Beer & Wine makers

Beer and wine makers unite!

Has anybody out there made their own beer or wine? Personally, I've made both. I started when I was in my early 20's and the first beer I ever had was one that I made myself. Unfortunately, it hadn't aged enough to develop in the bottle and the result kinda turned me off to beer for a couple months until I had perfected a recipe.

After beer, I turned to making wine. In particular, fruit wines. Since I live in California's Central Valley, I have access to every fruit available to man (well almost). My favorite of all time is my Kiwi wine...it is a crisp, clean, refreshing, dry wine with little acidity. Another great part to the Kiwi wine is that it imparts a slight neon color to the wine. Imagine a Savignon Blanc with less color to it but that color is neon.

Here's the book that I use for all my fruit wines...it hasn't steered me wrong yet.

http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Home-Wine-...319879&sr=1-11

Have been making wine from the grapes in the garden together with my dad for the past 5 years. :) This year seems to be the best crop so far and we'll reach the 25 - 30 bottle mark this year. :)

I've tried making beer before but it tastes very much like yeast and although I do kinda like the taste, with this one it just tasted disgusting so I'll stick to making the wine. I'll try to get some pics up later:)

I :beer2:the beer I make.....:)

Just about to do a Czech Style Pilsener for summer and setting up for a Dark Ale for winter.....

I made wine for about 3 or 4 years in a row back when I lived in the bay area and had relatively easy access to pretty outstanding grapes. I took it up mainly to develop patience (knowing that it takes a long time from start to finish and that this would be instructive to the youngster I was then). It was a fantastic experience and if I ever end up back in the bay area again (about 50/50 odds I suppose) I will surely do it again. I got rid of my old gear but if I were to start again I would do it much differently and with better gear this time around. We'll see. I highly recommend this to anyone who has access to good grapes and either a reasonably accommodating climate or a place with relatively stable temp (like a basement or similar).

Beer I have never tried and frankly am not too crazy about most beer I tried but once I tried a beer that my friend made and it was the nuttiest, most lively and flavorful beer I ever had. He told me he won some award with it and based on the flavor I never doubted that for a minute. Maybe once the kid is a bit bigger I'll have time to give it a shot and I'd very much like to do that although I think it would take several attempts before making anything in the same league with that stuff my friend made. Even then I'm not sure I could do it but would like to try.

My husband has made heavy stouts and porters (beers) and honey mead in the past. Very good. Just time consumming. Plus he always made a mess in my kitchen (ha ha).

Started when I was 18. Easier than trying to find someone to go buy it for you. I'm getting ready to start a Mead out of the reminants of last years honey. Have a pound of this two pounds pf that etc.. sitting on top of the cabinets in the kitchen.
Probably in he next couple weeks start up another batch of ginger beer for the cold weather. If you decide to try doing beer there's plenty of kits to get your feet wet with and if you want to move up try www.beerrecipes.org they have a pretty good list of recipes in most all of the styles.

Good Luck:beer2:

I've been a homer brewer for a number of years now. It actually slowed my transition to straight blades. I was building a 1/2bbl pilot system for my back yard. I am very proud of it. very very very very proud of it.

I have nothing bubbling right now, but I have a couple bottles left that are part of an aging experiment.

next up on the brew block are a gruit for valentines and a barleywine I plan on putting down for a number of years. but by the time I get to the planning stages, I will prolly do something sessionable. like a brown ale, or a basic APA

I haven't brewed in a few years, but my favorite was called "Marion Berry's better than a Crackwhore". This was back in the day when D.C.'s mayor was smoking crack in the hotel with the hooker. I got the recipe from one of the brewers at Ballast Point Brewery. We were at a homebrew festival. After about 14 hours of drinking, he freely gave out his recipe. :)The beer was as close to a lambic as you can get in Southern California. It also had marionberries in it. I pay a lot of money for lambics that really aren't any better than that batch was.

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Originally Posted by Weeeeee

I pay a lot of money for lambics that really aren't any better than that batch was.

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I feel your pain there. $5+change for a 12oz bottle of Kriek or Fram or Cassis or........Now I'm thirsty :beer2::beer2::beer2:

I just started homebrewing two months ago after receiving Palmer's book on brewing for Christmas last year. My wife and I bought our first house (a fixer-upper) almost a year ago and she insisted I pick up a brewing kit as a sort of reward for almost nonstop home repairs.

Since buying the kit, I've brewed and bottled an Irish stout and a brown ale. I have a Pilsner and a small batch of hard cider fermenting right now. Talk about an addicting hobby. It's time to go buy another carboy so I can make a saison or tripel.

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Originally Posted by kingspidey

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

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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):beer2::beer2::beer2:

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. :D

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.