It doesn’t feel like a Friday, but it is.
Any home brewers out there? I got a beer making kit (well, not a kit per se — I got beer making equipment) for Christmas and may start the inaugural batch of Crackerbräu this weekend. Any tips?
Feel free to discuss whatever.
schrodinger's cat
How is your doggie’s tail? Completely healed?
raven
Games all day again. That 1am shit was a drag.
Quaker in a Basement
Tip #1: Sterilize! Nothing ruins a batch of homebrew like stray bacteria.
Davis X. Machina
Scrupulous cleanliness is the secret.
srv
Situation Normal, West Virginia.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s still not 100%. She can wag, but she still holds her tail oddly (down almost all the time), and doesn’t seem herself. I’m thinking about taking her back to the vet about it, but I’m not sure what good it would do. Thanks for asking!
Betty Cracker
@Quaker in a Basement: The guides I’ve read emphasize that repeatedly, so I’m taking it to heart even though I’m usually a slob.
wmd
Get liquid yeast. Don’t try to brew lagers unless you’ve got a space you can keep below 55° F for an extended period.
Beer making is a form of cooking. If you spend time to learn beer styles by tasting a wide variety, you’ll develop a palate – then experiment with brewing the kinds you enjoy (and enjoy sharing).
Sanitizing has been said repeatedly already. Being a slob myself I’d say it’s important for anything that comes in contact with wort (fermenters and bottles, siphon tubes, etc). Pretty easy to do this though, and you can still be a slob.
Xantar
I’m really sorry that Harry Reid was badly injured and I hope he makes a speedy and full recovery.
But a part of me just can’t resist making, “He’s losing face” jokes.
I’ll go show myself out the door now.
MomSense
When it comes to beer making I am the chief bottle washer. I don’t know much about it except there is a lot of steam and washing.
smintheus
Quality of your water matters a lot.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Poor doggie, hope she feels better soon.
To all those I missed yesterday, Happy New Year!
Betty Cracker
@smintheus: So is spring water the way to go?
BeanDip
Aside from sanitation, my biggest reccommend is to invest the extra money into a kegging setup (5gal pepsi kegs). The bottle washing and filling dance was just too much of a PITA for me to keep up. Kegging, on the other hand, is easy and having draft beer at home is great. It does require a bigger capital investment than bottling though.
wmd
If you find yourself needing more glass fermenting vessels, buy 5 gallons of bottled water in a glass carboy. Use the water for brewing, carboy for fermenting – the deposit is cheaper than buying carboys from brewing suppliers.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: Still on restricted wagging? Poor thing.
pacem appellant
@wmd: I disagree about liquid yeast. I find dry yeast works just as well, if not better.
@Betty Cracker: It cannot be over-emphasized–especially with beer–sanitation is king. I use TSP to scrub every pot and carboy surface that will touch the wort, and I use a sink full of warm water and iodine to kill the buggies on the racking equipment. If you’re worried something isn’t clean enough, clean it again. Some homebrewers use sulphur tablets as well (right before racking), but I’ve found that TSP, iodine, and elbow grease get the job done.
Do not do like we did in college and start the rack siphon with a swig of vodka. While tasty, it does nothing to actually kill the bacteria in your mouth. Invest in a hand-pump siphon. Easy to clean and well worth the extra money (You may still swig vodka, too).
Also of critical importance, do not homebrew without a homebrew. If you don’t have homebrew then something from the store in the style in you’re attempting will suffice. Maintain a steady buzz from boil to carboy. You’ll do just fine.
Ripley
@smintheus: This. I turned my first few batches into the liquid equivalent of a rubber tire by using tap water. Use spring water (or at least purified or distilled water) or, if you’re lucky enough to have a well, use that.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@raven:
You gotta man up. It’s the playoffs!
Bitter and Deluded Lurker
It depends on the flavor profile you’re after, but for a beginner I’d actually recommend dry yeast. There are some nice, well-performing dry yeasts that work well in ales where flavor from the yeast is not a critical component of the style.
I certainly wouldn’t use a dry yeast for a Belgian-style ale, though.
pacem appellant
@Betty Cracker: Depends. We have very few dissolved solids in our tap water, so we sometimes add gypsum to increase the hardness of the water.
Avery Greynold
Try wine. I’ve proven a mead kit is idiot-proof. Or be really adventuresome, and make some prison hooch. Quick, much fun in the making (recipes include ketchup) and tasting is unforgettable.
smintheus
@Betty Cracker: I would say so, if you know it’s pure. We use our well water, which is excellent. The last thing you want is water with a strong taste, like iron or fluoridation.
raven
@Steeplejack (tablet): Shit is stupid and the natty will be just as bad on a frickin Monday.
elmo
Oooo, this is timely! My wife has repeatedly expressed interest in beermaking – she’s a huge beer snob, and it’s hard to find the dark, dark stouts that she likes – and we have a big enough basement that it might be do-able. Is it a huge pain?
Cacti
It must be the mother of all coincidences that in the first year of a college football playoff, the SEC looks like southern-fried frauds.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@raven:
What is natty?
Betty Cracker
@Avery Greynold: I make cider all the time (unbelievably easy), and a neighbor and the mister occasionally make mead. Mead is good, but I really do want to try beer.
Betty Cracker
@Bitter and Deluded Lurker: I have ingredients for “Ranger IPA,” so that will be my first attempt.
smintheus
@wmd: We use steel cornelius kegs, which we get used from a beverage supply co. locally for 10 or 15 bucks. They’re easy to sterilize with boiling water, and to siphon using a bit of forced CO2. And nothing can break them.
Tim F.
Check out this post I wrote on homebrewing back in ’09. For recipes, nothing will piss off those dittohead relatives like the White House’s own homebrew. I even hear it’s pretty good.
raven
@Steeplejack (tablet): National Championship.
the SEC WEST looks like southern-fried frauds.
Go Dawgs!!!!
Tim F.
@elmo: Do NOT brew beer in your basement. Carbon monoxide will kill you for sure. Brew the mash in your kitchen or on a burner outside.
Betty Cracker
@elmo: It seems fairly complicated, but I enjoy that sort of project. I’ll let you know how it goes!
elmo
@Tim F.: OH! Well, gosh, that sounds like good advice. I had no idea.
we were talking about brewing in the basement because that’s where we have excess space, and I’d always heard that beermaking is a space hog.
what about the garage, with the door open?
J R in WV
You need to know the pH of your water, and adjust it if it isn’t good for the style of beer you’re shooting for. I dunno what acidity/base is best for which beer.
I have friends who use fountain beverage “kegs” and a CO2 tank instead of 12 oz (etc) bottles, to avoid sterilizing all those bottles. I used the dishwasher to sterilize bottles the few times I brewed. Good homebrew is very good, but it isn’t easy, not that hard tho, either. Cross between intro chemistry and cooking, sort of.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
The key is that water is the single biggest ingredient in your beer. If your tap water tastes great, it’s probably OK for beer making. If you buy bottled water because you can’t stand to drink the tap water, for FSM’s sake, use the bottled water for your beer.
grumpy realist
@Betty Cracker: Cider? Cider is what happens when you leave the jug of unpasturized and unfiltered squished apple stuff in the fridge and just wait. Never bothered to bottle it–it disappeared too quickly to worry about. (and if you leave it too long, you end up with apple vinegar.)
wmd
190 proof grain alcohol will kill wild yeasts – I use it to wipe exterior surfaces of siphon tubes, etc.
gravity will work fine for starting a siphon – fill tubes with water beforehand. No need for a pump or putting your mouth on siphon.
With liquid yeasts you have a wide range of choices – dry yeasts have a much more limited selection. Neither type is problematic to use. The slight cost difference is moot if you propagate your yeast and then keep a starter culture.
Sanitization for boiling vessels is less important than fermenters – basically you don’t want rat feces in the boiling vessel, but infection isn’t a problem – boiling wort kills microorganisms just fine.
D58826
This isn’t going to end well –
Insomniac
I know this thread is about beer brewing, but I have a question about brewing a different beverage – Cider. What are the good/best brands of non-pasteurized apple juice to use for this? Available in the VA-MD-DC area? TIA
Roger Moore
@Tim F.:
Note that this is for the parts that require heating; it’s the CO from the burner that would get you. It should be fine to do the fermentation in the basement. It would actually be a good location, since it’s likely to be dark and have a stable temperature, both of which you want.
Ronnie Pudding
Homebrewing is all about sanitation and temp controls. Don’t let your fermenter sit in a room that’s >70 degrees.More like 65.
I would also say, don’t be a recipe snob yet. Start out simple, nail the basics. I disagree with the comments about needing to use liquid yeast or worry about water pH yet (you arene’t doing all grain yet, are you?).
Roger Moore
@wmd:
Which is why it’s usually safe to drink the beer in places where microbes make the water questionable.
ruemara
@D58826: Link, please?
I’m at a cafe doing more work on the upcoming media schedule and trying to work on an accomplishment based resume. The roommate is back with his appendage, so the year has already slid back into the usual.
Tree With Water
“It doesn’t feel like a Friday, but it is”.
Yup, been thinking the same all morning. Last night felt like a Sunday night to me, as well.
Betty Cracker
@Insomniac: Commenter Betsy gave me the easiest cider recipe in the world, which I implement as follows: Buy a glass jug of Martinelli’s unpasteurized cider or apple juice at the grocery store, loosen the cap, pour in some champagne yeast, replace the cap LOOSELY and store in a dark place, and voila, hard cider in a few days. (It’s a good idea to put paper towels under the jug to catch any overflow while it’s fermenting.)
The ratio is about a teaspoon of yeast to the gallon, and the Martinelli’s jugs are less than a gallon, so I eyeball it. The longer it sits, the stronger it gets. I like it when it’s still somewhat fizzy and sweet after three or four days, but you can taste it daily and decide what level you like. Just refrigerate it to stop/slow the fermentation. If you leave it for much longer, it tastes more like apple wine — quite a bit stronger and drier, but also still good.
wmd
@Betty Cracker: Refrigerate, then rack it so there is less yeast flavor. Use the yeast left behind from racking it to start a fresh batch.
A fermentation lock and drilled rubber stopper would work better than putting cap back on.
Infamous Heel-Filcher
I would, however, recommend “starting” dry yeast in a (sanitized) simple syrup before pitching it to your wort, however: you never know if a cosmic ray penetrated your lead-lined concrete bunker and killed all the wee yeasties.
Goblue72
Assuming you are starting off doing extract brewing (Liquid malt extract and dry malt extract), then distilled water is fine. You can also just boil your tap water for 20 minutes or let it sit overnight. Taste is part of it, but it’s more about getting rid of the chlorine. You can also just use a campden tablet. If your water company uses chloramine, then you’ll need to use a tablet.
Once you move into 100% grain brewing down the road a ways, then distilled water won’t work as it lacks the needed mineral content. (The LME and DME for extract brewing doesn’t have that issue)
For sanitization after cleaning, use Star San. It is a food grade, no rinse, reusable, acid based sanitizer that is designed for beer brewers. It is easy to use, safe on your hands and is the recommended sanitizer by all serious home brewers. Any home brew shop will carry it. It only requires a few minutes contact with equipment to sanitize. You can also put some in a squirt bottle for spot sanitizing. It will foam considerably when using but don’t worry – it’s supposed to do that and will dissolve. “Don’t Fear the Foam.”
As you are in Florida, you’ll want brew in the winter. Rest of year will often be too warm out to brew unless you rig up a “swamp cooler”. Your primary fermentation will not like getting too warm – and the process of fermentation generally raises the temp of your primary by 5 degrees over ambient temps.
D58826
@ruemara: http://www.thedailybeast.com/
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@raven:
And the B1G isn’t looking too bad today, is it?
Goblue72
I have a quite long list of home brew helpful hints stuck in moderation.
Craig
Sanitation is the first key, and water is the second! Beyond that, it’s following a recipe, and you’ll make great beer.
Sanitize everything. Back in the day, people used to gargle vodka before using their mouth to start a siphon. (A better plan is to start the siphon by submerging it, but you see what they’re driving at.) Poor sanitizing _might_ not ruin your first batch, but then again it might, and it’s no fun to get a batch of fizzy, sour, exploding bottles for your trouble. Not that I’d know anything about that, of course!
As for water, feel free to use tap water for beer if you use it for drinking, but boil it first to get the chlorine out of it. This is a case of being _too_ sanitary–the city puts the chlorine in there to inhibit microorganisms, and microorganisms are the name of the game.
If using dry yeast, hydrate it in warm water (boiled and cooled to body temp) before pitching into your fermenter. Gives a faster, stronger, cleaner ferment, in my experience. It’s also good to get your wort down from the boil to fermenting temperature as quickly as possible; if you can manage it, an icewater bath is very handy for this.
tom
Biggest benefit to my brewing was letting it age longer than the recipe called for. If your brew ferments in 10 days and the recipe then calls to age/condition it for 2-3 weeks, try a bottle or two at the 2-3 week mark, then let it age for another 2-3 weeks trying a bottle each week. It will get noticebly smoother and tastier and lose some of that “home brew tang”. Don’t use distilled water, it has no flavor, use spring water that you think tastes good or if your tap water tastes good, use that. Also, can’t brew with out brew, buy some decent beer before starting.
Heliopause
My advice is to keep things as simple as possible. Don’t lard up your process with careful balancing of ingredients, that sort of thing, because home brewing is already an enormous pain in the ass, and the more complicated you make it the sooner you’re going to get discouraged. Basically the same advice as if you were a neophyte cook; start simple and if you find that you truly enjoy it then by all means try fancier stuff.
Insomniac
@Betty Cracker: Thank you. Will be trying this this weekend.
chopper
it’s a lot like making pastries. keep things clean and be organized, and stick with the recipe.
also, make something you know you will like. even if it comes out a bit half-assed.
Mike E
Sanitize, also, and your dishwasher is your very best friend…a hot rinse cycle, sans detergent, is all you really need to prep bottles for filling at the final stage; and, when siphoning the bottles, do it off the counter over the opened machine, saves a big ol’ mess.
Betty Cracker
@Goblue72: Rescued, and thank you.
@wmd: If I were making a larger quantity, I’d definitely do that, but I just make a small jug of cider for my own consumption, so in this case, quick and dirty works best for me. The stopper would undoubtedly be an improvement over the loose cap, though!
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Gyad, I hope the Ducks put an FSU-style beat-down on the Buckeyes! If I had a nickel for every Buckeye / Big 10 fan who has crawled out of the woodwork to text “nyah nyah nyah” since last night, I could buy my own craft beer truck.
shelley
Phew, when you mentioned Harry Reid, my first thought was ‘Is he the third?’
You know, first Edward Hermann, then Mario Cuomo….
narya
I am not a homebrewer–but I hang out with one. Everyone else covered the sanitizing thing. Three other things:
1. Keep your beer out of sunlight or it will get skunky. (You might already know that one.)
2. Keep a beer journal! My friend has kept a record of every batch he’s made–he’s about to brew his 40th batch in 20 years, I think. He usually records the specific gravity and what it was and whether he liked it and whatever.
3. Especially when you are making stouts & porters, keep your spent grain (freeze it) and find someone who will bake bread for you with it, or do it yourself. If you like to bake bread, I’ll be happy to share my spent grain bread recipe with you. Also, I think the Brooklyn Brewery people have a lot of spent grain recipes, but they bother to go through the steps of drying it and grinding it and I don’t.
ruemara
@D58826: Thanks!
goblue72
Agree with Tom – you’ll likely find your beer tastes better after bottle conditioning for a while. I find that it often needs 4 weeks or more in the bottle to meld.
Also you can help your beer clarify better by adding a little bit of dried Irish moss to your wort.
If you are looking for homebrew guidebooks I’d recommend The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. It’s not the best guide anymore, but it’s the original homebrew book and the recipes are still solid. Great for beginners and Charlie is the Godfather of homebrew.
Best guidebook hands down is How to Brew by John Palmer. It’s dense, fact filled and straight forward. It reads more like a technical manual than Joy of Homebrew but it’s a must have.
Mike E
I went to a brewing class where they advised going the simplest route for starters, but one trick I thot was cool (and in your Arts bailiwick) was using 2% milk to “glue” your homemade labels onto the bottles…laser printed only because jet labels will run when soaked that way.
voldemort
@Goblue72: when i lived in Kona (actually, the even hotter Kawaihae area north of Kona), I was able to do just fine on small scale by putting the mix in a 2 liter bottle with a small tube out the top, then dropping the bottle in a large bucket (trash can) full of water. the trash can sat outside in a shaded area. the tube out of the bottle went up and back down in an inverted U and acted like a pressure valve — gas gets out, but as long as pressure inside is going up (from fermentation) water does not get in. the water temp was always warmer than you would normally want for brewing (~75), but never so warm that it ruined the brew.
goblue72
@voldemort: Generally speaking, ales can do ok 70-75 degrees.
What you rigged up was basically a swamp cooler without a fan.
NCSteve
Speaking strictly as a consumer of home brew, my best, most earnest, advice is TAKE IT EASY ON THE GODDAMNED HOPS!
There just seem to be a lot of home and craft brewers who perpetuate this hipster douchenozzle notion that the only point of small batch brewing is to use a lot of hops because they don’t have to cheap out like those evil corporate brewers. Which, ironically, means that they spend a lot of time proudly handing out bottles of what tastes like the pure concentrated essence of evil.
voldemort
@goblue72: i guess so. i was leaning on the specific heat of the water and the night-day temperature cycle rather than evaporation. (if I’d been clever, I would have some kind of sheet metal on the top that could swing down and reflect the cold night sky into the tank at night. the desert conditions in Kawaihae mean the night sky is colder than the land by far — probably not true in humid florida. but that would have required monitoring or work or something like that…)
SiubhanDuinne
@shelley:
Well, Donna Douglas died today. RIP, Elly May Clampett.
Mike E
@voldemort: My buddy at work does the “half batch” method of 2 1/2 or 3 gals each time instead of the standard 5…if it goes wrong, he feels he really wasn’t out too terribly and could chalk it up as a rather inexpensive learning experience. He has the outdoor “banjo” burner that one uses for
burning down your homefrying turkeys.goblue72
@voldemort: my sense from my visits to Hawaii is that it doesn’t get as miserably hot as Florida does.
Betty Cracker
@NCSteve: I saw an article today about how craft breweries need to take it easy on the goddamned hops, and I agree. Not that I don’t like hoppy beer — I do. But there are other ingredients to showcase, and not everyone is a hop-head, so craft brewing would be more inclusive if they branched out beyond the hop-race. I’d link it if I could remember where I read it, but alas…
goblue72
@Mike E: those are handy. Boiling 5 gallons of wort on the stovetop is a bit of a PITA.
goblue72
@Betty Cracker: I think part of the over hopped trend comes from the influence of the PNW craft brew industry which along with California, makes a LOT of craft beer. A lot of brewers up here in Twin Peaks country like to take advantage of the access to hops – almost all of which domestically are grown in Eastern Washington.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@goblue72: Here’s an old Slate essay on craft brew hops.
Betty Cracker
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): That’s the article I referenced above! Thank you! I just stumbled across it today, probably during beer research.
NCSteve
@Betty Cracker: And I think we agree. Hops are necessary. They are what make beer beer. Beer without hops would be . . . well, actually I guess it would be mash in need of distillation and aging in a charred cask.
Roger Moore
@NCSteve:
There is unhopped beer out there, though it’s usually made with some other herbal mixture to cut the malt taste.
Goblue72
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks. I read that article awhile back. Not much to disagree with in it.
Interesting info here about hops: http://www.usahops.org/index.cfm
Washington, Oregon and Idaho account for nearly all of US hop production, with 77% from Washington State alone. Much like zombie viruses though, the addiction to hops spreads quickly and clearly has infected the entire Western seaboard and inward to the Rockies and beyond.
eric nny
Betty,
Everyone’s preaching sterilization, and maybe you’ll need to down south, but I don’t go crazy with it. I do it but not fastidiously. I’ve never lost a batch. Remember, in the old days they made beer in barrels and stirred it with paddles that the live yeast lived on. Most certainly not sterile. But they probably poisoned themselves so who knows…
Goblue72
@Roger Moore: it’s usually called gruit. Also sahti in Finland.
It’s interesting as a change but I wouldn’t want to drink a session of them.
TrishB
Best advice is DO NOT drop the carboy and end up at the emergency room with a sliced thumb.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Goblue72:
My husband is a beer guy (not a home brewer) and he is REALLY frickin’ tired of everything here on the West Coast being so goddamned hoppy. He would like to taste one or two other flavors occasionally.
When we go back to Chicago in the summer, he revels in the Midwestern and East Coast microbrews that we can’t get out here that have some hops but are not totally dominated by them. Fee chrissakes, Woodchuck has started putting hops in their cider!
http://www.woodchuck.com/blog/introducing-hopsation-the-newest-woodchuck-core-style/
brendancalling
@Betty Cracker:
Not necessarily. The water you get in the store won’t have adequate amounts of sodium, calcium, and magnesium, which yeast needs. Unless your tap water sucks mightily,it’s probably fine. Filter it to get out chlorine.
kzoostout
A lot of the advise so far is for homebrewers who are deep into the game (I keg and it’s awesome, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who is brewing their first batch–if you decide you like it, then I’d for sure recommend looking into it). It’s hard to know what to say without knowing how much equipment you have already, but off the top of my head here goes:
For the first time brewer, equipment wise, I’d recommend Star-San for sanitizing. A small bottle will last you a year or so. Twenty years ago, I was sanitizing with bleach water (per Papazian) and it always gave me off flavors In comparison, Star-San is awesome–no rinsing or off flavors. An auto-siphon is very much worth the 8 bucks or whatever it costs. If you get into it, a large brew kettle is essential. Taking good notes will pay off down the road.
Method wise, I’d probably go with some re-hydrated dried yeast for your first batch (probably US-05 for your Ranger IPA). With liquid yeast you typically have to make a starter, which isn’t hard, but is one more thing to hassle with. I’d use spring water, filtered water, or distilled water. Save about half of your extract and don’t add it until the end of your boil (I only did one extract batch and jumped to all grain, but that seems to be the conventional wisdom for a lot of the extract recipes I see). Try to cool your wort down as quickly as possible. As someone mentioned earlier sticking your fermenter in a cold water/ice water filled bathtub will do the trick. Don’t pitch your yeast until the temperature is close to what you want to ferment at. Finally, watch your fermentation temperatures. Ideally it would be in the mid to low sixties for the initial fermentation. The yeast kick out a lot of heat when they are doing their thing for the first 3-4 days, so your temps will be 4-6 degrees higher than the ambient air temp. If you beer gets too hot, the yeast will give off weird flavors and produce alcohols that will give you hangovers. Don’t bother racking your beer to a secondary fermenter, even if your directions recommend it.
Finally, don’t stress (easier said than done)! Your first batch might not be great, but most likely it will turn out fine. Be forewarned though, if you catch the bug, you can spend an inordinate amount of time (and money) striving to make your next batch “just a little better” or making your brew day “just a little easier.” homebrewtalk.com is a great resource/time suck.
One last thing, if you ever go to Tampa, you should check out Cigar City Brewing. For $5 they’ll give you a tour, and a full pint glass to drink and take home. Their beer is pretty damn tasty, too.
tbone
Betty, the ranger ipa is a clone of a beer called ranger by new belgium. Go to a good liquor store and buy a six pack for reference. It’s a fantastic beer.
Most of the important stuff has been covered. No tap water, spring water is ok (but it’s like cooking without spices). Besides sanitation, fermenting at about 65 is absolutely critical.
Not 65 ambient. Fermentation produces heat, which means an actively fermenting beer can be +10 ambient. If you can, put your fermentor in a tub of 60 degree water. I think you’re in Florida, which is expected to see a cold snap next week? The seven smile upon you. Keep it at 65 for a week, let it come up to 68 fir a week, bottle it.
This kit should come with a packet of yeast that looks like bread yeast. It is barely enough for this beer. Put it in the fridge and follow the instructive on how to rehydrate it.
And let us know how it turns out! This hobby is incredibly addictive. Sounds like there are lots of brewers here willing to help you spend money on it. The great thing about this hobby is there’s always a way to do it cheap with crap from home Depot.
tbone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Have you tried any of the goose island Belgian stuff? If you like Belgian beer, sofie is incredible. In. Cred. Uh. Bull.
smike
I agree that beer making is a lot like cooking. Exacting recipes are not necessary at all unless you know enough about the exact beer that you want to produce. I have tweaked many recipes and only had one failure – I used too much honey (which screwed up hydrometer readings by adding too many ‘other’ solids) and ended up with a prematurely still batch that, at the time, I did not feel like saving.
I have also consumed (with help over time) an entire batch straight out the primary fermenter at room temperature. It was a dark brew and we all found it worthy. When starting out, I made a number of batches out of Pabst malt extract with hops (sold at a local grocery), adding no flavoring hops before bottling.
One thing that I found that works well is to produce the sugar needed by simmering plain old white sugar in water for 30 minutes before using. That breaks the structure down from a complex sugar (which yeast have trouble using) to a simple sugar, as far as I understand. I found it to be reliable and much cheaper.
And avoid brewing snobs at all costs. I have met brewing supply employees who have told me flat out that I cannot make beer the way I have made it for years. When you encounter these people, run away fast, go home and open one your home brews. The world falls back into place.
John Weiss
Here’s some tips for making beer: Make more than you think you need. Be patient, ageing beer pays off. Use the hydrometer, that way your beer won’t go wild after you bottled it. Watch the amount of hops you use; less is more. Cleaning equipment is a pain in the butt, but it pays off. Temperature is important, generally cooler is better. Don’t forget to sterilize the bottle caps. Most important: what ever you do, don’t fall in.
You’re welcome.
narya
Also, you may be able to grow your own hops (don’t know if that works in the south). My friend’s family has a farm in northern wisconsin, and he discovered that there were hops growing on the windmill. He grabbed some rhizomes and they’re now taking over his backyard in Chicago, the deer stand at the farm, the cabin at the farm, and his brother’s yard in Ohio. He hasn’t been able to figure out what kind they are, but he has brewed with them very successfully.