Any brewers out there? was thinking of giving it a go again, did some about 25 years ago which was ok as i remember. Anyone got any recomendations for lager/pilsner type brews and good suppliers of supplies etc

I have been very interested in this idea too, beer seems quite easy and looks quite entertaining

I suspect quite a few attempts may end up feeding the giant crocodiles though

[Edited on 27/8/13 by Mr Whippy]

I regularly brew but mostly stick to bitter, IPA and porter. Having tried many different kits over the years I would personally reccommend the higher end kits - the ones that don't rely on you having to add a huge amount of sugar.

When i started off i went for the lower end kits such as Boots and Tom Caxton- as i'd convinced myself that home brewing should be as cheap as possible.

This thinking didnt always work out though as I often ended up with brews of variable quality. Ive since come to the conculsion that it's worth paying a bit extra to get decent results.

Apart from this change of thinking the item that probably made the most difference was buying a brewing heater. This looks like a glass tube with a mains lead and just drops into the fermentation bin. It is thermostatically controlled and though it hardly uses any electricity it works to keep the brew at a consistent temperature night and day which tangibly helps the process.

A criticism of using a barrel instead of bottles is the beer can start to go off when the barrel drops to atmospheric pressure. Other than drinking the beer quickly at this point before the flavour starts to be affected the practical solution is to use a modified cap with a gas valve - a 2 second blast of CO2 from a small CO2 bottle when the barrel is down to about 1/3rd full works wonders and keeps the beer drinkable for much longer.

My favourites at present (with 100% sucess rate) are Woodfordes (as in the Norfolk based brewery) and Festival. Both make a variety of different kits.

Always sterilise the fermentation bin and any equipment such as syphone tubes, big spoon, thermometer etc that will be put into it during brewing plus the bottles or barrel.

Equally important is to rinse everything after sterilising.

Always use finings in a barrel. It drags the sediment th#o the bottom of the barrel to keep the beer clear. Though all decent home brew shops will sell this with the kit this wont be the case if you are buying from Ebay or a supermarket so make sure you get a packet.

Used to brew my own beer many years ago, could never quite get on with the malt extract flavour you always seem to get with the kits.

Then started using the full brewing process which is a lot more involved but I was then producing some nice ales, just as good as any pub offerings. Eventually though, started to get an "off" flavour in my brews which I could never seem to eradicate, despite sterilising everything many times, at this point pretty much gave up with it.

I'd also be interested in what the modern kits are like, and whether they still suffer from the unpleasant (for me) malt extract taste, quite fancy having another go myself....

Whilst I've not done any for a few months now, I regularly brew my own from the kits you can get. I typically spend £20-25 on a 48 pint kit as I couldn't be bothered with all the making it from scratch approach. I get my stuff from here.

Making the stuff is really easy once you have the suggested gear sterilised. It takes a few days for the initial brewing stage and then I choose to barrel rather than bottle my beer as I don't have the space for the bottles in the house. A barrel can just sit on any spare bit of shelf though. I also tend to leave mine in the barrel to have a good long secondary fermentation, sometimes as much as 6 months. But then I prefer the darker heavier ales and porters.

Do not be afraid to experiment after a few goes either. My best to date was a dark Xmas ale with oak chips that had been soaked in home steeped cherry brandy, with a good glug of the brandy thrown in too. It smelt lovely and 4-5 pints was enough to make a family Xmas pass in a suitable blur.

No1. Buy the KingKeg Tap..
A cheap tap will probably start to leak once the barrel starts to pressurize
(from experience)..

How long does beer last once bottled? Some of the kits seem to be very large amounts, I may get very fat trying to drink it quickly before it went off

I used to do a lot of home brew but I was drinking far too much of it for my own good so I stopped doing it. I used Boots, Muntons, Geordie or whatever took my fancy at the shop and can't say I ever had a bad kit just down to personal taste. I used top tap barrels which need pressuring to get the beer out but the top clears first so you get to drink it sooner.

I have been brewing now for about 12 months I started with the kits then very quickly went to extract (liquid malt extract) and this method gave me a better beer. the 8 or so kits I did all 2 can kits cost between £15- 25 and the best 1 was the woodfordes wherry which I got from wilkos on offer for £15 I think. I have tried all the 3 methods of storing beer first plastic kegs all fine until you get a leek from the cap and as said before you will need to inject the keg with co2 via a s30 valve. bottles - only did 1 batch far too time consuming for me I used the swing top bottles which made things faster but then on the Cornelius kegs which are a stainless steel keg and hold about 18 litres. no looking back now but everybody moves to stainless over time. and im tryin all grain brewing next weekend the method called biab (boil in a bag) this method takes more time than kits and extract but is said to be better. give it ago things have moved on since you stared.

steve

Some previous discussion

here

and

here2

and

here 3

among others.

I remembered this being discussed before, when I searched for "beer" the site returned over 4000 threads, "brewing" returned 81 threads, seems we talk about beer a lot




[Edited on 27/8/13 by Fred W B]

I brew from kits pretty regular. Better brew range is pretty good for the money, brewferm pilsner is a nice drink. My favourite easy drinking lager style is Coopers Mexican. I have elderflower cider and blueberry cider in kegs. I bottle all my lagers/ales. Kits are much better quality now than years ago!

All grain is the way forward. I've just almost finished building a double barrel temperature controlled fermentation chamber / kegerator which will double my output. I'm a bitter man myself... although my Fermentation chamber will be quite handy if I ever go all continental and start lagering beers. Cheers!

ps I'd stay well away from any kit which recommends adding sugar and if possible go for an unhopped malt extract (even if it means using DME) and add proper hops (even if they're hop pellets) to get the flavour. Hopped malt extract isn't the best.....

I brewed my own 20 years ago too, and gave up when I started drinking it before it was ready.......



Now Im older and fatter I love the idea of a 50 pint barrel somewhere cold, but my personal keg will only get bigger.




I watch from afar

"I brewed my own 20 years ago too, and gave up when I started drinking it before it was ready.......!

+1

I'm going to ask maybe a daft question now as I've never home brewed but would this all go wrong / off quickly if the ambient temp was always between about 25 and 30 deg C?

Can't buy ale here full stop

This could be a solution

I'm back in the UK for a few weeks in less than a week so I could stock up on kit but it's got to be relatively compact as got to fit in a suitcase.

Unbreakable is good.

Not sure how easily I could get my hands on CO2 bottles as so much stuff here is bottled lager, very little comes on tap.

how do you homebrew? what kit do you need? I am trully fascinated...