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National Teach a friend to homebrew day

I wanna learn.. there is a place here in Austin that supplies the stuff... just need to find $300 laying around doing nuthin.
 
I go to a place in california called Beer,beer and more beer.com. They have a awesome catalog on different setups. I'd like to help you setup b rewing,I even have some extra equipment that I up-graded away from which is fine to learn on/with.
Don't let anyone fool you into starting with Extract brewing. The beer won't be as good as all-grain. It also costs way more. You just need a stainless half barrel and a plazma cutter to cut into the end of the barrel,ground smooth. predrill the end so no pressure builds.also partial fill with water so the slag dosn't crap up the inside.
Now you have a 15 and 3/4 gallon brew kettkle. Sit this on top of a turkey cooker burner of 35,000 to 50,000 BTU size, or go with natural gas hot water tank burner mine works great, you might even get the old hot water tank for free,
I did!
Next you go to a Fleet and farm store and buy 2 10 gallon rubbermaid watercoolers like they use in the NFL to dump on the coach at the end of a game
One is going to be your hot liquor(water)tank,the other is going to be turned into your MASH TUN(TOON) I removed the plastic nozels with stainless single handle ball valve's This is sealed with silicone o-ring gasgets ffrom the hardware store.
The rack you build (welded!) I made out of 2 inch trailer hitch steel stock.
You are going to make a GRAVITY FED system out of these 3 items. the burner and stand the half barrel sits on has to be 3 inches higher than the top of a glass carboy that sits on the ground. next the MASH tun sits 3 inches above the top lip of the half barrel kettle. next the hot liquor tank also has to be 3 inches above the lip of the Mash tun, See where this is going, its a 3 tier setup.
I use a magnet drive nylon pump good for boiling water is all thaT IS NEEDED,
tHIS MOUNTS ON THE THREE TIER rack.
Back to the half barrel kettle, drill a hole that acepts a stainless female to female
3/4 inch pipe nipple. This gets welded into the bottom most part of the half barrel before the curved bottom of the barrel paralell to the bottom. This is for another stainless ball valve that screws into the now welded pipe nipplt in the bottom.
This all needs to be tuned up before you can start really useing this setup. This setyup works great for home brewing.
The mash tun needs a FALSE bottom put in the bottom of the rubbgermaid cooler
which canects to the ball valve that replaced the plastic valve that came with the cooler. A stainless round piece of steel with 1/16 inch holes drilled into the bottom.Done with a drillpress homemade jig. this steel is .40 thick .
Oh boy this HAS gotten very winded. If you want to PM me I could happily help set you up with a nice home brewery.
 
brewmeister....

Thanks for the info. Spouse and I are becoming interested in brewing, and one of local stores has an entire aisle set up with everything one would need to get started. (beer or wine)

Soon as the daughters wedding is done and the garden is closed up for the winter, we're going to give it a try.

:drink
 
the only time I mix grains and boiling water is for oatmeal.

i dabble in draft cider production.

their dominator bock was the best of last seasons bock
 
I wanna learn.. there is a place here in Austin that supplies the stuff... just need to find $300 laying around doing nuthin.
Entertain yourself with this: www.leeners.com . I just ordered some wine corks from them and found the website to have lots of interesting products and several recipes as well. This thread takes me back to the days in Minnesota(among other locales) when several small towns had breweries and one could "visit" them to sample the product.
 
That is a good starting point. I find from my travels around the country that prices vary by region. I am lucky that wisconsin has a strong brewing culture with many small micro brewerys and home brew supply stores. Try this place ,they have fair prices and do lots of business on the internet.
www.pointbrewsupply.com mark and catina are great folks!:drink:drink;)
 
I don't drink beer, but I love the mystique.. and I am addicted to old brewery history. St. Louis once had a thriving beer community/economy.

But, what I would like to home-cook is some moonshine, vodka if possible. In Lexington, KY last year, someone handed me a bottle, and it wasn't too shabby. "Tastes like fresh cut corn," one guy commended. :ha

If it wasn't an 8-hour drive to Wisconsin.. in November, I'd be there.
 
Tomorrow I'm brewing my annual Christmas Beer. It's basicaly a Pale Ale hopped way to much, I add some malted white wheat,and sweet orange peel,and coriander seed,and cinnamin stick. EEEEMMMMMMM Good!!!!
This realy started with my grampa who just made beer once a year for the holidays.
The sheeps head card games went on into the weee mornings while enjoying this tasty brew!!
I'm bottleing the english porter I brewed 2 Weeks ago,It'll be ready for my birthday!!
:groovy:)
 
I brewed a batch of Maibock yesterday - my first lager. Will brew a pale ale as soon as the Maibock comes out of the primary. The maple syrup ale and oatmeal stout I made before Christmas are about gone.

The comments about going with all grain to save money bring a smile. Neither all grain nor extract are inexpensive, but that's not why we do it, is it!

:beer
 
All grain actually IS less expensive when you figure in everything. But no matter brewing yourself is a tradition worth starting. Did you see the show on discovery channel on how beer saved the world? Its really a good program.
 
All grain actually IS less expensive when you figure in everything. But no matter brewing yourself is a tradition worth starting. Did you see the show on discovery channel on how beer saved the world? Its really a good program.

I missed the show on Discovery so I hope it is repeated. This reminds me that I haven't seen any recent episodes of Brew Masters on Discovery.

Back to expenses just for fun....how much does labor cost when you're making beer?

And I agree that brewing is a terrific hobby.
 
About as much as you spend on bmw oil changings or any other hobby-free with a great reward.Equipment can be expensive if you don't fabricate some of it your self.:bottle:bottle:buds
 
I found a new bonus from brewing. I have began maple sap collecting, it looks funny cause I went to all my nabours houses asking permission to tap there trees. Now my nebourhood has buckets hanging from all the maple trees.
I am using my brew kettle to evaporate water out of the sap. I have a 100,000 btu burner that works well and the kettle has a spigot on the bottom to drain the finished surup. This works well ,I do'nt have to lift any heavy buckets of surup. I plan on making 2 or 3 gallons of surup. The rest of the sap I collect WILL be made into maple ale beer!
Ein Prosit!!
 
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You can brew anywhere and don't actually need the big burners or much space if you brew the usual 5 gal size batches most homebrewers do- any you can do partyglyle to make twice as much with minimal extra effort.
It is really necessary to learn all grain though- many styles are near impossible or truly impossible to do or do well from extracts and homebrewers can easily get all needed ingredients, same as any pro. Personally, I find all grain as easy as using extracts and easier in some respects.

My apt setup does mash and sparge using 2, 10 gal coolers from the local Home Depot.
(You need the 10 gal size mash tun to brew 5 gal batches of higher alcohol beers like triples). All heating is done on my apt electric stove which requires splitting the boil into two pots due to lower output of stove burners but it works fine. And fermenting is done either in 6 gal glass (beware breakage!!) or my fancy stainless Blichman fermenter (which makes harvesting and reuse of yeast easy). I cool wort with a copper coil chiller hooked to my sink faucet. I crush my own grain with a mill and electric drill but you can get it crushed when you buy it for free or almost free.

Too lazy to bottle- I keg mine and serve from a modified kegerator in my living room. 3 on tap there- styles rotate with seasons and consumption. Get my CO2 from the same suppliers we bought lab gases from for our instruments.

Highly recommend going to see a couple different folks do it different ways before you buy any gear- you can then get a setup that suits you and your place. There are as many ways to do this as there are brewers, almost....At it heart, brewing is basically a type of controlled cooking and a whole lot of cleaning/sanitation. Most of the labor is cleaning stuff well enough...

FWIW, I don't like any of the exisiting do it yourself books. All are arranged for folks who alredy know how to do it or fail to answer key questions beginners have or fail to provides reasons for various choices presented. If I ever took the time to write one I would arrange the key parts by brewing steps and show the equipment and reasons for various ways to do each step. Anyone who understands each step can design their own rigs and do their own thing easily...
 
You seem to be describing something similar to my brewery set-up shown here.
 

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Yup- the sparge tank goes on top of my fridge, the mash tun on the counter and the two stainless pots I use go on the floor, all right next to the electric stove used for cooking.

Do my starters in a flask on a stir plate. Oxygen from a bottle plus a teeny drop of olive oil to help fermentation. The Blichman sits near the kitchen. I keep a freezer rigged as a fridge for lagering. Save yeast next to my orange juice....

All pretty std stuff. Would be nice to have place for a dedicated stand, etc but making do with what I have really isn't a hardship.

All folks who really like beer should learn to brew- as you know the homebrewer has several huge advantages over commercial guys- including freshness and the lack of any need to stabilize for shipping and long term storage. I'm not aware of any pro techniques one can't emulate or do as well with a home version or alternative though most of us prefer to keep it as simple as possible for whatever style we're making at the moment. Not being an extreme hophead, I don't make stuff needing hopbacks, etc etc.

Have grown some hops at a friends place to get green ones. Cascade is a weed here in NC- you can get a crop off a first year plant and by year 3 it will take over your yard...
 
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