UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Background

Ever wonder what it would be like to brew your own beer? A few years ago a friend of mine decided to try it, and since I had thought about brewing too I went over to his house to "help". I brought over some of the ingredients and at the end of a long day carried back some beer to ferment at my home. It actually turned out better than I expected. I was hooked.

I've been brewing for a few years now. In these pages I'll go show you how I brew beer. My process is just one of many ways to brew - it's not the cheapest or easiest way to brew, but when I follow it I can consistently produce quality batches of beer.

Overview

Making beer is actually pretty simple. All you have to do is mix some sugar and water in a container, add some yeast, set it aside, and in a few days you'll have beer. It probably won't be the kind of beer you would want to drink regularly, but it would be beer. On the other hand, if you would like to make beer that you and your relatives and friends actually look forward to drinking, you'll need to spend a little more time and money brewing.

There are many reasons to brew your own beer, but if your only reason to brew beer is to save money then you may be out of luck. With a case of Bud/Millers/Coors (BMC) running at 50 cents for a 12 ounce bottle (I actually saw an advertised price of $10 for a case of Piels today (12/15/2005), which is 42 cents a bottle) you'll have to be pretty frugal with your brewing equipment and supplies. I've seen claims of homebrew only costing 10 cents per bottle, but to get this kind of cost you'll need to make larger batches (to get economies of scale), re-use as many supplies as possible, and minimize the use of specialized equipment. I'm personally not into homebrewing to save money, so not counting the cost of all of the equipment I have purchased over the years, and not reusing any supplies, and making smaller batches of beer (about 34 bottles in a batch), my cost runs around 70 cents a bottle.

Another thing that gets some people take up homebrewing is to try to duplicate the taste of beers like BMC. These beers are very difficult to duplicate as a Homebrewer. Their flavor and color is very "light", and the beer is heavily filtered. You can certainly create beers that are light and filtered, but it will be difficult to create the BMC taste.

I approach Homebrewing as a hobby. As a hobby I don't expect to save money, and don't expect to duplicate specific "professional" brews. I do have the opportunity to experiment with flavors, aroma, colors, equipment, supplies, etc. and create brews that are custom tailored to my taste.

I've organized the pages to the different stages in brewing. You can follow the links in order, or just jump to the specific topic you are interested.

Links

Here's an overview of the links:

•  Preparation - things you should do prior to brewing day

•  Brewing - what you do on brewing day

•  Fermenting - activities while your beer is fermenting

•  Packaging - bottling your beer

•  Equipment - things that you can/should purchase

•  Recipes - some "winning" recipes that I've brewed

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Last Modified: May 27, 2008 11:56:09 PM