Made Beer


sorabji.com: What have you done?: Made Beer
By Dougie on Monday, February 1, 2010 - 02:43 pm:

    A nice, classic amber. My wife got me a kit for Christmas, and I brewed it on New Year's Day. Bottled it a week later, and cracked it on Saturday night, a month after brewing. Was really good too! Could have used a bit more carbonation, and a little more body, but better than a lot of stuff I've paid $12 a 6 for. Any homebrewers here? My next kit is a Kölsch, which I'm looking forward to. Then a brown ale, such as Newcastle.


By sarah on Monday, February 1, 2010 - 10:16 pm:


    that sounds super fun. i almost got senor a home brew kit for his birthday, but decided against it since we don't have time for much of anything non-kid related. but we do a good bit of beer drinking in this household, so i wonder how much money we'd save, as you said, drinking home brew that tastes better than what we buy from the store.


    i wonder if they sell home brew Tequiza kits?







By Dougie on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 09:02 am:

    Ha! I guess you could brew a light American lager, and then feed some agave flavoring in at bottling time. I doubt I save that much money, but it is fun, and the kits seem pretty foolproof. Also, it really doesn't take that much time to brew -- maybe an hour or two of boiling the malt and hops, and then maybe an hour or two the following week to bottle it (that's a bit tedious), but not a big time commitment. Then wait about 3 weeks, and you've got beer!


By sarah on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 11:22 am:


    does it change the flavor of the beer significantly if you wait longer than three weeks to open it up?




By Dougie on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 12:29 pm:

    That's a good question Sarah. A couple of weeks probably doesn't hurt, but I doubt 6 months aging would do it any good.


By Patrick on Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 12:03 pm:

    Dougie, our recent issues addressed the issue cask aging in
    barrels , which is pretty popular amongst craft brewers these
    days. Since barrels a can only bed used once by spirit and wine
    makers, there's an abundance of brewers getting these barrels
    and aging them in say.....whisky barrels, sherry or port barrells.

    personally im not a huge fan as the flavor tends to be dominated
    by the whisky or the port and the beer is like an afterthought.

    check out brewyourown.com . its a great home brewing
    magazine.

    we also have home brew articles on our site allaboutbeer.com as
    well. This is a good place to start
    http://allaboutbeer.com/live-
    beer/brewing/2009/09/thinking-about-homebrewing/

    good luck with that. homebrewing daunts me, but unlike wine,
    there's so many fun things you can do. of course the other fun
    part is, since it involves yeast, its quite possible you can spend
    the evening on a toilet after a particularly nasty batch.


By Dougie on Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 10:02 am:

    Thanks for the links Patrick. Very interesting! Yeah, not sure I'd want a whiskey or port flavored beer. I got the Joy of Home Brewing by Charles Papazian, which seems to be a very good book so far. Why would homebrewing daunt you? I was surprised at how easy it was to make a 5 gallon batch.


By patrick on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 10:32 am:

    i dunno man, everything daunts me these days.