Thread: Any brewers in the house?

I've primarily been doing mead and just started with beer. Beer is harder but faster. you have to be carefull with exploding bottles with either but with beer you are trying to carbonate it so it is easir, or you can get my first batch where I let the alcohol content get to high and it wouldn't prime.

Mead is fairly easy but takes a while depending on how you do it (1-1 1/12 years is typical for mine) to avoid exploding bottles issue you can use sulfates or drive the alcohol content up past the yeast tolerance point (this is how I do it since I have friends who are allergic to sulfates) There are two ways of driving the alcohol up let it ferment and add sugars until it stops, or add everclear (if you really want to get people drunk this works)

Bear in mind this gets addictive quick, the plus side is once you get the equipment all you need is the ingredients.

Hope this helps

Let me know if you have any questions

Ernest

Someone else mentioned mead to me on another forum. The ferment times they mentioned is what made me think twice. Don't think I have the patience to wait a year to find out if I screwed up, lol.

Originally Posted by TomSD

Went a head and ordered both of the books you suggested homebrew... around ten bucks each on Amazon I figure why not, heh.

So what flavor additions have you tried and what do you think were your best results? And what thread would be complete with the question... what were your worst failures?

best would be a dopplebock i did 3 months ago, still drinking it. tastes like spaten optimator. my worst failure was a ginger lager, i put way too much ginger it, it was absolutely undrinkable.

Originally Posted by TomSD

Someone else mentioned mead to me on another forum. The ferment times they mentioned is what made me think twice. Don't think I have the patience to wait a year to find out if I screwed up, lol.

When I rack it I also taste it to see if I need to add more sugars, spices etc... but lack of patience is why I started doing beer. That being said where else are you going to get good mead. (the ironic thing I wind up drinking about 10% of what I make)

All grain brewer here. Doing 10 gal batches and kegging. Love the results.

Yeah got both the books I ordered and have been reading through them. Probably going to get a decent starter kit from a local homebrew store and try out my first batch soon.

Originally Posted by TomSD

Yeah got both the books I ordered and have been reading through them. Probably going to get a decent starter kit from a local homebrew store and try out my first batch soon.

let us know how it goes. sterilize, sterilize, sterilize.

Originally Posted by jockeys

let us know how it goes. sterilize, sterilize, sterilize.

Yeah that seems to be a recurring sentiment in the books too. It would suck to brew a batch and have it die or spoil due to contamination.

Well, now you all have gone and done it. I just got The Complete Joy and Idiots Guide...

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Well, now you all have gone and done it. I just got The Complete Joy and Idiots Guide...

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is a great book. I really got a lot out of it and it was written in such a way as I enjoyed it, not like a dry text or manual.