The TBR Homebrewing thread

Papazian is awesome. I started brewing in Boulder and he lived and brewed there. He was a regular at the brew store - and they loved having him.

That book is cool. About the only thing I miss about drinking is homebrewing. It's easily the best time I've ever had consuming something I made.

Ever make mead? I used to attend a solstice mead party. Pretty hippy - buncha freaks high on shrooms mushing fruit up. Mead's testy to make - but damn damn tasty when finished. Takes a long time. I guess a year - hence the annual parties - drinking what was made at the last party.

 

well, looks like kegging isn't quite as cheaply available as hoped. She doesn't deal with kegs so we gotta buy in. How do you deal with keeping kegging in different places for different people, re: CO2?


SO meat - how long you brew?

 

The initial costs are still less than bottles, and it's an assload easier.

All you have to do is buy some CO2 tanks - I don't know how much they are because we got ours free. It's good to know people. We could also get them refilled free, but that's kinda inexpensive. My advice would be to have a large CO2 tank (25 lbs) where you are going to keep the kegs and a small one for travelling.

Even iff she doesn't deal with kegs, ask her if she knows a soda rep. That guy will have access to literally thousands of them. So trade him a full keg for 20 or 50 empty ones. Or teach him how to brew if he wants to learn.

The motherlode that I am still trying to get at is the Coke warehouse out at the speedway - apparently they have tons of kegs there.

Even if you do decide to keg, I am guessing that you will still want to get some bottles just becasue it's not always convenient to take a keg somewhere.

Meat - I've never made mead, but I'd like to. It's not that hard anymore - they sell the honey and all, so it's no more intensive than making beer.

 

coupla years. it's fun as hell.

 

first you need to make molds. then you melt aluminum and pour it into the molds. let it cool and, presto!, you have made your own kegs.


I don't brew but enjoy building kegs. kegs and ashtrays. I like making ashtrays.

 

what years did you spend at Attica?


so VP or meat - ever fill into champagne bottles? I'm gonna try to hit up a bar or two for bottles, but I'm more likely to get bottles from my wife's friends and from some contacts in the local hospitality industry that my wife has with literally every hotel in town. And champagne bottles are both easier to remember and less work for me.

No, I don't mind drinking beer from a champagne bottle, fuck the fuck off.

 

Yep. When we first started out. They actually make a great way to give your beer as a present. I still have a bunch of them too - including a full one of our very first Christmas beer which has to be like 7 years old now. Little known fact - the only time that champagne bottle have corks in them is during the final steps - they use beer caps the rest of teh time. They'd sell them with caps on instead of corks if people wouldn't turn their noses up at it.

Anyway, if she's got hospitality contacts, ask about used soda kegs too. Or if they know their rep and would introduce you.

And you aren't going to be drinking from the bottle if you bottle condition (carbonate). There will be about an 1/8 inch of sediment that you won't want to drink. It won't hurt you or anything, it'll just taste different and make your beer cloudy.

 

yeah, I read about the sediment. I don't think we'll be krauesening just yet, so that's a concern, but either way, yeah, drinking from a glass nonetheless.

And yeah, the kegging and all that's something I've already talked with my wife about. Really hoping the bottles can be a relatively smooth endeavor, don't want to have to dig through too many recycling bins or have to drink tons of Grolsch.

It's funny, the snobbery around wine v/s beer. I have a book - History of the World in Six Glasses - talks about where that came from. Christians v/s Muslims. I assume that prohibition stoked that, too.




Oh, BTW - single stage or dual stage? I'm preferring single, and Jake's kinda confused about it (said the dual-stage kit was the one with the glass carboy).

Either way, we'll have purchased our parts of the material needed this week and probably brew during the Super Bowl. After that we'll talk about coming down to check out what y'all do, but have you thought about competing? It might get you back into doing the brew thing regularly enough, and there are apparently contests all over the place, so I'm sure there are a few in CLT per year.

 

Bottling isn't bad - it's just worse and more time consuming than kegging. It's good to learn how to do it regardless. I may be able to hook you up with some bottles too.

Definitely go with the dual (I'm assuming you mean a glass carboy and plastic bucket, right?). They are easier to deal with, will give you clearer beer, and will allow you to do more than one batch while having your bucket free for bottling. About the only time I had to use my bucket for secondary or conditioning was when we did an IPA and had to put wood chips in. They I figured out that you can add them right to the carboy and did that every other time.

I thought about competing. Our beer was pretty good. But I never got into it. The reason that I got out of it had more to do with having a kid than anything else. I plan to start getting back into it soon.

 

the competing might get you back in, that's all.
My local homebrew goober was all about competing so he could have ribbons to show he wasn't a dumbass. I don't think we'll ever care that much about any of it, though his double-infusion concoction he was doing for his oatmeal stout looked interesting. Guess it has some benefit I'll learn about along the way, but seeing it made me interested in doing all-grain at some point.

Anyway, we've got our material, and at a party Sat. night, I met a Bud distributor and a Coke distributor, the bud guy said he couldn't get me anything but showed me the rigs he was using (he had a keg system he'd brought) and he told the Coke guy to give me some kegs. Had that guy not already been piss drunk I could have some kegs this week, but because he was that drunk, now I gotta re-introduce myself to him and start that process over.