Dang it...

[suver569]

I have a little fridge, where I store my reef supplies (frozen stuff) and Beer. I'll be damned if my beer bottles dont smell like shrimp now....... crap.

[suver569]

Ya, got the fishy stuff in small tupperware containers in the freezer part, I just think I spilled something somewhere. Smells like phytoplankton,so I might have dripped. All I have left in there is some homebrew that isnt quite ready. Tastes strangely similar to.... Well... Pot. Got a weird combination of hops this time around

[suver569]

Lol, well the "Dan pot brew" has calmed down. I tried a bottle way to early. It's a very, very strong IPA and needed a good month to settle out. Tastes like it's ready, maybe another week and it'll be an arse kicker. Nah, now that I taste it again, it's pretty much ready.

It's actually not that hard to do, just a little time consuming. You pretty much have to dedicate a good 6 hours to do a brew. Inital cost was around 120 bucks for all the gear, and will run you about 35 bucks per brew (if you brew strong beer, which, what else would you brew....Budwiser?) You can brew inexpensive lagers, which will run you about 28 bucks. They are good, but not very strong. I stick with the strong hoppy beer. A batch will make about 4.5 gallons, or 60ish 12oz bottles, or 32ish 22oz bottles.

It's good fun, and keeps me out of trouble on the weekends. It's hard for me with the 1 and 4 year old, because they are curious, and like to bug me when I"m brewing. I usually send them to g'ma's house for the day.

You can wind up spending quite a bit more if you start getting into it more. I made a chiller, which cools down your brew in about 20 minutes, rater than 3 hours, but that was only 35 bucks. If you get into kegs, you can drop some good money very fast. I'm fine with bottling for now, plus it makes the beer portable, which I like. I wound up buying almost an entire extra setup (which was about another 40 bucks, because you dont need 2 of everything) so I could make some more elaborate beers, which take 5-6 weeks to ferment. This way, I can make an elaborate beer, and a simple beer at the same time.

Good fun I think.

Oh, it's good fun to mess with people too. I give them one of the brews, they get about half way through, and I tell them to not worry about the little floaties in the beer, and that the visual hallucinations only last about 2 days.

[TommyD]

Jason; go to http://www.homebrewmart.com/

You thought Reefkeepers were a cool bunch? HomeBrewers are just as cool. ALWAYS willing to help; I've called them up 5 min before they closed with a question and ended up in a 20 min conversation with them. They're right below USD in a strip mall. Check them out. BTW; they ALWAYS have used C02 cylinders for Kegging (Anyone say cool people and cheap Kalk reactor parts?...)

-Tom D.

[SDMike]

If you can boil water, you can make beer!

I have a friend that's been making 15gal batches for the last few weekends straight:

Boil water.
Add ingredients.
Sparge.
Boil again. (rolling boil for about an hour)
Add a little more hops.
Run thru a counter-current cooler and put into carboys.
Clean up
Done.

A few weeks later you'll need to either bottle or keg up the beer, but that's pretty simple really.

If you wanna see a slick setup, I'll call next time Steve's brewing.

M

[suver569]

www.americanhomebrewing.com

Another good store. The owner is real helpful, and has helped me with a few good brews.