Homebrew beer, the basics of home beer brewing.

posted on Announcement in how to brew beer


The step by step process I use to brew malt extract recipe beer. This is a great video to watch if you’re brewing for the first time, or want to know more about how to home brew. Teach everyone what makes a good craft beer!

Duration : 0:7:47

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Technorati Tags: alcohol, ale, basics, Beer, beginner, bottling, Brew, brewer, Brewing, extract, ferment, growler, home, homebrew, homebrewing, homemade, hops, keg, kit, make, making, malt, organic, recipe, wort, yeast

How to Brew Beer

posted on in how to brew beer


Gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to brew beer from a store-bought kit.

Duration : 0:8:23

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Technorati Tags: alcohol, Beer, bottle, Brew, brewery, drinking, ferment, fermentation, filter, home, hops, how-to, yeast

Scent in plastic fermentation pale?

posted on November 29, 2009 in home brewing equipment


Hey, I’m new to home brewing, and just got my first kit from a family friend who unfortunately let it sit in his basement for 10yrs. I already sanitized and rinsed it, but it still has an oh-so-slight odor to it, not necessarily an obvious one. Do you think that this could effect the quality of my brew, or am I being overly anal concerning the cleanliness of my equipment?


The best thing I have ever found to eliminate odours in any container is : Bicarbonate of Soda.
Use about a T spoon full in every pint of warm water and leave overnight.
Hey! good luck with the homebrewing and if you’re in UK I look forward to a bottle from your first attempt, if my solution works?!

St Patrick’s Day funny?

posted on in home brewing supplies

St. Patrick’s Day: the one day of the year when the 2% of the world’s population that’s Irish gets the other 98% completely sh** faced.

Leg 1: 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Rise and shine early. Take a long, hot shower, and liberally use aftershave, perfume, cologne, deodorant and powders afterwards, because by 3p.m., you will be excreting raw alcohol and other poisons. The bars open at 9, so use this time to prepare. Collect the following supplies and put them in a place where you will easily be able to find it in an impaired condition. We recommend the bathroom floor, between the toilet and the baseboard heater, since that’s where you’ll probably end up: 1 litre spring water, 1 bottle aspirin, 5 pairs incontinence pants, 1 bottle Pepto Bismil, 1 gram morphine sulphate, 1 oz. human adrenaline extract, 1 pre-charged electric defibrillator, 4 Cardiac needles, 1 trauma surgeon. Brew a strong pot of coffee and add 9 oz. Jameson Irish whiskey, drink. Note that coffee should be drunk liberally throughout the day. There is a reason that the Irish invented Irish Coffee; unless you ingest a large volume of artificial stimulants throughout the course of St. Patrick’s Day, you are going to die. Arrange to be picked up to be taken to the bar by 8:45 a.m. We cannot stress enough that you should not drink and drive. There is no reason to chance losing your license or killing someone in a drunken state when you have plenty of idiot friends willing to take that risk on your behalf.

Leg 2: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
It’s lunchtime! You may not be hungry, but it’s important to eat something. If you want to maintain your buzz and not get that hideous, bloated feeling that could slow down your drinking, there are only two options: Popcorn or Pop Tarts. Both have the carbohydrates you’ll need to give you energy, both will soak up excess bile in your stomach, and both have names that are hard to slur. If you start slurring your words too early, you’ll hear the most frightening phrase in the English language on St. Patrick’s Day besides I’m pregnant: "We’re not serving you". By now, you should switch from coffee drinks to beer. You have only one option here: Guinness stout. You may be tempted to order green beer, but remember: beer doesn’t always turn green because of food colouring.

Leg 3: 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
By now, the bar is definitely crowded as people take long lunches and bail out of work early to tie one on. If you’re doing your job correctly, the bar should look twice or three times as crowded as it really is. By now, you may be in conversation with some real Irish people, since the person you came with has likely been taken away by ambulance. Some conversational points to remember when talking to the Irish are: Football; you should be more passionate about it than you are about your wife or husband, AND The English are all piss-arsed, pig-f&^king b*stards who should be lined up and kicked into the Liffey. If you remember those two points, as well at least three derogatory names for Margaret Thatcher, you can talk to the Irish for hours. You should continue to drink Guinness throughout this leg, although you may want to have another Irish Coffee if your heartbeat has become irregular.

The Home Stretch: 7 p.m. to Closing
Your goal, of course, is to be the last person to leave the bar at closing time. This will be impossible, since a blood alcohol content of .50 usually equals death, and you should be pushing a .35 or .40 by now. The only way for a true Irishman to leave a bar before closing time with honour is to be hauled away by the police. Throw a punch. It doesn’t matter who you hit or why; no one’s made any sense since 3 o’clock, anyway. You will be beaten mercilessly, since your fine motor control has been gone since the late morning, but it doesn’t matter since you can’t feel anything. Depending on your community, the police should arrive within fifteen minutes to scrape you off the floor and clap you in irons. The final impression you leave is the most important: as you are being dragged from the bar, begin screaming that you want to take your drink with you. You will be a legend, and by now the friend who took you to the bar should have had his or her stomach pumped, and will be able to bail you out. By following these simple guidelines, your St. Patrick’s Day experience would be one you would never forget if it weren’t physically and biologically impossible for you to remember any of it.

Somebody had some free time ????

With my first home brew kit I got a small packet of finings (beer clearing agent)?

posted on in home brew

When is the best time to add these to the brew?

You can put the fining in after the primary fermentation (when you transfer the beer to a secondary fermenter/carboy for aging).

-OR-

Adding Irish Moss at the end of the boil (last 5 minutes or so) will also help clear the beer.

-OR-

Cold conditioning for a week will clear beer with or without the use of finings. If you do any kegging, this is a good way to go.

How difficult is it to brew your own beer?

posted on in how to brew beer

I’ve heard of individuals learning how to brew some tasty beer and I was wondering about some of the secrets.

The basic homebrewing equipment is not all that expensive – you can probably get everything you need to start for $100 – $150 – and we’ll be glad to direct you to it online in our related products section. Of course, you could also choose to ruin our fun and buy it from some local brewing supplies store. In order to start brewing, you will need the following items:
Brewpot
Primary fermenter
Airlock and stopper
Plastic hose
Bottling bucket
Bottles
Bottle brush
Bottle capper (if glass bottles are used)
Stick-on thermometer
Household items
Now we will explain what these items are and give you a basic idea of what you do with them, although the more detailed brewing instructions come in steps 2, 3, and 4.

Brewpot

A brewpot is a huge pot made of stainless steel or enamel-coated metal which is of at least 16-quart capacity. You might have a huge pot at home already, but it’s no good if it’s made of aluminum or if it’s a chipped enamelized pot. These will make the beer taste funny. You use the brewpot to boil up the beer ingredients or "wort," as described in 3. Cook up some beer).

Primary fermenter

The primary fermenter is where the wort goes after you’ve boiled it, and it’s where the beer begins to ferment and become that fabulous stuff that makes you so funny and charming. The primary fermenter must have a minimum capacity of 7 gallons, and a lid which seals airtight and accommodates the airlock and rubber stopper. There’s no faking these puppies – you’ve got to buy one that’s made for the purpose. Make sure the one you buy is made of food-grade plastic, as this kind of plastic doesn’t allow the bad stuff in or let the good stuff out.

Airlock and stopper

The airlock is a handy gadget which allows carbon dioxide to escape from your primary fermenter during fermentation, thus keeping it from exploding, but doesn’t allow any of the bad air from outside to enter your beer’s hygienic little world. It fits into a rubber stopper which has a hole drilled into it, and the stopper goes in the top of your primary fermenter. The stoppers are sized by number, so make sure you figure out what size of hole you have and what kind of stopper fits it.

Plastic hose

This small, wind-powered burrowing machine is . . . no, just kidding, we’re talking about an ordinary five-foot length of food-grade plastic hose. You need it to transfer beer from place to place, and you need to keep it clean and free of kinks or leaks.

Bottling bucket

This is a large, food-grade plastic bucket with a spigot at the bottom. It must be at least as big as your primary fermenter, because you need to pour all the liquid from your primary fermenter into your bottling bucket prior to bottling your beer.

Bottles

After primary fermentation, you place the beer in bottles for secondary fermentation and storage. You need enough bottles to hold all the beer you’re going to make (a 5-gallon batch of beer is about 640 ounces, so if you’re using 16-ounce bottles you’ll need 40). The best kind of bottles are solid glass ones with smooth tops (not the twist-off kind) that will accept a cap from a bottle capper. You can use plastic ones with screw-on lids, but they look crappy and they’re not as good for fermentation. It’s your call, but we recommend you go with the glass ones.

Whether you use glass or plastic bottles, make sure they are dark-colored. Light damages beer, so you want your bottles to be as dark as possible.

Bottle brush

This is a thin, curvy brush which you can insert into a bottle in order to clean it out really well. We haven’t even gotten into how clean everything has to be, but we will, and the bottle brush is a specialized bit of cleaning gear you will need.

Bottle capper

If you take our advice and buy glass bottles, you will need some sort of bottle capper to secure the caps on them. You’ll also need caps, of course, and you can buy them from any brewing supplies store. The best sort of bottle capper is one which can be affixed to a surface and worked with one hand while you hold the bottle with the other. There are also cheaper ones which require two hands on the capper, but these can be a pain. Go where your budget guides you.

Stick-on thermometer

This is a thermometer which you can apply to the side of your primary fermenter. They look like thin strips of plastic and they are backed with an adhesive. You can purchase them online, from a brewing supplies store, or from a pet store or aquarium store (they are also used for aquaria).

Household items

In addition to the above specialized equipment, you will need the following household items:

Small bowl
Saucepan
Rubber spatula
Oven mitts/pot handlers
Big mixing spoon (stainless steel or plastic)
Once you’ve got all these things, you’re properly armed.

For you, the beginning brewer, this step is accomplished all at once, because you are simply going to buy a "beer kit" which tells you what kind of beer it will make and includes all the necessary ingredients. (More experienced brewers find a recipe they like and purchase the ingredients separately. Not you, novice.) A beer kit consists of a big can of hopped malt concentrate and a packet of yeast. You will also need to purchase additional "fermentables" (this is the stuff that makes alcohol. All together now – "More fermentables means more alcohol"). Common additional fermentables are include brewers sugar, dry malt extract, liquid malt extract, rice syrup, demerera sugar, Belgian candi sugar or any combination of the above. You will need at least two pounds, and not more than three on your first go-round (you want to get just drunk enough to be charming, remember).

Beer kits eliminate a lot of your capacity for error and let you get used to the procedure before you start messing around with loose ingredients. These beer kits are available online or at brewing supplies stores and most people in the world brew with beer kits. Some brewers like the convenience and certainty of them so much that they continue to use them throughout their homebrewing careers.

There are, however, many variations on the brewing theme. We don’t provide you with any recipes in this article because it is aimed at the beginning brewer. If and when you wish to move beyond beer kits, we recommend that you purchase a book about homebrewing which contains a good recipe section, subscribe to a brewing magazine which will provide you with new recipes each month, or look on the Internet yourself for online recipes. (We took the liberty of including some links to homebrewing books with this SYW.) Once you’ve selected a recipe, you can then purchase the required ingredients and proceed.

Clean and sanitize your equipment

Cleanliness is incredibly important. You must clean and sanitize all of your equipment right before you start brewing, and keep everything clean throughout the process. Bacteria and fungi are everywhere and if enough of them get into your beer they will completely ruin it. The good part is that if you do clean everything you will make an excellent first batch of beer. At the first stage of brewing, you will need to clean and sanitize the following items:

At the first stage of brewing, you will need to clean and sanitize the following items:

Brewpot
Primary fermenter
Brew spoon
Airlock and stopper
Saucepan
Small bowl
Rubber spatula
Big mixing spoon
Later stages will also require you to clean and sanitize other items, and when we say that you should refer to the following cleaning and sanitizing instructions.

Cleaning refers to the removal of any visible crud, sediment, film, dust, etc. from all of your equipment. This can be accomplished with dish soap and a cloth or brush. Or if you’re lucky enough to have one, you can just use a dishwasher.

Sanitizing is a separate procedure from cleaning, and it requires the use of heat, chlorine or iodine mixed with water to kill off any remaining bacteria. If your dishwasher has a "heat dry" cycle, you’re in luck. Turn it on and let the steam in the dry cycle do the work for you.

If you are not blessed with a dishwasher (no doubt, one of man’s greatest inventions) you will need to sanitize the old fashion way.

First, you need to mix up some sanitizing solution, using either unscented chlorine bleach (2 ounces per 5 gallons of water) or pure iodine (not the stuff your mom put on your wounds, but stuff you have to buy at a brewing or restaurant supply store) and cold water.

Mix this up in a big basin, a sink or a bathtub, so long as whatever equipment you put it in has been thoroughly cleaned.

The primary fermenter and the bottling bucket don’t need to be soaked; you can mix up sanitizing solution right in them. You can even soak your other items in these two pieces.

All small items should be completely immersed in the sanitizing solution in the sink or in one of the large pieces of equipment. Once everything is full of or immersed in sanitizing solution, you can kick back and wait (30 minutes if you are using bleach, 5 minutes with the iodine solution) while the solution does its work. If you are using bleach you need to rinse everything thoroughly after it is sanitized. Set everything somewhere clean and let it dry. Don’t allow small children, pets or gypsies to rummage through the equipment, don’t sneeze on it. We want everything to be nice and clean for the brewing. OK. Let’s make some liquid nirvana!

Instructions for making great beer from a beer kit

Bring 2 quarts of water to 160-180°F, basically steaming but not boiling. Then remove from heat.

Add your beer kit and additional fermentables according to the directions. Suggested fermentables, as we mentioned before, include brewers sugar, dry malt extract, liquid malt extract, rice syrup, demerera sugar, Belgian candi sugar or any combination of the above. Each will impart its own unique flavor profile. Ask your local shop owner for advice on how to get what you want.

Stir aggressively to ensure that everything gets dissolved. Put a lid on the pot and let it sit for 10-15 minutes on the lowest heat setting. This will ensure that you achieve sanitation.

Add the contents of your pot to 4 gallons of cold water already in your primary fermenter. Mix well, at least a minute or two. This helps add oxygen to your wort prior to adding your yeast. Trust us, your yeast will thank you for it later (if you know what we mean). When the side of your fermenter feels cool to the touch, it is safe to add your yeast. Some kits recommend re-hydrating your yeast in water first. This is not really neccessary.

Ferment as close to recommended temperature range as possible

Primary fermentation

You have now made wort (it’s not exactly beer yet). Your wort will begin to ferment within the first day, and it will continue to do so for 3 to 5 days. You can tell that your wort is fermenting when you see little air bubbles rising up through the water in the airlock. This is basically just the gas produced during the fermentation process being forced out of the fermenter. After five days, you should begin to check on your beer every day, to see if it is still fermenting. If the water in the airlock is still bubbling, the beer is still fermenting and you must leave it alone. You can ruin your beer and cause your bottles to explode if you bottle your beer before primary fermentation has finished. When the bubbling stops or slows until there is a pause of two minutes between bubbles, primary fermentation is completed and your beer is ready to be bottled.

Bottling and Secondary Fermentation

Secondary fermentation takes place in the bottles, so you don’t get to drink your beer just yet. You can go ahead and try some, but it won’t be carbonated so you might not like it very much.

First, of course, you must clean (be sure to use your bottling brush and get all the crud out of your bottles) and sanitize (see section 3) the following items: Bottling bucket, Bottles, Bottle caps, Plastic hose, Saucepan, and Mixing spoon.

Make sure you have enough bottles to contain your new brew. Five gallons of beer is equivalent to approximately 640 ounces, so you need to plan accordingly, e.g., if you have 16-ounce bottles you’ll need about 40. You should also make sure you have more than enough caps, in case you screw up and have to re-cap some of the bottles.

You will also need to have some pure dextrose on hand, to make a priming solution. This is what allows the remaining yeast in your beer to carbonate the beer. Take the saucepan and put two or three cups of water in it, and dissolve 3/4 cup of dextrose in the water. Bring the solution to a boil over medium heat, then cover it and set it aside to cool for 15 to 20 minutes.

After the priming solution has cooled, place your cleaned and sanitized bottling bucket on the floor. Place the primary fermenter on a chair, table or counter directly above the bottling bucket. Try not to shake up the beer inside the fermenter too much when you move it, because you want all the sediment to stay on the bottom. Attach the plastic hose to the spigot on the primary fermenter and put the other end of the hose in the bottom of the bottling bucket. Pour the priming solution into the bottling bucket, and then open the spigot on the fermenter, allowing the beer to flow into the bucket and mix with the solution. Don’t try to get the last of the beer out of the fermenter, because it contains sediment you don’t want.

Close the spigot on the fermenter, take off the hose, and clean it well. Then get the fermenter out of the way and put the bottling bucket up where it was and hook up the hose to its spigot. Line up all your bottles on the floor underneath it and stick the hose into one of the bottles. Then you’re ready to open up the spigot on the bottling bucket and let the beer fly. Stick the hose in all the way to the bottom, and when the beer gets really near the top, yank the hose out and stick it in the next bottle. The level in the bottle drops when you take the tube out, and you want to leave about one inch of airspace at the top of the bottle (as close to one inch as possible; much more or less than that is not good). Therefore, you should be yanking the hose out when the beer is more or less right at the top of the bottle. If you have any financial aid money left over from last semester, invest in a bottle filler. It will make bottling less messy and be the best $2.99 you ever spent.

Once all the beer has drained out of the bucket, get ready to put the caps on your bottles. You need to do this right away, because every second that your beer remains exposed to the elements is a bad second. We’ve warned you about the bacteria and fungi. If you are using plastic bottles with screw tops, you can just sit down on the floor with your beer and twist them on. If you’re using glass bottles with metal caps, you’re going to need to use a bottle capper, and it will be way easier if you move them to a table or wherever you’re going to sit and work. Follow the directions of the capper you’ve purchased, and take your time. If you suspect that one of the caps didn’t go on correctly, rip the cap off and put on a new one. Check all your bottles for leakage and re-cap any that leak.

Once you’ve got all your bottles capped, you need to find a cool, dark place to put them while secondary fermentation takes place. They should not go in your fridge. Refrigerators are too cold for the yeast to do its work. You might as well put your beer wherever it was you put your fermenter, like in a closet, in the basement, in the attic or wherever, so long as the location is at a steady temperature of around 60 – 70 degrees. Now comes the really hard part. You have to leave your beer there for a minimum of two weeks before you can drink any of it. We know you’ve already waited for like, a whole week or maybe more, but you must be patient.

You must also continue to be clean. We know you’re tuckered out from all that bottling, but you have to clean out all of your equipment before you shove it into the closet. You’ll be doing yourself a huge favor, as the equipment will be much easier to clean and sanitize next time you want to make beer, and, therefore, it will be easier to make your next batch

Home Brew Stout Beer Recipe : Sanitizing Equipment To Home Brew Stout Beer

posted on November 27, 2009 in home brewing equipment

How to clean and sanitize brewing equipment to home brew stout beer; learn more about how beer is made in this free instructional video.

Expert: Mark Emiley
Bio: Mark Emiley has been homebrewing beer since 1998, with about 140 extract and all-grain batches under his belt, his beers have won numerous awards and his recipes have even been brewed commercially.
Filmmaker: Mark Emiley

Duration : 0:1:27

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Technorati Tags: Beer, Brew, Brewing, equipment, home, homebrew, How, recipe, Stout., supplies, to, video

Organic Home Brew Beer

posted on in how to brew beer

Is your beer a home brew? Beer activism is more than just a college past time.

Duration : 0:3:24

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Technorati Tags: alcohol, ale, Beer, Food, growler, LIME, Natural, organic

I need help with my first home brew beer?

posted on November 26, 2009 in home brewing equipment

I would like to attempt a beer similar to my favorite Guinness Extra Stout, but I’ve never brewed beer before.
I’ve made mead and hard cider. I have equipment.
Making a mash is new to me.
I just don’t quite know how to read beer recipes, so if someone would break down this recipe it would be awesome.
Specific questions regarding the (60 min)/(10 min) next to the hops and Irish moss
Dry Irish Stout

5 Gallon Recipe (OG 1.059)
77% System Efficiency
29 Carbohydrates/16oz
266 Calories/16oz
5.8% ABV

7.9 pounds Beeson’s Marris Otter
3 pounds Flaked Barley
1.2 pounds Roasted Barley
1 ounce Northern Brewer Hops (60 min)
1 ounce Kent Goldings Hops (60 min)
1 teaspoon Irish Moss (10 min)
1 Vial White Labs Irish Ale Yeast
.5 ounce Oak Chips in Secondary Fermenter
20cc 88% Lactic Acid at Bottling

Mash Schedule
153 degrees for 60 minutes
168 degrees for 10 minutes

Thanks

the minute markings next to ingredients is how long from the end of the boil you add them. Generally you boil your wort for 60 minutes.
So you would add 1oz of N.Brewer and 1oz. of Kent Goldings as soon as you come to a full boil. You would add Irish Moss (optional) at 10 minutes from the end of the boil, or 50 minutes into the boil.
It helps if you have a timer and can have multiple alarms on it to remind you of each increment.
You say you have equip for mead and cider, but do you have a mash tun? You will need one for doing an all grain batch of beer. Also double check your recipe to make sure that 7.9lb of Marris Otter is grain, not extract.

You can go to a homebrew store locally or buy your ingredients online. I prefer www.morebeer.com for online orders.
Once you find out about the marris Otter, you’ll be good to go.

Since your Original Gravity is going to be 1.059, I would recommend either pitching 2 vials of yeast, or making a 1000mL starter the day before (www.MrMalty.com for info about starters)

If you are doing all grain batch, I you will need to heat your water in a separate container, Denny Conn suggests 1.25 quarts of water for every lb of grain. Now you can either add grain to water or add water to grain. There are opinions about both methods. Either way add slowly so you don’t clump. Make sure to preheat your water higher then you need to account for the temp drop when the grains are added. Then sit and wait. Vorlof, drain, sparge and boil.
If you’re doing an extract batch, heat water to around 165 or so and steep your specialty grains (Flaked Barley and Roasted Barley) for 30 – 60 minutes. Then drain and add water and extract and hops and boil.
Check out www.howtobrew.com for more info.
Once your wort has been boiled, let cool to pitching temperature (usually around 60-62 degrees F) and add yeast or starter. I would say to ferment at around 62-65 degrees F. Wait for your Terminal Gravity to get around 1.012 or so. Drink and enjoy.

there are also forums on www.thebrewingnetwork.com and www.morebeer.com that can be very helpful.

Happy Brewing!
Brew Strong!

During this recession, what do you think of these ideas for saving and making money?

posted on in home brewing supplies

1. Set up an apple cider stand on a crisp fall day.
2. Start a gift-wrapping service at the holidays.
3. Sell items from the attic using an on-line auction service.
4. Wear your winter coat one more season
5. Set up an automatic paycheck withdrawal for $2 per week.
6. Hold a garage sale.
7. Barter with neighbors or friends for needed household services.
8. Babysit for neighbors.
9. Mow lawns.
10. Post a flyer at the grocery store offering to help people move.
11. Start a spring cleaning service.
12.Walk dogs.
13. Offer seamstress and tailoring services.
14. Sew instead of buying clothes or home accessories.
15. Provide a taxi service for elderly neighbors.
16. Bike to work.
17. Car pool.
18. Use public transportation.
19. Park in the less expensive lots and enjoy the exercise you get from walking!
20. Conserve electricity at home and estimate monthly savings.
21. Find a student (kindergarten through college) who needs a tutor.
22. Cut out candy and snacks; donate what you save on these purchases and dental bills!
23. Take outgrown kids’ clothes to a consignment shop.
24. Take your duds from the ’70s or ’80s to a vintage shop-everything old is new again!
25. Camp instead of staying in hotels on vacation.
26. Give up cable television for a few months–or forever!
27. Pet sit for neighbors who are traveling.
28. Make Saturday "Homemade Pasta Night" instead of dining out.
29. Borrow the latest best-sellers from the library instead of buying them.
30. Give up soft drinks for a whole summer.
31. Take a Thermos of fresh-brewed coffee to work instead of stopping for gourmet brew.
32. For your birthday, ask friends and family to make a gift to Mennonite Board of Missions, Commission on Overseas Mission, Commision on Home Ministries or Ministries Commission, Mennonite Church Canada in your name.
33. Give up your gym membership for the summer and exercise in the fresh air and sunshine.
34. Use coupons when shopping, and donate the savings.
35. Shop at yard sales and thrift stores–you never know when you’ll find a hidden treasure.
36. For large household purchases, look for bargains on-line.
37. Pay off credit card debt so no interest collects.
38. Don’t let water run while brushing teeth and turn out lights when you leave a room.
39. Offer your services as an office temp or substitute teacher.
40. Design Web sites for local families and businesses.
41. Buy cost-cutter brands for staples and household supplies.
42. Email friends and family instead of calling.
43. Make your own gift cards for holidays and birthdays.
44. Wear more "hand-me-downs" instead of buying new clothes.
45. Buy clothes that mix-and-match for each season.
46. Start flowers from seeds instead of buying seedlings.
47. Put on a family or neighborhood talent show and charge admission.
48. Use vinegar and water for a general household cleaning solution and save on expensive products.
49. Collect cans.
50. Study your health insurance policy and discover ways to avoid health care costs.
51. Plant a larger garden and sell vegetables at a roadside stand.
52. Instead of taking friends or clients out to dinner, send a donation in their name.
53. Donate your holiday club account and give homemade gifts this year.
54. Instead of buying a new CD every week, trade with your friends.
55. Scale back your vacation this year, or choose a service project instead.
56. Wait another six months for any major household purchase.
57. Postpone an upgrade to a software application you use.
58. Make a choice: Chocolate or coffee. Movies or eating out. Experience the one you choose more fully and donate your savings.
59. Buy a live plant instead of fresh flowers to decorate your table.
60. Love your looks–give up hair color, permanents, and other things that detract from your natural beauty.
61. Learn calligraphy and make money addressing invitations and lettering announcements.
62. For special family nights, plan on a video and pizza at home instead of dinner and a movie out.
63. Take the kids to the grocery store with you instead of hiring a babysitter.
64. Restrict your use of the cellular phone to emergencies only.
65. Choose eyeglasses with a sun clip instead of buying prescription sunglasses.
66. Wait for summer clothes to go on sale.
67. Be creative with leftovers–use them for work lunches.
68. Find loose change and save it in a coffee can for a year.
69. Bathe the dog yourself and save the groomer’s costs.
70. Do your own house painting this spring instead of hiring a professional.
71. Play tennis on the public courts and save fees.
72. Give up golf for a few weekends and hike in a state park instead.
73. Rake lawns in your neighborhood in the fall.
74. Donate your expense checks from work-related travel.
75. Hold a bake sale.
76. Have friends over for parlor games instead of going out to the theater or a concert.
77. Shovel snow for money.
78. Organize a neighborhood car wash.
79. Sell lem

wow these are all really good ideas
ive been doing lots of things like this lately =]

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