, search for a local homebrew shop, and if one is within a half hour or so of your house, go there, buy your equipment, and start building a relationship with them, because you may need their help starting out. Plenty of homebrew shops on the internet also - I use http://www.austinhomebrew.com/ for ingredients I can't find at my lhbs - you can't beat the flat fee shipping rate of $6.

It is a very rewarding hobby when you start making good beer.

[Pei]

Aha, you sealed the nail in my beer coffin. I don't have anywhere in the apartment that stays below 70 degrees for even a few hours out of the day.

So this will have to wait until winter...or beyond.

But thanks for all the responses, everyone! Very enlightening, and great pointers to bookmark for the future (thank goodness for that new feature--thanks Chowhound Team!)

[JMF]

When I lived down south I brewed ales all the time and my home averaged around 75 degrees. You get different flavors when you brew at warm temps but those flavors go well with the amber, medium, darker, and brown ales. Also a good hopping level works well with warmer fermenting temps.

[noahbirnel]

No, do it whenever you have the capital to start running. Hot fermenting will never yield good lager, but ales are fine... just expect more fruity flavors. Remember that boozy things have been brewed all over the world without fridges or cellars. Go to it and learn in the process.

[ted]

I got into home brewing to make a Belgian style white beer, and quickly ended up doing all-grain brewing. I don't suggest going quite that far yet- it's a big investment in gear, time, and space. But the Wyeast witbier strain, in my experience, actually did best with a temp in the low 70's. Below that and it would glug along forever (weeks) to finish fermenting. You could emulate a white beer w/ a kit or extracts and get good results while it's still warm.

[howtobrewbeer]

There are lots of people who brew in hot temps.. all you need to do is keep an eye on the brews temp and cover the kit with a wet towel, this helps keep the temps down!

Also, just store it in a shady spot of the apartment

[Ali G]

I started brewing with one of those Mr. Beer kits. I'd have to say, skip that and fork over the money for a decent kit. The beer I made from the kit was OK, but I'd probably still prefer a Bud Light over it.

Talking with people from work, I found several guys who had brewed at home for years. I'm now trying to use some of their experience to try recipes they enjoyed and had good luck with. Here is a shop that is local to me that also ships their products, however, I'm sure there is a similar store in the LA area closer to you. Good Luck.

http://www.beer-wine.com/

[Jim Dorsch]

IIRC Mr Beer does not utilize a boil, an essential step in wort production.

[Captain]

Brew, you will learn much about beer by brewing. Use malt extract, but try to get cans or bags that are unhopped. Find recipes calling for unhopped malt extract. Put the hops in yourself. Ferment in glass. Taste everything. Drink beer while you brew.

[Jim Dorsch]

I've always found it useful to maintain lucid thinking by enjoying beer after I'm through, not while brewing.

[dijon]

I think you can brew in your apartment as I did years ago in a one BR, just don't transfer the hot wort directly to a glass carboy like I did or you risk having gallons of hot wort all over the floor if the carboy cracks. The real question is do you like the home brew taste? If you like the import/microbrew beers with yeast on the bottom you are getting an idea about what they generally taste like. I'm not a big fan of that yeast taste, and in my experience no one else will appreciate your beer but another home brewer. It is an interesting hobby, but there is a significant amount of work to it and the initial investment adds up, I concur with skipping the Mr Brew type all in one plastic brew kits. As you might gather I have gotten rid of my homew brew and wine making supplies. Look around for someone who still has supplies left in their basement and buy or borrow those if you are still interested.

Doug

[jbg7]

I just started brewing myself. I have a few friends that are very serious, so I was able to get some higher end supplies for brewing, and most of the supplies for kegging. I have had great success with my beers so far. You just have to make sure you have everything prepared and sanitized, and take your time when you are moving your beer - it's not a race!

I get most of my kits and supplies from the web. Start out small and work your way up. Your first beer will not win awards. And pretty soon you will be able to create flavors and styles that you've always wanted to try or make up out of the blue.

Enjoy.

[pauly99]

You most definitely can make your own beer at home. I've been doing so for years.
#1. See if you can find any local brew supply stores. I have one about 4 miles from where I live, so I'm lucky. Otherwise, the great thing about the internet is that you can buy all of your supplies online. I started for about $150 and that included all of the supplies and the beer kit. You will typically be making around 40-50 bottles at a time when you are making your own beer.

Pretty much what you will need is the following:
Drinking water (usually about 5 gallons)
Pot to boil the ingredients (around 20 quarts)
Plastic bucket that seals well and has a hole in it for an airlock
Airlock
Carboy
Auto Siphon
Large mixing spoon
Bottles. About 48-55 is a good start but do not buy the screw top kind. Brown are best.
Caps for bottles
Sanitizer (some use bleach but I prefer C-Brite or B-Brite.
Hydrometer
Beer kit.

Without going into too much detail, the beer kit will give you all the instructions you will need. Of course with anything, there are beginner kits, intermediate kits, and at some point if you really gets into this, you can buy individual ingredients either at your beer supply store or off the internet.. If you started today, you could be drinking your first homemade beer in about one month. I could layout all the particulars of how I make my own beer at home but instead, I'd recommend that you check out this website for more details... http://howtomakeyourownbeerathome.info/

[chuckl]

theres lots of good reasons for home brewing. you learn a lot about the process, you learn to respect beer more, it's not that expensive and you can make new friends. but for me it comes down to, can i make better beer than i can buy in a good beer store?

[LStaff]

With some experience/knowledge, yes you can. Mostly because it will be fresher, brewed to your taste preferences, and you won't have any commercial restraints (cost/sales).

[The Professor]

You absolutely can make beer at home that is better than the beer you buy.
And if you stay with it and eventually transition to brewing from all grain, you can also save a ton of money versus what you pay in the stores.

Two weeks ago I celebrated my 39th year of home brewing. I rarely buy commercial beer other than single bottles I occasionally pick up to try the newer things out there. Sometimes they can inspire, but by and large there are few if any commercial beers (big or small) that I would choose over the home made stuff.
Once you understand the processes involved and master them, microbrewery beer loses quite a lot of it's mystique especially when you realize just how inexpensively you can make beer of equal and often better quality.

[chuckl]

congratulations, Professor, on your anniversary, and I have no doubt you make some fine beers. You are correct in saying that the process is relatively simple. However, the devil is in the details and often in the unique characteristics of the locale. With all due respect, however, I doubt you can make anything that approaches a Saison Dupont, a Gulden Draak, a Weihenstaphener Korbinian or Vitus, Orval, a Chimay Reserve, an Allagash White, a Russian River Damnation or Consecration, or an Ayinger Celebrator, which are the types of beers that I like to drink.

[niquejim]

@chuckl
"With all due respect, however, I doubt you can make anything that approaches a Saison Dupont, a Gulden Draak, a Weihenstaphener Korbinian or Vitus, Orval, a Chimay Reserve, an Allagash White, a Russian River Damnation or Consecration, or an Ayinger Celebrator, which are the types of beers that I like to drink."
That's the thing, a good homebrewer can make beers very simalar to those beer if they use the correct malts, with the correct water, ferment at the correct temps and use the right yeast. And you have a lot of fun experimenting trying to reach your goal;-)

[chuckl]

I agree that home brewing is a lot of fun and very educational. And that good brewers like the professor can make fine beer. Some of my friends make award winning home brew, and one of them recently opened a home brewing store. All I'm saying is that when I drink the beers I mentioned, I'm looking for specific flavors that are unique to those beers. You can use the same recipes, but because you are in a different place and the ingredients will be different, however slightly, the results just won't be the same. Belgian beers in particular are very dependent upon the yeast strains, and those conditions are not easy to replicate somewhere else. I would be the last person to criticize the art of home brewing. If it wasn't for home brewing we would not have the craft beer we have today. But for me, I like being able to go to a good beer store and bring home an assortment of Belgian ales, German lagers and weissebiers, etc. for the variety of flavors I can use to drink by themselves or to pair with food. Brewing up 5 gallons of one particular style just isn't for me. The process is far less interesting to me than the end result

[JMF]

chuckl-That just means home brewing isn't for you. For a great majority of home brewers the process is even more fun than the final result. Most home brewers I know are perfectionists who can recreate, after a time of trial and error, any beer on the market. Back in the early 90's when I was big into the scene, the club I belonged to had competitions with blind tastings to recreate many of the beers you list above. Several of the folks from that group went on to become professional brewers, including myself.

[chuckl]

I wouldn't disagree with any of this. I have the greatest respect for home brewers and what they can accomplish. Thanks Jimmy Carter and Sen. Alan Cranston, who helped with home brew legislation in 1978. For me, it's more about convenience and variety, but I tip my hat to all of you who have the skill and the patience to do it right. What's unique about our microbrew culture is that individuals are free to use trial and error to create something that's different from what's already out there. To me, it's the essence of American ingenuity, taking something that people are already familiar with and making something new. If it wasn't for you guys and gals we would never have the variety we have today and we'd all be hunting for imports or stuck drinking fizzy yellow water.

[JMF]

You should see what the American distillers are doing. It's shaking up the old fuddy duddy distilling world. The old Scottish whiskey guys are taking a keen look at the way and types of things we are doing. American ingenuity is all about finding new ways of doing things, and of the highest quality. I have a young Scottish distiller who sits me down for hours whenever he is in the country to stay on top of all the wild things that are going on in the artisanal US distilling biz.

[chuckl]

I'd like to know more about what you guys are up to, I think that both beer and spirits are going through an evolutionary period right now, particularly when it comes to food pairings. I'm writing a blog about beer/food here in San Francisco and the creativity is astounding. allbrews.blogspot.com

[thew]

why would you doubt it?

if you have the right malts hops yeasts and spices......

[LStaff]

And some homebrewers would say - why would you want to make something that someone else already makes? I got into homebrewing because I wanted to make some cheap clones of beers I liked. But what keeps me interested in homebrewing 10 years later is that I can make beer you just can't buy. When you drink only commercial beer, you are bound to the flavors that commercial operations make, when you learn to brew, you are only bound by your imagination and willingness to put in the effort.

To turn your statement around, would Orval be able to brew a beer that comes close to Celebrator? Probably not, because they aren't Ayinger.

[steveprez]

This has been an interesting discussion. I used to home brew quite frequently but eventually gave it up, primarily because I like to drink a variety of different beers and taste new beers. Brewing several cases was limiting in that regard.

The one thing about homebrewing, IMHO, that can not be replicated by commercial beers is the taste of 'freshness'. I'm not sure I can adequately describe it but homebrews have a fresh taste. Kinda like fresh bread coming out of the oven at home. You can buy great bread in stores but it lacks the freshness of bread out of the oven at home. Anyone else have this opinion?

[JMF]

Definitely.

[JMF]

Professor, congrats on 39 years of brewing. Last month was the 18th anniversary of my first home brewing back in the summer before my last year of undergrad. I went from not drinking at all for several years, straight into brewing, because I thought it would be a fun hobby. This summer is also the 17th anniversary of my first professional brewing, from when I worked at a brew pub in Seattle in grad school.

[briggssteel]

Yes. You should definitely start brewing. I just did my first batch and am about to try it within a week. As someone who just started and is fresh to brewing here are some tips:

1. Read. Read. And read some more. Learn about hop profiles. Malt profiles. Yeast profiles. Learn about the process of brewing and go over it in your head before you do it. This will give you a solid plan of attack.

2. Midwest brewing supplies has everything you need. Letting you know though, it is FAR from cheap for all of the stuff. First of all, order a starter kit.Once you get the process down, go through it and write down all the misc. stuff you need. Make a list and then order from that list.

3. Some tips when brewing that I screwed up on. When you boil your wort, you will boil then add top off water to dilute it and reach the 5 gallon mark. MAKE SURE you have more than enough. We didn't boil enough and lost a ton of water to evaporation. Our 5 gallon batch of pale ale went to a 3 gallon batch of India Pale Ale. Luckily it still tasted good.

Practice with your auto-siphon! We decided to wing it and got plenty of oxygen in our beer, which is bad. Although we didn't do this, MAKE SURE to add the right amount of priming sugar to your beer. If you add too much you will create exploding bottles.

Some additional tips: Go with malt extract as opposed to all grain at first. Also, I highly recommend Wyeast Liquid Activator Yeast. They are bags you slap at least 3 hours before using it. Once the bag swells all you have to do is dump it in your wort. A lot of people will tell you to make a starter for it but we still got an awesome fermentation and the beer tasted great.

I definitely recommend brewing. Even though we screwed up with getting oxygen in our beer and it might not be the best now, it still was a total blast brewing our own beer. It's so much fun to watch it through the process and there are so many styles to pick from. Don't let screwing up get you discouraged either. We screwed up royally and we're still pumped to try our finished product and can't wait to start the next batch! Good luck!

[chuckl]

if you're in Oregon, they're clamping down on sharing, apparently. total bs

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/in...

[beertaps]

No, it's not insane to brew in a small apartment. But, you do need at least a kitchen and a space out of the way for fermentation phases.

The supplies you need, you can get from a hardware store. A few pots from a department store, some containers for the fermentation stages and then a few extra gadgets to get everything just right.

As far as quantities are concerned, just start boiling and going through the stages. When you get to the primary fermentation stage, you'll have a good idea of how many bottles you need. Take the quantity you have and divide by 12 oz bottles.

As far as cost is concerned, a sufficient kit can cost anywhere from $50 to $100. If you want a more elaborate setup, you'll be able to save some money if you get the supplies like I talked about earlier. But if you are thinking about getting into brewing, a few batches will save you money. All you need now is the barley, hops and yeast.