Title says it all. A sixer costs 12-15 dollars these days. I just brewed 5 gallons for under $30.
I’ve been doing this shit for decades. If you’re curious how to get into it (hint: it’s easy) I can point you in the right direction.
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just piggy backing off your post: a cheap bottle of apple juice + yeast is easy (and cheap) hard apple cider. literally just get bread yeast and apple juice and let it ferment for a week or so. it’ll be funky, but this is the “first time get your feet wet just try it out keep it simple” recipe.
once you get the hang of it you can do other shit: add sugar, yeast nutrition, proper apple cide yeast, wine yeast, better quality apple juice, post-yeast fermentation, aged cider, apple wine, etc.
~1 gallon of apple wine is ~$3.50 whereas if I bought a gallon of apple wine it’d be 25-35.00$.
Since its fall I usually just pick up the pressed cider from the orchards. Obviously not available year round, but that makes a good hard cider for me with minimal effort. I’m not huge into cider, so I keep it simple.
My mead didn’t turn out too good. I probably should actually not be lazy and follow instructions next time by transferring it to a second container to help the yeast further settle before bottling it. And also I should probably bottle it in actual wine bottles instead of beer growlers
Mead. Im 50/50 on it. Easy to make but then the finishing process takes forever. And it requires a somewhat perfect vessel.
With beer: kveik yeast, and done in a week and it tastes pretty fucking awesome.
I’ll probably buy a loaf of black bread from the local bakery and make some Klass with it instead
Joe’s ancient orange mead is the one for the ages for simplicity.
Wine bottles do absolutely give a better experience.
I have to say, I was a little worried that a fuckton would be more than the 15 gallon electric setup I built years ago but my ego remains intact
For beer brewers, 5 gal is average. For average people 5 gal is a lot of fucking beer.
Awesome you made a 15 gal set up. 220/240 I assume?
Yeah, I ran a dedicated 50 amp fuse out to the side of the house and built a brewhouse on casters with mounted pumps, a control box, and an integrated electric grain mill.
It’s very extra and I love it
That’s fucking great.
I’m really happy with my 110 Clawhammer. Gets the job done and the better half doesn’t bitch about the footprint.
Lol you animal
I tried a couple times but it was such a pain in the ass to sterilize everything given the facilities I have available to me.
I use a 5 gallon bucket and a bottle of StarSan. My whole rig and cleaning equipment could fit in a coat closet.
That being said, I’m pretty loose with sanitation and have never had an issue.
How loose? Like what’s the minimum for your sanitization method?
So check it. The only item I ever really star san is my siphon. My fermenters are food grade plastic. I put the wort/beer in there at 140F, then rest until room temp when I add yeast. So that’s one less item to sanitize. I clean out the kegs with PBW, rinse, and fill with CO2. In my mind, no need to sanitize. Those are the three items I would argue must be clear of microbes/yuckies.
So yeah, I sanitize my siphon. That’s it.
Once a quarter I flush my beer lines in my kegerator. So I guess that sort of counts.
This was posted
onetwo hours ago, have you consumed more than aquarthalf gallon since then and if not why not?I would be interested in home brew, and I’m comfortable following sterile techniques, although bottling and keeping bottles on hand seems like a hassle. Without asking you to talk me through the process, would you share some links you think are good starting places?
Three pints deep. Life’s beautiful as I reflect upon the revolutionary optimism dancing through my mind.
For beer brewing, BIAB. Ten gallon pot and a mesh bag, and heat.
If you have the space, kegging is the way to go and cheaper in the long run compared to bottling. But an additional refrigerator is usually necessary.
Most equipment can be sourced secondhand. Go for an Anvil or Clawhammer if you can source either off Marketplace. I scored a Clawhammer for $350 some years ago. By far the best purchase I’ve ever made in this hobby.
This is really cool, I don’t think I can attend to a new hobby now but this seems fairly accessible and I would like to try it myself sometime.
Its basically like brewing a big bag of tea for 4 - 6 hours.
6 pints in. Still doing great. Gave some to my neighbor.
Is it good?
As good as any microbrewery.
This is not an encouraging answer
Pretty fucking good. Solid B+. Given the price and time to finish, A+++++++.
I saw the post below that it’s a cream ale with Kveik yeast, that’s basically a guaranteed B+, I approve.
For the people asking about brewing, probably don’t try and make super hoppy beers or a Budweiser clone, do what Dick Fuckarelli did. Or maybe make an English dark mild or Bavarian hefeweizen, they’re all super easy and good. Also don’t start off shooting for malt liquor, there’s nothing better than crushing multiple liters of 4% beer and your early attempts at high abv are probably going to suck.
Couldn’t agree more. English ales are the best way to cut your teeth. Then SMASHs if you want to go IPA, or Belgium Singles or Doubles if you want to go malt forward.
I’ve made so much of Jamil’s English dark mild at like 3.8% and it’s ludicrously good and crazy cheap to make. The closest thing I’ve found that is similar is Cigar City Maduro but that’s got significantly more alcohol and it’s still $10 for a sixer on sale.
People usually let Belgians get a little out of hand because they saw on Reddit that you can just dump a bunch of extra sugar in there and let it rip at 90° and it’ll be fine. I love saison as another starter style though and it’s probably one of the most proletarian types of beer so it’s the perfect complement to leftist cosplay.
My cream ale I made up myself (which is like saying I invented stick figures).
8.5 lbs 2 row, 1.5lbs corn flakes (Aldi big box for the proletariat win), 2oz Special B
1oz Fuggles @ 60min
Kveik Omega Lutra (dry)
Filtered water (just an RV filter on a garden hose)
Mash temp 152F
Yield: 5.5 gallons; 5 gallons in the keg.
Oh what type of beer and flavour?
Cream ale. Kveik yeast. Done in 6 days.
Ohh weee that sounds tasty
How do you like Kveik? I did a couple beers with it and thought it was fine, but never really ferment at the hot temps folks were saying it’s really neat at. Mostly back to a dry yeast of whatever is appropriate for the style now.
At low temps (basically room temp) it’s (to me) between an s-04 and s-05. Some yeast flavor but fairly clean. At high temps, it gives off a citrus affect that you normally would attribute to hops. And higher temps give off a lager-like feel in most instances.
I see it as it’s own thing.
Makes sense, was mostly curious since for me the only real window for me to even think about using it is in the summer to hit that high ferment temp.
Right now I’m not brewing as much anymore as I’ve cut back a lot on how much I drink and I try to give it away when I can. Half the fun is sharing it with folks for me. So I struggle to find recipes I want to include it in. I’ve been trying to fine tune my recipes right now more than anything.
I can’t recommend brewing with kveik enough. This is my fifth or sixth batch overall using it, and it blows my mind how good it is.
I’ll have to put it back in the rotation next summer and give it another go. Might be nice to pitch immediately and not worry about it. In the summer my wort chiller + normal tap water doesn’t quite get me to pitch temps immediately.
hell yeah
do you mind me asking how much it costs to get started? any guides you recommend?
I have a bunch of 5 gal buckets In not using…
OK. Bare minimum for brewing:
10 gal stainless steel pot
Mesh bag
Look up The Bru Sho on YT. Dude will walk you through basics. However I suggest getting an all in one system like an Anvil.
For fermenting I suggest 6.5 gal buckets. Or, using corny kegs as a fermenter has been very popular lately.
Everything can be had second hand. Sometimes free
As the old saying goes, “Before I learned to brew I was poor, sober, and lonely. Now I’m just poor.”
Oh. I see you asked for price:
I bought my brew system for $3-400ish dollars used off of Marketplace. I got a used kegerator 2 years ago for $100.
And everything else i picked up along the way over 20+ years. A lot of it was free.
What equipment do I need? Anything too expensive?
Large stainless steel pot (10 gal), mesh bag, heat source that can bring 7 gallons of water up to boil. For fermentation: plastic carboys/buckets. Then either bottles (growers or regular beer bottles) or a corny keg.
Nothing expensive. Most of it can be sourced second hand. Sometimes free.
How do you usually go about sourcing bottles?
3 ways:
You buy beer, and you keep the bottle or growler. Or, have friends buy beer, and you keep the bottle or growler. Or find em on marketplace.
When I used to bottle (20+ years ago) I liked those swing top sealing bottles.
how are you adding carbonation? just sugar + capping or…?
i’ve made a shit ton of flat cider/apple wine because i’m lazy, but i’d like to try beer sometime.
Forced carbonation in a corny keg.
Priming sugar is a great way to add carbonation to beer and cider. As long as your glass is good, secondary in bottle is perfect.
Kickass!
It sounds like you did a cream with kveik yeast, sounds great - what’s your favorite style?
For my first batch I did a kolsch as that was my favorite style at the time. What was your first batch?
Favorite style? Gun to my head, English Nut Brown or Irish Stout. How about you?
My first brew? i think I recall doing a pale ale from an extract kit. Which isn’t a bad way to go (extract kits) except there’s no money to be saved. Might as well just go buy commercial beer at that point .
These days porter is my nectar, but I drink vanishingly less than I used to.
Agreed that extract kits are a good way to see the proof of concept, but don’t do much for cost savings.
I’ll have to check into kveik a bit more. I know it throws some mean esters sometimes, so it always kinda spooked me.
Lutra spits out clean if you ferment under 80F.
How’s “gun to my head”? Is it an IPA?
I just found the name of my next beer.
dumb question but - are you able to make it taste as good as/better than commercially available beer? my dad used to homebrew cider and it was pretty gross tbh.
Definitely as good. Maybe not as clear, but taste wise, just as good as any beer at the store.
Is altbier easy
Its a lager so it will require a certain temperature profile during fermentation. Not particularly hard but 4-8 weeks of the fermenters sitting at 60ish degrees.
I would recommend finding an ale equivalent to try and mimic first.
It’s all pretty easy to do right.
It’s doing it well that takes a lot of practice.
What do you think of dark beers? Like stouts, and porters. Because oh my god I want to try making some, seeing how a bottle of Komes costs regularly over 12zł. It’s good, real good. I definitely won’t start with it since I don’t know shit, but still it would probably be a goal.
I find porters to be more complex from a brewing perspective, vs stouts. I’d argue stouts are actually on the easier side, in general. If I were to just be getting into brewing, I’d start with an English brown. The jump to having the skill to make a stout from browns/milds/etc is fairly small.
Thanks I’ll look into it
