Thread: Beer & Wine makers

Originally Posted by kingspidey

It's time to go buy another carboy so I can make a saison or tripel.

I've got 4-5gal & 3-3gal carbs. Plus about 30 someodd books including almost the entire Classic Beer Styles series from Brewers Publications (Including the one on Lambics). It's one of those hobbies that like str8's gets tailored specifically to what YOU want what YOU need. It'll have it's rough moments but trust me you'll love it (i've been doing it for the better part of 16years now)

I havent tried wine yet, but I do beer, cider and mead. I have a mead going right now. The hardest part is waiting.

I started making beer because I was too young to buy it at the store. I have been doing it off and on for 25 years now. I make a great Strong Belgian Dark. If you like IPAs google "Denny Conn's rye IPA" It is hands down the best IPA I have ever made. Lastly, I make a great CACA.

I built my own system. It is a 12.5 gallon system with a 60 quart cooler that holds about 14 lbs. of malt and 3.5 gals of mash water. I have only one 60,000 Btu burner that triple duties for mashing sparging and boiling. This winter I am going to go natural gas and upsize to 120,000 Btus.

I also have a converted side by side kegerator conversion in the garage. I have two taps on the left and store 6 cornies on the right side. Right now I have a CACA and a trippel on tap.

The best website I have come across for homebrewing is www.hbd.org It is a very small site but the info there is first class. Other larger brew sites you will get "experts" that have 3 batches under their belt.

What I tell my friends is "Brewing is like making cookies. The cookies you buy at the store can be very good but the ones you bake yourself rock."

I've been into winemaking for quite some time.

I have a few hundred acres in the Ozarks of Arkansas, and as a result most of my wines have been muscadine, sand grape or fox grape, but I have branched out over the years to include such fruits as dewberry, blackberry and black raspberry.

I tend to make wine in rather small batches (5 or so gallons at a time); my very best was a wild blackberry I bottled in '07 and broke out in late '08... folks still talk about that stuff.

We had a major ice-storm a couple years back which served to pretty much mangle most of my standing woods; since then I've seen an upsurge in the growth of grapevine and berry brambles - while walking along a quarter-mile section of fencerow, I counted no less than perhaps ten large muscadine and sand-grape vines which were pretty much inaccessible before the storms I previously mentioned.

Shoot, I've even found a few rather peculiar strains of grape I can't quite identify, for that matter.

As of now I've got about a gallon and a half of black raspberry going; this weekend I plan to harvest a bushel or so more berries and actually make this worth my while.

Another month or two and the lion's share of my grape crop will be ready for picking... then the fun begins!

And next year... black mulberry wine.