Thread: New Year's brew is fermenting... it is starting to smell a lot like Christmas!

Finally got around to brewing my first batch of beer a couple days ago. Went with a simple one for the first time around (German Amber Ale) and after a lot of stumbling around got the wort cooked yesterday. That night I saw my first couple bubbles and the next morning the yeast was cranking away and the airlock was bubbling like mad. If all goes well I'll be bottling it in a week or two then letting it age until New Years. Not a long aging process but long enough for it to get carbonated and things to settle.

Man.. I already have wayyyyy too many hobbies, but this is one I could really get behind. Maybe after my SR obsession has cooled off for a couple months I'll get to it.

Your brew sounds great, Tom. Let us know how it turns out.

I brew my own as well and I can tell you - if you've never had a home brew before - get ready for the best beer you'll drink. Nothing comes close, oh and it's about 2.5X the alcohol content of an average off the shelf beer. I brew an Irish red and a stout for myself that average 8 - 9% and I brew a peach wheat for my wife and her friends that is on average 7.5 - 8%

I see you're in Lemon Grove, CA. I was stationed in San Diego when I got started, used to get my stuff from a little place in Ocean Beach.

Where does one get all the equipment?

There are home brew shops all over. I found Home Brew Mart after a referral from a friend online only to find they were local to me. I went and checked the place out and it is run by a great bunch of people.

You can go piecemeal but really the easiest way to do it is find a good shop (online or locally) then ask a bunch of questions and get a starter kit. It will usually include everything you need to brew your first batch, including the ingredients. After that there really isn't much you have to buy before doing your next one... just more ingredients. Of course, much like any other hobby (cough, cough... straight razors) you end up wanting to go bigger and better and want to buy more stuff for your new hobby, heh.

And I can tell you after the cluster fudge that was my first attempt it is really hard to screw up a batch, lol. This one was a real learning experience and I was so worried it wouldn't ferment but it is a pretty forgiving process and is cranking away right now. It has a decent smell to it (what I can tell from the airlock anyway) and I'm hopefull it comes out full bodied and tasty.

Yeah I mean if African tribes had been doing it for hundreds of years using clay pots and what not I bet its hard to mess it up so it doesn't work right. I"m gonna look into it though I think in American age will be an issue... I'm more interested in the DIY part than the drinking part though.

Well in all the reading you do sanitizing is the biggest point stressed. This makes sense being that fermenting is an active process and anything else in there competing with the yeast will either kill your fermentation or skunk your beer. As you say though it has been done for thousands of years in crude containers with no idea what sanitation even was so as long as you are careful it is pretty hard to screw it up, lol.

As for the age issue you need to be old enough to drink it before you can brew it, lol.

Originally Posted by khaos

Where does one get all the equipment?

http://www.ithacabeer.com/

lol I forgot about IBC. Thanks. And yeah I didn't mean you couldn't mess it up, just that at the end you'll probably have some kind of alcohol. Whether it contains methanol or not... or if its skunked or not... thats different lol. You'll still get drunk, it just won't taste good and it'll make you blind lol.