From the category archives:

Homebrew Related

Brewing beer is by far the best and most satisfying hobby that I’ve run across. How great is it to spend a few hours brewing beer while drinking a few beers, then a week or two later bottle your brew while drinking a few beers, and then a few weeks later get to taste the beer you created?

When I tell people I brew beer, they always have questions. How much does it cost to start?  Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to buy beer already made?  Honestly, it can be an expensive hobby, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you’re serious and can afford to spend a few hundred to get good equipment, I suggest you go down to your local brew shop and let them help you.

If you are interested in home brewing, but don’t have a lot to spend, or are not sure if you will enjoy it enough to spend a few hundred dollars getting setup, I’d suggest getting a home beer brewing kit.

I’ve had beer made from two kits, and each had completely different results.  The first I’ve tried was from Mr. Beer, and honestly it tasted like crap.  It could have been the way that batch was made, but I would probably stear clear of it.

Last August I was in New York and tried two beers from a Coopers brewing kit. I was pretty impressed with the quality for how cheap the kit and the ingredients where to get started.  I had the IPA and the wheat beer.  While not the best beers I’ve ever had, it sure beat the taste of most micro beers out there.

Once you get the kit for $99, you can make 6 gallons of beer for about $20 (includes malts, hops, and yeast), which is a pretty good deal if you are toying around with the idea to get started home brewing.  Plus if you realize that you enjoy the brewing process, you will already have some of the key pieces of equipment so it won’t cost to much to upgrade.

Here is a video on their website that shows what is included.

The Coopers kit includes:

  • 1 Plastic 30 liter fermenter with lid (and o ring), makes 23 liters (6 Gallons)
  • 1 Hydrometer
  • 1 Sediment Reducer
  • 1 Plastic Spoon
  • 1 “Little Bottler” tube and bottling valve
  • 1 Tap
  • 1 Airlock
  • 1 Airlock grommet
  • 1 Thermometer
  • 30 740ml PET bottles and caps
  • 1 Instruction booklet
  • 1 Instructional DVD
  • 1 Cooper’s Lager Beer Kit Package – which includes:
    • 1 1.7kg Coopers Lager Beer Kit Concentrate with yeast
    • 1 1 kg Coopers Brewing Sugar
    • 1 Bag of Carbonation drops

Check out Coopers beer kits here.

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High Country and Homebrew

by Logan on August 3, 2010

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Geoff Spakes. Geoff is a longtime homebrewer trying to balance his love of craft beer with his passion for distance running and CrossFit. If you would like to contribute a guest post to BlogAboutBeer.com, please contact me.

Nothing goes together quite like a tasty brew and the great outdoors, even better if it’s your own painstakingly crafted concoction. Trying to escape the heat wave that’s hit the Colorado Front Range my homebrew buddy and I packed up the families and headed to the high country for some cooler air. Besides all the typical camping gear that is required we also loaded a cooler full of our favorite homebrew.

Two of our newer brews were tucked away in the coolers awaiting their appointed time of drinking…two radically different recipes meant to be drunk under very different conditions. The first, Meyer Lemon Hefeweizen, is designed to go down easy on a hot summer day. After a painfully long two hour drive, we arrived, setup camp and hit the trail for a quick hike…it was the perfect activity to get a quick blast of mountain fun and relax after the hectic unpacking.

Of course back at camp we eagerly dug into the cooler, pulled out a liter bottle and filled two glasses. We were greeted by a white fluffy head and a cloudy pale liquid; raising the glass to take a drink the tangy aroma of the Meyer lemons rose out of the glass. The first sip was just as expected, cool and refreshing…a light summer wheat beer with just enough citrus to make things interesting.

Meyer Lemon Hefeweizen

Batch Size: 12.00 gal
Boil Size: 13.74 gal
Estimated OG: 1.058 SG
Estimated Color: 4.3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 30.3 IBU
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients
20.00 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)
2.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
2.00 lb Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)
1.00 oz Summit [17.00 %] (60 min)
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (30 min)
12.00 items Meyer Lemon (Primary 7.0 days)
1 Pkgs American Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP32)

Mash Schedule: *Single Infusion, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 24.00 lb
*Single Infusion, Medium Body

60 min Mash In Add 30.00 qt of water at 165.9 F 154.0 F (Step Temp)
20 min Mash Out Add 16.80 qt of water at 196.6 F 168.0 F (Step Temp)

Notes:
Zest and juice lemons; boil juice, rinds and zest for 15 minutes. Add rinds to boiling wort for 60 minutes and add juice and zest to primary fermenter.

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Submit Your Homebrewing Recipes

by Logan on July 6, 2010

Are you a home brewer with some good recipes that you want to share with the brewing community? I’m currently in the process of putting together a beer recipe guide and would love to include your recipes. If you feel that you have a good recipe, please submit it via the contact form and I’ll include it in the guide, which should be available in the next few weeks.

When submitting the recipes, please include the following:

  • Beer Name
  • Category (ex: Pale Ale, ESB, etc..)
  • Type (all grain or extract)
  • Ingredients separated by fermentables, hops, yeast, and others)
  • Procedure

It doesn’t matter if you are an amateur, as long as you like your recipe, I’d love to include it. I might even send you a gift if it looks so good that I decide to brew it myself.

Have a great day!

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Homebrewing Beer Now Legal in Oklahoma

by Luke on May 19, 2010

Homebrewing beer has been legal in the eyes of the federal government since 1979. Little did I know, however, thatthere are still a few states which consider homebrewing to be illegal. I know — weird, right? But as of this week, the states which outlaw homebrewing is down by one (now only two states remain; Alabama and Mississippi). House Bill 2348, sponsored by Representative Colby Schwartz and Senator Mike Schulz, officially legalized the home production of beer for personal use in Oklahoma. Home production of wine and cider for personal use was already legal in Oklahoma. Below is the rest of the press release which was distributed Monday by the Brewers Association/The American Homebrewers Association. Congratulations, citizens and brewers of Oklahoma!

The passage of HB 2348 leaves Alabama and Mississippi as the only remaining states where the homebrewing hobby is not yet legal. The U.S. government made homebrewing legal on a federal level in 1979.

“I’m excited to see Oklahoma finally bring homebrewing into parity with wine and cider, and it was an honor to author the legislation,” said Representative Schwartz. “The success of this measure would not have been possible without the overwhelming support of the active homebrewing community in Oklahoma.”

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) estimates that there are approximately 750,000 homebrewers in the United States, including 7,000 homebrewers residing in Oklahoma. Oklahoma and Utah are the only states to have legalized homebrewing in the last 10 years.

Gary Shellman, AHA member and editor for Oklahoma City’s homebrew club, the High Plains Draughters, initiated the legalization process and worked tirelessly to ensure the bill’s passage. Shellman spent months lining up a sponsor for a homebrew bill. He kept up with the bill throughout the process, advising the bill’s sponsors and reporting on the bill’s progress to the American Homebrewers Association staff and Oklahoma homebrew club members.

“Our theme from the very beginning was to get support from all sectors of the brewing community to bring parity for homebrewed beer with that already long enjoyed by home wine and cider makers,” said Shellman. “We are proud to say that we finally got the job done, but none of this would have been possible without the diligent efforts of Rep. Colby Schwartz.”

The American Homebrewers Association assisted the legalization effort by providing advice and by mobilizing Oklahoma AHA members and Brewers Association member breweries in support of HB 2348.

“Gary Shellman’s dedication to homebrew legalization and the response of Oklahoma’s homebrewers has been truly inspiring,” said Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association. “I’m glad that the AHA was there to help with the process, as I believe that legalizing homebrewing for all U.S. citizens is one of the most important issues that the AHA addresses.”

The AHA is currently working with homebrewers in Alabama and Mississippi on efforts to legalize homebrewing in those states.

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As any long-time BlogAboutBeer.com reader knows, I’ve been dabbling in homebrewing beer for years. I still stick to extract brewing (for lack of equipment, space, time, attention span, etc.) but I brew pretty regularly and like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Therefore I’m personally surprised it took as long as it did for me to try my hand at some other kind of home fermentation. That all changed this weekend when I brewed my first batch of Kombucha. Kombucha, as you may or may not know, is an ancient tea with origins in Russia, China and Japan which is fermented, and therefore has a very low alcoholic content (sub 1 percent).

Many folks, myself included, feel that Kombucha is an “elixir” which helps cleanse and revitalize the body, boost energy and speed up metabolism. Plus, it’s damn tasty. You can get bottles of kombucha commercially (any Whole Foods will have lots to choose from), but it’s expensive – usually about $3.50 a bottle. But you can brew your own at home, for about $1.50 a gallon.

The recipe and the brewing process of Kombucha is really quite simple, especially if you’re used to brewing much more complicated batches of beer. The tricky part is locating a SCOBY — often called a culture or “mushroom”, the SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) is what ferments the Kombucha tea — but I bet if you ask around, you’re bound to find some friends who have a SCOBY to spare. I was amazed at how many people I knew brewed their own ‘Booch and volunteered to pass along a baby SCOBY for me to use. If not, you can buy SCOBYs online (although they’re a bit pricy) and have them shipped to you. Or you can grow your own using the sediment from a raw, organic, unflavored bottle of commercial Kombucha (but it takes a couple of weeks to form).

After you have your SCOBY, all you need is 5 or 6 tea bags (caffinated, plain black or green; I used black), a cup of plain ol’ white table sugar, and a gallon of spring water. I brought half of the gallon of water to a boil, took it off the heat, steeped the tea bags in the water for about 20 minutes, removed them, stirred in the sugar until it disolved and then added the 1/2 gallon of sweet tea to the other half-gallon of cold water in a gallon-sized glass jar (an old pickle jar. Unfortunately a homebrew carboy won’t work because the mouth isn’t wide enough to fit the culture).

Once the liquid had cooled to about 70 degrees, I added the SCOBY and a half-cup of an old batch of Kombucha (from the same friend who gave me the SCOBY), covered the jar with a couple paper towels (rubber banded on) to serve as a makeshift airlock (and fruit fly lock), and put it in a warm, dark closet to hang out and ferment. In about 10-14 days, the batch will be done fermenting, at which time I’ll remove the SCOBY (and put it in a Tupperware in the fridge along with a 1/2 cup of the tea to use next time), and bottle the Kombucha for 3 or 4 days (so it can continue to carbonate) and they it will be ready to drink. What I need to do a little more research on is how to flavor my batch. I know some people who have added real flavoring to their bottles — like grated ginger, apple slices, blueberries, etc. — while I’ve seen other people use extracts common to homebrewing beer. And even still, I know that commercial Kombucha companies use fruit puree to flavor their batches. So I’ll report back on the direction I choose when I, well, choose it.

Have you ever brewed Kombucha before? What have your experiences been?

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