I should probably put this thread on ignore
...
Seriously, great idea for a thread and great comments so far. For my 2 cents, I'll also say that
if you want to really limit your initial investment, you can really do this on the cheap, w/o sacrificing quality, but it will take a smidgen more research than just buying the starter kit from a home-brew store.
Here are some great forums:
The Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum • Index page
HomeBrewTalk.com - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Community.
Previously mentioned, John Palmer's site with on-line book (the 1st edition). But I suggest you buy the current edition of his book. Some of that 1st edition info is outdated and has been corrected in recent editions, but it is still a great site. I sometimes go to it, since I can search faster than digging out my copy, and I know which parts are current. Anyway, people who have met him all say John is a great guy, so buy his book!
How to Brew - By John Palmer
Here's an interesting wiki/blog from a very scientific home brewer [-]interested in [/-] obsessed with German Brewing techniques. It's a deep dive for a beginner, but you might find it interesting - don't be scared off if you aren't the geeky type, you don't have to know this stuff, but you might find it interesting to see where this can lead if you are so inclined.
Braukaiser.com - German brewing and more Kai pops in the forums pretty regularly, and appears on some brewing podcasts, with authentic German accent.
Now, just like some threads in this er.org forum will be overwhelming to someone just starting out in personal financial management, much of the stuff on those brewing forums may seem intimidating. Don't worry - just tell them you are new to brewing and many helpful people will jump in to answer your questions.
For my (attempted) contribution, I'm going to use
jIMOh's post #8 with questions about grains and extracts as a jumping off point to describe some basics:
What most people think of as the actual 'brewing' step in making beer involves 'cooking' malt extract to produce a 'wort' (unfermented beer). Then the wort is cooled, fermented, and bottled or kegged. It helps to understand what malt extract is and the terms used in home-brewing.
The wort you will produce is made up of sugars, mostly maltose (malt sugar), some residual 'stuff' from the grain that was used, hops (for bittering and flavor/aroma) and water. The wort is generally boiled for about an hour, and the hops are added at various times for different effects, just like spices can be added at different points in a recipe.
A key point here is that yeast will ferment sugars, but not starches - and we all know that grain is a starch. This is where 'malting' and 'mashing' the grain comes in, malting is a step in converting starches to sugars for the yeast (and ultimately for us). Almost all brewers will purchase their malted grains from their supplier, so this next paragraph is just FYI to understand the process.
Malting is a process of soaking the grain until it sprouts, then drying it and removing the sprouts. This activates the enzymes in the grain that allow the plant to convert its starch to sugars, but the process is halted by drying before this occurs. We just want the enzymes to get activated. Again, this is done for you by the maltster.
What this means to the home-brewer
There are a few basic ways a home-brewer goes about making their wort.
1) The so-called 'all-grain' approach - Take the purchased malted grain, crush it (or have it crushed), soak it in hot water (~150F - this is where the enzymes work fast) for about an hour, and those enzymes will have converted the starches to sugar. This is called 'mashing'. It is actually pretty amazing to see this happen - you start with an oatmeal-like porridge, and an hour later it's sticky-sweet liquid. Drain the sugar water off, and (optionally) rinse it to get more of the remaining sugars out, and then you start with the boiling process. You discard the spent grain/hulls (compost, cattle feed, garbage...). A typical 5 gallon recipe will use ~ 10 #'s of grain.
2) Using pre-made, condensed extract - Most people start out this way. The malting and mashing is done on a commercial scale, and the sugar water is condensed to either a thick syrup, or a dry powder. So the home-brewer just adds the syrup or powder to water, and brings that to a boil, and proceeds the same as the 'all-grain' brewer. This is why I hate the term 'all-grain' - the extract you purchase is made from grain too, the difference is who mashed it, and the condensing process. People have made award winning beers with condensed extract. A typical 5 gallon recipe will use ~ 6 #'s of condensed extract.
3) Condensed extract, with 'specialty grains' - For flavor variety, and/or to make a darker beer, brewers will add some roasted grain to the process. Everything from a light toasting or stewing, to a black as coal roast (again, usually purchased, but a few brewers do some home roasting of grains). Generally - these roasted grains have already had their starch converted to sugar, so they don't need to be 'mashed', they can simply be steeped in a little warm water to get the flavor/color/sugars out. So an extract brewer can add variety to a basic malt extract with these 'specialty grains'. The 'all-grain' brewer will generally just include these in their mash.
4) Condensed extract, with a 'mini-mash' (also called 'partial-mash', but I hate that term too) - if you want to use a grain or starchy adjunct (corn, rice, etc) that needs to be mashed, and it only makes up a relatively small portion of the total grains used, it's really easy to do a small-scale mash of a few pounds of grain, and add this sugar water to the boil along with the extract.
For extract brewers who want to do anything beyond absolute basics (purchased recipe kits),
I highly recommend that you base your recipes on the light colored extracts, and get your color/flavor from steeping the 'specialty grains'. They do sell amber and dark extracts, but then you don't really know what went into the recipe, and if you move to 'all-grain', it will be harder to duplicate those beers.
For the beginner, an advantage of pre-made extracts is that it simplifies things (skip the mash), plus, you can do a concentrated boil. With all-grain, you generally collect about 6 gallons of wort and it boils down to 5 gallons, so you need big pots and big burners. With extract, people generally boil 3 gallons, and then add ~ 2 gallons cold (sanitary) water at the end (this can go in the fermentor). Three gallons can be done on the stove top pretty easily.
( I warned you I should have ignored this thread
.... )
Anyway, if
jIMOh could post the list of ingredients with
amounts in his kit, I think we could give more specific directions. From his description, I'm not 100% certain if he is looking at a steep of some specialty grains, or a full mash (all-grain).
-ERD50
