Brewing one's own beer?

[First Shirt]

My partner at work has advanced the notion that we need to start making our own beer, as part of the general SHTF skillset. I don't have a problem with it, since it's hard to find good beer anymore, everything is "light" or "ultra" or somesuch garbage, but I know less about brewing beer/making wine than I know about quantum physics. Google-fu returns results that are like trying to drink from a firehose, so I'm turning to the educated and erudite members of this august body, in hopes that someone who knows something about this can point me in the right direction. I'd at least like to find out if it's something that's going to be more trouble than it's worth.

Thanks in advance,

[MarkD]

I've never done it, but I did look into it a few years ago.

Like so many things (including shooting), your best resource is a local homebrewing shop, go there, ask questions, get friendly. You can usually buy a basic kit with all the necessary equipment, and you can buy pre-packaged ingredient kits. As you gain experience you can buy the individual ingredients to make your own recipe.

The single biggest thing that ruins a batch of beer is failure to sterilize something. I read about a guy who neglected to sterilize a gasket on his fermenter and ruined the whole batch.

Consider also if you'll bottle or keg the beer, most beginners bottle until they get tired of sterilizing all those bottles and caps, then switch to kegs.

The hardest part is waiting for the beer to age before you sample it.

[Rich]

Closest I've come to brewing my own was when my father decided to try it in the cellar of the house.

A few days after bottling the beer, we were all sitting down for the evening meal when we started hearing small explosions.

After seeing the mess it made, I've had no desire to brew my own.

[DwightG]

Oh and to reinforce the important point already made,

[center]SANITATION IS EVERYTHING[/center]

Makes you wonder how they managed to make beer in the era of open fires, thatched roofs, and rats everywhere. I wonder if they had a lot of crop failure or if we just wouldn't recognize what they got as "beer"

My wife bought me a kit for doing this about 20 years ago. I never had time to try it and now I'm not sure where it is. Still don't have time anyway

BUT... hope springs eternal...maybe someday. (as an aside, the word "hope" is starting to make me want to spit. Damn, another perfectly good word wrecked by the left)

[Termite]

Makes you wonder how they managed to make beer in the era of open fires, thatched roofs, and rats everywhere. I wonder if they had a lot of crop failure or if we just wouldn't recognize what they got as "beer"

You get sour beer. Lambic beer for example.

Here is the definitive homebrewer's bible : The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing

My copy is well worn. I haven't made any homebrew in years, though. Still got most of my equipment, though.

[Aglifter]

Er, just to clarify -- beer requires special sanitizer -- you can probably get it from a home brewing supply -- if not, I can ask my chemical supplier, and find out what is ideal -- bleach works OK in small batches, but you'll get a better flavor by using something else -- I don't think it's iodine, though... I think it's something which releases chlorine gas in the solution.

Also, once you sanitize, it can air dry, or it can be used -- tap water is not sanitary. Obviously, if available, use limestone water.

Gloves usually offer a contamination problem, as everyone thinks gloves are "magic" and can touch unsterile surfaces/not be sterilized first, etc.

Also, on sanitizer, more is not better -- you must have your solutions at the correct dilution to be effective -- too strong is actually less effective, usually, that too weak, but it's a simple matter to just be correct.

Make sure you use the proper temperature, and time for sanitation as well -- hardness of the water can also pose a problem.

I don't really anything about homebrewing, other than I like to drink it, but I have spent considerable time and effort fighting food borne contamination.

[drice]

A casual friend of mine home-brews, and I occasionally get to enjoy a bottle or two with him. It is, without a doubt, the f**king-A Best, Dynamite, most kick-ass killer beer on the planet, in my opinion. He only makes Ales, and he uses whatever fruit is available from his back yard: berries, peaches, oranges, whatever.

Every batch is slightly different because of the fruits used, but every batch is unbelievable.

I've thought numerous times about home-brewing, but, oh yeah...I'm lazy.

[Catbird]

In the early days of the "microbrew revolution", approx 1993-1996, I was the head brewer for a local brewpub. I once counted up the number of batches I brewed and multiplied them by an average batch size, (6 BBL/186 gal). It came to a little over 50,000 gallons. It's been a few years since I brewed, but I remember the important stuff.

As Chris and others have said above SANITATION is the first and last word in successful brewing. One of the first things my brewmaster taught me was the definitions of two words, clean and sanitary. Clean means that all visible gunk, residue, film, etc. has been removed from any surface which could contact the beer. Sanitary means that a clean surface has been treated with a sanitizing agent such as chlorine or iodine which kills any remaining microorganisms which could infect the beer. Luckily, it's virtually impossible to infect a batch of beer in such a way that it is drinkable yet hazardous to consume, (no risk of salmonella or e-coli for example).

The other thing I recommend for new home brewers is WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN! Get yourself a three ring binder or spiral notebook and dedicate one page to each batch. Write down the date and time for each step in the process. Write down all your ingredients. Write down all important temperatures. If something goes wrong, this information will be useful for diagnosing the problem, especially if you are getting advice from someone more experienced. More importantly, If you produce a really fantastic batch of beer, you will want to reproduce it!

I hate to contradict Aglifter above, but tap water is relatively sanitary. Most municipal water systems are chlorinated. In the brewery, I sanitized everything with a 25-35 ppm iodine solution, then rinsed with tap water. We never had any problems in the four years or so that I worked there. For cleaning, we used a 4-4.5% sodium hydroxide solution. Some large commercial breweries use a strong acid solution as a combined cleaner/sanitizer. It is efficient but very hazardous to handle. My chemical supplier told me that if you get the concentrate in you eye, you've lost the eye.

The basics of ethanol production are these. Generate a sterile sugar-water solution and add yeast. The yeast consumes the sugar and excretes ethanol and carbon dioxide. This is called fermentation and will produce a 3-5% alcohol beverage in most cases, up to 8% if you're careful. Stronger than that and you have to distill it. With beer, the sugar comes from malted barley. Malting is the process of taking a grain and germinating it. Just after it sprouts, you kiln it. This leaves you with a kernel of grain consisting of a hull and a starchy endosperm infused with enzymes capable of breaking the starches down into sugars.

The basics of making beer are:

1. Obtain some malted barley.

2. Mill it so that the grain is broken open but the hull is still relatively intact.

3. Soak it in warm water so that the enzymes can convert the starches into sugars. (This is called Mashing)

4. After the starches are completely converted, drain the malt sugar water into a large pot, (brew kettle). This liquid is called wort, (pronounced wert).

5. Boil the wort according to your recipe, usually about 1-1.5 hours. Add hops during the boil according to your recipe. Hops provide bitterness and flavor to balance the maltiness. They also serve as a preservative.

6. At the end of the boil, stir the wort into a whirlpool. This will cause the proteins in the wort to accumulate in the center of the brew kettle making it easier to leave behind when the wort is drained off.

7. Drain the wort into your sanitary fermenter. Add more hops if desired. Cover. Allow to cool.

8. When the fermenter has reached the proper temperature, add the yeast. This is called pitching the yeast. The temperature will depend on the type of yeast you are using.

9. Monitor and maintain fermentation temperature as best you can. Yeast generates heat as it ferments. If it gets too hot, it will produce undesirable flavors and/or kill itself. If it gets too cool, it will go dormant. Ale yeast usually ferments around 77 F, and takes about a week to ferment completely. Once it is fermented, it is officially beer.

10. Move the fermented beer into the sanitized serving container, bottles or a keg. You will need to add a small amount of sugar to provide carbonation. Let it rest for a week or two for the secondary fermentation then chill and serve.

Most home brewers start out extract brewing. You buy a can of malt extract syrup and go directly to step 5.

Every home brewer I know has a copy of The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing. It is the definitive resource. Brewing clubs and home brew supply stores are great places for help and information. Use them if they're available.

Stay away from the beer-in-a-box, just add water kits they sometimes sell around Christmas. They make lousy tasting beer at best.

Brewing beer is a great hobby in that it's relatively simple, allows for endless variation, and is highly social. Compared to other hobbies, it's relatively difficult to let it get out of control financially. It's easy to get started with $100-200 worth of equipment. It's hard to spend more than a couple of thousand. It's when you seriously consider opening a brewery or home brew supply that you need to consider therapy.

I have never home brewed myself, because here in Seattle I'm surrounded by an endless variety of delicious beers on tap and in bottles. Maybe someday...

[Aglifter]

I'm used to dairy, which is more sensitive than beer, so, maybe, tap water doesn't pose as big a contamination problem for beer.

If I can find the article, I'll try to post what's the current recommended sterilizer for beer -- I think it's the Cl gas one (2 compounds mix in the water, and release small amounts of Cl gas in the water, which sterilize, but comes completely out of solution.)

Either bleach or Iodine is supposed to create big problems -- again, my source is geared toward industrial production, so using smaller equipment where you can get full access to something may be different.

[First Shirt]

Dammit! You guys were supposed to talk me out of this, not into it! Oh, well, soon as I finish the ammo program, looks like another hobby on deck.

Seriously, thanks for the advice. Knew there would be some knowledgeable people on here.