I am surprised this has not come up here before, as coffee and home brewing seem like parallel hobbies that would attract a similar sort of crowd. Personally, my coffee and beer journeys have a lot of similarities. I got into both over 30 years ago, but did both on a very amateurish level for a long time without evolving much. In the past few years I got more interested in both. I upped my game a level or two – still very basic but significantly improved, and very happy with the results I am getting. I currently have \~120 bottles (6 crates) of 6 or 7 different brews in the garage, so there is always something to drink. For a long time I only made the simplest pre-hopped liquid malt kits. I then moved to non-hopped dry extract recipes, adding my own hops. This is a more hands-on approach (though hardly more difficult) that gives better understanding of the contribution of the different ingredients to the final beer. I then discovered I was a hop-head and aroma freak, so added dry hopping and found that I love what it does to the beer – I will not dream of doing a batch without it now. I am still a very low-level amateur. I have not made the move to the all-grain Brew-In-A-Bag method, but who is to say I won’t do it at some point in the future? Currently I am mostly after hoppy pale ales, light in colour, big on hop flavour and aromas, not heavy on the alcohol (4-5%). Citra, mosaic, cascade, Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, Amarillo (and a few others) are some of the hops I used recently. Comparing espresso to home brewing, I find that: * It is easier and faster to get good results with beer than it is with espresso (contrary to what it may seem if you hadn’t tried either 😊) * Much cheaper to get into beer than into espresso. A basic beer brewing kit (which is what I use) can be had for around £100, maybe slightly more including ingredients for the first batch of \~40 pints (don’t quote me on that – I haven’t checked recently, but the point is that there is no need for a lot of kit to get started, and it isn’t expensive compared to espresso). * It is easier to find good beer outside than it is to find good espresso (but one can quite easily make ace beer at home, much easier than getting to great espresso at home IMO). If you are already home-brewing – What do you do? What do you like? How have you evolved? What have I said that is completely wrong? If you have never tried home-brewing – what are you waiting for?

@"Doram"#54, I definitely fit the camp of enjoying some home brewing. I did it first as a student, with a plastic bucket and malt extract kits. A few years later I upgraded to a Cornelius keg system (washing bottles is a pain). Later on I decided to go whole grain and set myself up for BIAB (brew in a bag) with a large pot and gas burner. This was my setup for many years until the first lock down. As some of you who’ve read any of my other posts might have gathered I like building things. I therefore decided to upgrade my system from gas to electricity, so that I can brew indoors. I built a controller based on the https://shop.theelectricbrewery.com/, but for BIAB. I then modded my pot by fitting an element, temperature control and recirculation. I also built a counter flow chiller. I still do BIAB, but it’s much easier as I can set everything up in the utility room, and the PID controller and alarm means I can automate a fair bit. This is what my setup looks like now:[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/FBmYhbu.jpeg] Plus I added taps to the spare fridge in the utility room so I have a kegerator: [upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/pyWArMA.jpeg] I need to brew again, but am waiting for raspberries to come into season as I want to try a raspberry sour.

@"hornbyben"#p11971 > @"hornbyben"#p11971 I built a controller based on the , but for BIAB. I then modded my pot by fitting an element, temperature control and recirculation. I also built a counter flow chiller. I still do BIAB, but it’s much easier as I can set everything up in the utility room, and the PID controller and alarm means I can automate a fair bit. > > This is what my setup looks like now: Looks fantastic, way out of my league! Makes me feel very humble with my plastic bucket setup, lol: [upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/Z0DopuV.jpeg]

@"Doram"#p11973 there’s nothing wrong with a plastic bucket. These days you can make some great beers that way. One of my friends does mini mash, where you use malt extract for the bulk of your fermentables but do a small steep for the specialty grains and boil for the hops in a pan on the stove. This gives the recipe freedom of all grain but is a bit quicker and easier. If my explanation isn’t very clear. Here’s the equipment you’d need: https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/mini-mash-starter-kit/ and here’s an overview of the steps: https://youtu.be/IQb0iQDwwoc I’m envious of your bottle collection. I always like the idea of a good stock of bottles, but was always too lazy to do that much cleaning. Kegs are quicker and easier, but you drink until it’s gone. I do like having CO2 though, as I’ve also set up one tap for sparkling water, which my wife and I enjoy. We try to reduce our waste, and carbonating tap water saves on a lot of plastic bottles vs buying it.

Really awesome to see your setups! It’s a journey I embarked on briefly and have been meaning to get into. I got a all-grain recipe kit that involved two big saucepans on the hob, a large sieve and a demijohn which was dry-hopped and then siphoned into 12 bottles. The end product was actually better than I’d expected but it was such a faff with all the equipment that I’ve not tried again. I’m keen to get into it, and I’ve seen some great YouTube videos but I still find the list of kit I need and the start-to-finish process a bit of a mystery. I’d love to buy a good quality kit of everything I need to make hoppy, hazy beers, but I don’t know what that is!

@"Ernie1"#p12002 the brew in a bag method is probably the easiest. This works as follows: - get a big pot (for a 40 pint batch you probably need 50L pot), fill with water and heat to mash temperature (usually about 60-70⁰C). - There are calculators on line to help you work out how much water you need to add, but I'm this method you're saying everything, including what you lose to boil off. - add a bag (you can buy or make from a net curtain), pour your milled grain in and stir - wait for the mash time (typically 30-60 minutes) - you might want to sit occasionally and heat a bit to keep the temperature in the right place. - pull out the bag to remove the grain - typically you don't rinse the grain. This wastes a bit of sugar, but you can just compensate by adding more to start. Grain is cheap. - bring to boil and boil for 30-60 mins depending on the recipe - you add your hops during this stage - cool - this can be with a chiller, or you can seal in a 25L Jerry can and let it cool overnight - put in fermenter, add yeast and wait - transfer to bottles or keg Everything before the boil needs to be clean and everything after the boil needs to be sterilised. If your decide to get started I would go for something like a porter first as they hide a lot of mistakes. Very hazy West coast IPA type styles are more susceptible to oxidation and probably best saved for when you're a bit more experienced.

> @"hornbyben"#p11995 [Doram](https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/d/549/3) there’s nothing wrong with a plastic bucket. I posted the picture, so obviously I am not ashamed enough. ;- > @"hornbyben"#p11995 One of my friends does mini mash, where you use malt extract for the bulk of your fermentables but do a small steep for the specialty grains and boil for the hops in a pan on the stove. This gives the recipe freedom of all grain but is a bit quicker and easier. This (mini-mash in a cloth bag) is exactly what I do! My method is very similar to what is seen in your video, only I used dried malt extract and boil it with the hops. It saved having to do a full boil (bigger pot) and the time it takes to do a full mash, so brew day can be completed faster - it probably takes me 2-3 hours from start to finish, including sanitising before and putting things away after. Full grain obviously gives more options and control, and the ingredients are cheaper, but also more opportunity to get things wrong. There is some debate if it gives better results or not. I suppose it depends on how well you do it. > @"hornbyben"#p11995 I’m envious of your bottle collection. I always like the idea of a good stock of bottles, but was always too lazy to do that much cleaning. Kegs are quicker and easier, but you drink until it’s gone. As with everything, there are advantages and disadvantages. My method with bottles is simple and easy for me, because I am used to it. As soon as I drink a bottle, I rinse it with water and store it up-side-down in a crate, so it stays relatively clean and doesn't pick up nasties from the air. On bottling day, I sanitise the equipment in a second bucket, so end up having half a bucket full of no-rinse sanitiser. All I do is dip the bottles in the sanitiser to fill them up, then shake out the sanitiser and put back, up-side-down again, in the crate ready for bottling. This gives me clean and sanitised bottles, and I never had a problem with contamination. Many of my bottles I collected from beer I bought, but at one point I wanted some more so emailed a local small brewery and asked if I could buy some bottles. Beer people tend to be very nice, so they said yes. Had a really nice chat and walked out with some very nice beer and a few dozens of new un-labelled bottles. Beer keeps really well - I have some bottles I probably made 3 years ago, maybe more, and they are alive and well - improving like fine wine.

> @"Ernie1"#p12002 I’m keen to get into it, and I’ve seen some great YouTube videos but I still find the list of kit I need and the start-to-finish process a bit of a mystery. > > I’d love to buy a good quality kit of everything I need to make hoppy, hazy beers, but I don’t know what that is! Like coffee, home brewing can be as simple or as complicated as you choose. People used to do it 5,000 years ago, and I think the internet wasn't that big back then. If you found it too much faff and want to keep things simple - maybe take a shortcut and use malt extract? All you are missing is that you let professionals (with professional equipment) extract the sugar from the grain. In return you get to need less equipment, do a partial boil (smaller pot) and the process is shorter (maybe we can liken extract brewing to buying roasted coffee, and all grain to roasting yourself?). You keep most of the fun bits and can get really nice results with very little kit.

Thanks everyone that’s a huge help. I’m definitely keen to try all grain again, and I’m happy to invest a bit in some equipment that will serve me well! I have no intentions of scaling past 12 or 24 bottles so just things like stable heating/cooling/bottling are factors in what equipment I’d like to buy. I think the faff before was mainly that I was trying to make do with household items (the kit said large pasta pans…) and a sieve and it was just a big mess. Also the siphoning into bottles wasn’t much fun compared to some kind of tapped container. Have you guys played with water treatments? I sometimes read about how the hazier New England style beers have something added to the water.

Water treatment is very important from what my brewing friends have said. Styles like a London porter are suited to brewing with harder water than a Scottish ale. Breweries are quite secretive about how they treat their water for each brew, one of the few things that brewers can be cagey over. The water treatment is similar to water for coffee but with more of a range for hardness and alkalinity

> @"Ernie1"#p12020 I have no intentions of scaling past 12 or 24 bottles so just things like stable heating/cooling/bottling are factors in what equipment I’d like to buy. When you say "bottles", do you mean pint/\~500ml bottles? If so, personally I think you have the faff built in to that small quantity, especially if you are making 6 litre batches. Beer takes time. You start a batch, and you will only get to drink it in a few weeks (minimum). Cleaning, sanitising, brewing will take the same time for a 6 litre or a 5 gallon (20-23 litre) batch. For me, it makes more sense to use the small pot you already have to make a 5 gallon extract batch than to make a 6 litre all-grain batch. Personally I usually do 2 X 5 gallon batches back to back. This gives me \~80 bottles (40 litres) of beer which lasts me for a long time. If I was limited to 6 litre batches I would need to brew all the time and it would hardly be worth the effort in my opinion. My method has no syphoning and no faff (I think). I use an 8-10 litre pot to boil \~6 litres of water. If I do a mini-mash, I steep grains in at about 65C for 30-60 mins. I then do hop additions to the pot as the recipe calls. When done - the pot goes into the sink with cold water and maybe some ice to cool (it's a small quantity, so I don't need any cooling device). I strain that wort to a plastic bucket fermenter, top up with water, add the yeast and let it ferment. I don't have any temp control for fermenting (maybe in the future). Instead I just do it in moderate seasons when the temp in the house is about right (18-20C). Once fermentation is done, I put in some hop pellets in a hop bag for dry hopping. To bottle, I put the fermenter on the kitchen counter, connect a hose to the tap, put a second bucket (which also has a tap) on the floor and move the beer from the fermenter to the second bucket, leaving the sediment behind in the fermenter. I add carbonating sugar, put the second bucket on the counter and use a bottling stick to bottle (a simple pin at the bottom of the stick opens when pushed against with the bottom of the bottle, which is very convenient). Crown caps and a simple capper to finish off and that's it. > @"Ernie1"#p12020 Have you guys played with water treatments? Not really. I use tap water. I add a campden tablet because I have it, but I don't know if it's necessary. It is meant to get rid of chlorine, but I don't smell/taste chlorine in my tap water. I sometimes use 5 litres of Ashbeck to reduce minerals a little, but to be honest - I don't know if it's improving anything. This is another something that I may be looking at in the future, but have neglected for a long time.

Any home brewers in the house?

Doram

oddbean Should I wait one more day or should I go ahead with priming tonight.

There is no rush. If you are sure fermentation is done you can bottle today, tomorrow, over the weekend - whenever it’s convenient. It doesn’t matter

oddbean Looking at this online calculator, they suggest a CO2 volume of 2.4(not sure how much that is) for the American Pale Ale and 5.1g dextrose/ litre. Is that ok?

I usually use ~3.5 gram per litre for American Pale Ale. I prefer moderate carbonation. It’s all a matter of personal preference. Try a couple of calculators, choose a number and go for it. Then record if you prefer less carbonation or more, and adjust next time. You will find what you prefer by trying. :-)

oddbean How much water should I boil for 100g of dextrose?

I don’t bother with melting priming sugar in water. Dextrose melts very easily so I just put it into the wort (in the second bucket), give it a mix and that’s it

oddbean Should I first put the solution into the sterilised second bucket and with that pouring stick, fill the bucket with the fermented beer? Then fill a bottle, cap, repeat and wait for 2 weeks?

I move the beer from fermenter to second bucket, add priming sugar and put the second bucket on the kitchen counter. Then I attach the bottling stick to the tap, open the tap and start filling. When I have some bottles filled (maybe 10-15), I cap them. But it doesn’t really matter, whatever works for you.

Beer is usually considered drinkable (clear) after about two weeks, but the beauty is that it is real ale. It has live yeast in it, it’s not filtered or sterilised, so it’s alive and keeps developing (and improving) over time, like good wine. I tend to give my beer a lot more time to condition, and it does get better with time. It might be harder to wait with the first batch, but from the second one and onwards you can drink the old beer while your new beer ages a bit longer. ;-)

oddbean

Doram that was very useful information. Thank you so much! Bottles are now capped! Can’t believe it. It will be one of the longest fortnight.

oddbean

Hey @Doram, here is the first glass 2 weeks after botelling. It’s actually much better than expected. Do you reuse the star caps?

Have a nice long weekend!

Doram

oddbean Hey @Doram, here is the first glass 2 weeks after botelling. It’s actually much better than expected. Do you reuse the star caps?

Looking good! I think if people knew how easy it is to get a great beer from the first batch, many more would give it a go!

I don’t re-use crown caps. I don’t think I could trust used caps to seal properly. Might also be a risk for contamination. Luckily they are cheap.

hornbyben

oddbean looks good

DavecUK

Doram Looks like an excellent beer, just nice for a summers day in the garden.

oddbean

Thank you, something clicked in my head when @Doram wrote it’s easier and cheaper to start making beer than it is to make an espresso.

oddbean

Tried 3 mini-mash recipes from the malt miller shop. An APA, an AIPA and a SAISON. All beer was/is enjoyed by myself and friends plus I did learn a few things from mistakes. I feel though they all have a malty taste in common. Is it normal when you use malt extract to have that taste? Are there any other kind of malts that can be used?

@Doram what types of beer do you brew and could you recommend a recipe that can be done in the mini-mash style?

Have been also thinking of trying all grains with BIAB. It seems that I just need to get a bigger pot and a cooler coil. From what I’ve read the challenge is to properly drain the grains because of the quantity. Does anyone have some easy beginner’s recipes for this method? @hornbyben would you have any suggestions in this direction?

Cheers!

Doram

oddbean @Doram what types of beer do you brew and could you recommend a recipe that can be done in the mini-mash style?

The last few batches I made were all from Brew UK Extract Brewing range. They have a good selection of extract recipe kits for different styles. The ones I have tried in recent years were all pale ales with citrusy/fruity hops that I enjoy. Two that I particularly liked were Sitra (Citra and Simcoe hops) and Mosaic IPA (Mosaic and Cascade hops). To both these recipes I added dry hopping with Citra pellets (so I don’t know how the recipes would come out without that addition).

I also enjoyed Route Citra Six American Wheat, which uses wheat malt extract (as the name suggests) and is great on a hot summer day (remember those?).

oddbean I feel though they all have a malty taste in common. Is it normal when you use malt extract to have that taste? Are there any other kind of malts that can be used?

I don’t have enough experience, but I suppose you can get a similar malty taste if you use the same extract (you tend to go that way if, for example, you only make pale ale so always use pale dry malt extract from the same supplier). You can add more variation by using different malt extracts (pale, dark, amber, wheat and other grains etc.). You can also try liquid extracts to see if you like them better.

oddbean Have been also thinking of trying all grains with BIAB. It seems that I just need to get a bigger pot and a cooler coil. From what I’ve read the challenge is to properly drain the grains because of the quantity.

I have not gone all grain myself so can’t answer from experience, but my understanding is that the main difference is that you have to do a full boil for the mash, which means longer brewing days because you have another stage and need to boil, steep and cool down a bigger volume, and of course more space for the equipment. You also potentially have one more thing that you can screw up. In exchange you get more control and more flexibility to create whatever you want.

hornbyben

oddbean For BIAB you just need a bigger pot, a large net bag and a way of heating the pot.

For pot size I’d recommend 50L if you want to be able to do 20L batches of beer. You need enough space for all your water including any loses, and the grain without it spilling everywhere.

I think you can buy BIAB bags, or just buy some net curtain and sew one up.

For heating source you can go gas or electric. Gas tends to be cheaper to buy but more expensive to run. You need a pretty big gas burner, what in the US they call a turkey fryer. If you happen to be anywhere near Oxford I have one I don’t use anymore since going electric. Electric BIAB is a lot more convenient as you can do it indoors and typically the controller will hold a set temperature. You need a pot with an element and a controller, or an all in one unit like a brewzilla or g40.

For chilling you can use a chiller, or do no chill, by letting it cool overnight in a plastic hdpe water container (I did this for years with no issue, it’s very common in Australia due to the lower water use).

As your only home brewing you don’t have to worry about getting every last drop of wort out of the grain. Just accept it will be a bit less efficient and use more grain. If you use some brewing software like BrewFather you can record what you produce and it will calculate your efficiency, which you can use next time.

Recipe wise there is nothing special about BIAB, you can do whatever recipe you fancy. I’m always a fan of David Heath on YouTube. He has many good recipes and you can tweak the recipe in BrewFather to make it suitable for BIAB.

No idea on the malty taste, other than perhaps it is from the extract, sorry.

I hope that helps

oddbean

@Doram thank you for your recommendations, just received all 3 recipes. Previous recipes contained liquid brown malt. Curious to see how this solid light malt will change the taste.

@hornbyben from what I see most all in one units are 35l. So probably less convenient if you are aiming for 20l batches? They are also pretty expensive and I need to find space for it. I was thinking to get a 50l pot with a tap and boil it on the hob. Probably a bit harder to keep the temperature constant. Maybe I can get an electric heating element to submerge from the top.

hornbyben

oddbean 35L is fine for an all in one as you tend to sparge the grain, which means you’re adding extra water once the grain is removed, so you can still hit 20L brews. If you do BIAB you need enough space for all the water and the grain.

A 50L pot is pretty big. I don’t know if a gas burner would have enough power. Stainless steel often isn’t ferromagnetic, so induction won’t work. Most pans have an insert in the base to make them induction compatible

Nightrider_1uk

hornbyben A good wok ring would give you about 4kw on a gas cooker or you can buy large Propane rings quite cheap

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