how hard is it to brew beer..?
how costly is it?
any good receips?
has any body done it? please tell
i meant like personal experience, has anybody done it
Its quite simple to brew beer. Cost is about 100 buck for start up kit not including the ingredients. Any of the listed answers are a good start but try to find a local home brew shop where you can chat with them. They are there to help, like all home brewers. Start with a basic kit and take good notes. Thus, if you like it you will have better chances to duplicate the recipe again. Most important EVERYTHING must be sanitized if you want a better beer. Pending on the beer recipe ingredients (my guess you will be doing extract or a mini mash) the cost should be around 30-40 bucks. Unfortunately the price of grains and hops have sky rocked recently but well worth brewing. Go ahead brew some beer.
PS if you are bottling save your bottles (or ask friend to save theirs)from whatever you buy so you need not buy bottles. You can’t use twist offs. I recommend the "pop top beers so you don"t have to buy caps or a capper (IE Grolsch bottles)
Cheers
Setup – $75 to $130 US… Total cost including equipment, ingredients and bottles.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdBySubCat.aspx?SubCat=11166&fd=1
Good Recipe – Easy to find:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/recpkits.asp
Has anybody done it – Thousands… I dare say millions.
How hard is it – Ha ha ha… It ain’t easy… but it isn’t nuclear science either. The hardest part is being patient and SANITIZING EVERYTHING!
EDIT:
I am speaking from experience… I’m on my way to the brew supply shop after work because I ran out of priming sugar. Like I said… It ain’t easy. But it ain’t hard either. Much like anything else it takes practice, research and patients. It isn’t like cooking… but it kinda is at the same time.
References :
Off-centered person… Seeking off-centered ales.
Comment by Mayor Adam West — February 28, 2010 @ 4:19 pm
not hard. Bottling is the hardest/messiest I found. That was years a go so I’m sure there are better methods today.
References :
Comment by Tony H — February 28, 2010 @ 4:26 pm
Take your pick:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=home+brewing%2C+beer
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Comment by Mystress L — February 28, 2010 @ 5:06 pm
You are not lifting weights or mowing the lawn
BUT I not going to just tell you..
get your information form the source..
http://www.homebrewmart.com/
http://northernbrewer.com/
http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew.html
I save these to my favorites in a folder called beer & wine
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Comment by Mike L — February 28, 2010 @ 5:49 pm
It’s not hard to brew beer. It’s hard to brew GOOD beer. The kits you see at stores will get you a tank and some hoses and the ingredients, but even if you do it perfectly what you’ll end up with is mediocre beer.
I tried the kit along with my brother and father. IT takes a day of work and a few weeks of waiting. Of the three of us only dad managed to produce anything drinkable, and personally I could go to ten liquor stores in a five minute ride and get dozens of better varieties. Mine fermented and skunked (I wasn’t careful enough with the bits and tubes, apparently) and my brother’s never fermented. He’s a slacker, so no telling what went wrong.
The second batch went better, as far as the technical aspects. Dad and I both got the same product, which was a very bland ale.
SO:
- The kit was fairly cheap, maybe 30 bucks total (there are certainly better ones).
- I have no good recipes, my recipe for good beer involves twenty bucks and the car keys.
- I tried it twice and while it was educational and fun to try I have no interest in doing it again.
I have a few acquaintances who seem to have really gotten involved with home brewing and wine-making. They’ve invested quite a bit of money and seem to put out some drinkable stuff. It seems to lend itself more to experimentation than to just making your own on the cheap. If you want to make pumpkin beer, then home-brewing is your thing. If you’re happy with decent lagers, porters and ales then it’s easier and cheaper to hit the store.
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Comment by Brian — February 28, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
making beer can be as easy as opening a bag of pre made wort and adding water waiting 2 weeks and bottling. or it can be as involved as crushing your own grains, mashing them, developing your own recipes, and kegging. it all depends on how much time and money you want to invest into this hobby. i have come across no boil kits to 20 minute boil kits to extract kits and have made my own recipes from scratch. I started with a 60 dollar kit and now have close to 1500 invested into it. even my very fist batch of beer turned out fantastic. if you are serious, you should first pick up a good book and read on it. it will be the best first step you can make.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdByID.aspx?ProdID=5189
References :
Comment by dieselwolf — February 28, 2010 @ 6:36 pm
Have you ever blown up a chem lab? Do you consider reading a cook book the same way you consider reading Joyce or Pound? If you answered no to both questions, you can brew good beer more cheaply than you can buy it.
You can buy a kit that is worth using (that lets out Mr Beer) for $70 to $100. If you shop around or buy a used kit, you can do better. If you are handy, you can make a lot of the equipment yourself. Each batch may set you back $30, if you use liquid malt extract in cans and liquid yeast cultures. Dry malt extract and dry yeast cut the cost but, alas, also the quality. A five gallon batch will fill a bit more than two cases of pints.
Before you buy anything, get a copy of Papazian’s book The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing. That will tell you what you need. If you can find it, a local homebrew shop is a wonderful resource, both for supplies and for advice. Before you buy anything other than the book, go to the Brew Your Own (magazine) website. Click on Reader Resouces. That will give you a list of advertisers with links to their catalogs. One used to ship free if you bought more than $100 worth. That saves a lot of money on your first order, when you will be spending almost that much on an equipment kit.
References :
Comment by oikos — February 28, 2010 @ 7:05 pm
Its quite simple to brew beer. Cost is about 100 buck for start up kit not including the ingredients. Any of the listed answers are a good start but try to find a local home brew shop where you can chat with them. They are there to help, like all home brewers. Start with a basic kit and take good notes. Thus, if you like it you will have better chances to duplicate the recipe again. Most important EVERYTHING must be sanitized if you want a better beer. Pending on the beer recipe ingredients (my guess you will be doing extract or a mini mash) the cost should be around 30-40 bucks. Unfortunately the price of grains and hops have sky rocked recently but well worth brewing. Go ahead brew some beer.
PS if you are bottling save your bottles (or ask friend to save theirs)from whatever you buy so you need not buy bottles. You can’t use twist offs. I recommend the "pop top beers so you don"t have to buy caps or a capper (IE Grolsch bottles)
Cheers
References :
Comment by MINIC — February 28, 2010 @ 7:22 pm