Home Brewing

[Arca]

I&#39;ve recently become interested in a lot of DIY and brewing was one of them. Wines, beers, lagers, whatever. I&#39;ve been looking for a site about brewing, but most things I&#39;ve come across loads of brewing kits you can buy <_<

Does anyone know of any good links I could learn from? Some interesting sites I have found (although I am unsure of their reliability) are:

http://home.att.net/~lumeisenman/contents.html
http://www.homedistiller.org/
http://www.moonshine-still.com/
http://www.totse.com/bbs/Forum20/HTML/003767.html (comments are funny too :lol: )
http://www.warpbreach.com/6/6.html
http://www.stoutbillys.com/stout/recipen2.htm

I would also appreciate (free) food recipes if someone has any sites they can say off the top of their heads.

Thanks.

[Concilio-et-Impetu]

ive been meaning to do this for ages and have no real excuse why im not. My friend made cider by putting brewers yeast in apple juice in a big bottle and shaking it now and then for a month oor something. Get a big container with a lid and put in water sugar some kind of fruit or vegetable and a water lock in the lid or if thats too hard just take the lid off when theres too much pressure and stirr it a bit. After a while of doing this you should have alcohol and a whole bunch of fetid plant matter. Take it out and put as much as you cna at a time into a metal container with a hole with a hose going in it in the lid and boil it and the steam that comes off is the alcohol so at teh end of teh hose put a container for capturing it. That is the simplest description of distilling spirits the way i know how. Enjoy.

Also dont over boil the stuff as you only want ethyl alcohol not methy alcohol in your drink.

[Clutch]

My dad used to brew his own beer. He was so happy that it only costs 20c per bottle and Johnny Howard got fuck all in taxes. The downside was that because it was so cheap, he gained 20kgs in three months.

[Red Flag]

"Home brewing" is illegal in almost every country in the entire world. Posting this here might pose some sort of liability to the sites owners.

Also, be careful with this shit, a bad mix can make you permanently blind or worse.

[which doctor]

"Home brewing" is illegal in almost every country in the entire world. Posting this here might pose some sort of liability to the sites owners.

If it is illegal than why do companies sell what you need to bre so openly?

[Arca]

It&#39;s distilling that&#39;s illegal. And I don&#39;t see why just showing the information will incite legal problems, it&#39;s information that advocates bad things that is bad.

And Red Flag, I&#39;m sure it&#39;s distilling that creates the methanol needed to blind you. There&#39;s a small amount of methanol in all alcohol anyway.

[Organic Revolution]

There is a recipes thread at the top.

[violencia.Proletariat]

in one of my anarchist news papers it has a list of what you need and detailed instructions, if i ever have time i can type it out or tell you the name and issue.

[Ian]

Been doing it for awhile with a bit of luck you can make a brew far better than anything commercially available, this is especially true with Stouts.

If you don&#39;t buy a kit these are the things you need to get started:
a 25-30 Litre screw top plastic drum with a tap on the side this is where your brew ferments
Thick Rubber ring to put round the top of the drum to make it airtight
A small rubber ring to put in a drilled hole where the airlock goes

It is pretty hard work but try your hand at it.

[pedro san pedro]

walking around late at night you can often find the bttles that you&#39;ll be putting the beer into for free, saving a lot of cost.

you can often pick up a bottle capper at second hand shops and we used a heating unit from a waterbed to keep the brew warm when i was in high school.

i&#39;ve also made my own still before with friends - a pressure cooker, a big ole steel drum and a length of pipe. heating up the pipe over a fire and bending it into a spiral is particually good fun. vomiting from too much home made vodka is not.

[Scars]

<<"Home brewing" is illegal in almost every country in the entire world. Posting this here might pose some sort of liability to the sites owners.>>

....um...no.

As has been said, distilling is illegal in many places, but that&#39;s called intelligence. Distilling is very hard to do well and control without plenty of experience and skill, experience and skill your average joe don&#39;t have. Subsequently they distill vodka that makes you deaf, dumb and blind.

However distilling IS legal in many places, but it is illegal to brew things over a certain alc %. Generally you can get a gauge thing from a brewing store (which is a smart thing to get anyway), if your beloved brew if over a certain % it&#39;s technically illegal- so drinking it in public probably isn&#39;t smart. Selling it probably isn&#39;t either.

[Red Flag]

Sorry I made a mistake.

Home Brewing is illegal in some countries.


Moved to Japan where there are only 4 beers, all lagers, and home brewing is illegal&#33; (working as the only male at an airline stewardess training school helped make up for it&#33;) http://www.wynkoop.com/beerdrinker/2004resume.htm


In 1978, US President Jimmy Carter signed into law a bill explicitly allowing home beer and winemaking in the US. However, this only applies at the Federal level as the individual States are still free to set their own laws concerning beer and wine making. Note that home distillation of alcohol is still illegal in the United States for human consumption — a situation representing the majority of other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrewing#Legality


Up until February of 1979, homebrewing was illegal; it had been illegal since the beginning of Prohibition, back in January of 1920.
http://beeradvocate.com/news/stories_read/317/

So still be careful.

Distilling is illegal in almost every country. The only country I can find that allows distilling is New Zealand, and it&#39;s under question there.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

can anyone ell me how much would some brewers yeast set me back, if there are any restrctions on buying it and where i might find some??

[Arca]

In dollars, I *think* it&#39;s &#036;0.60 - &#036;1 a packet. They&#39;ll probably be at specific places... But I don&#39;t know really. Use google, I guess.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

lol - thanks, specific places...

[pedro san pedro]

look in the supermarket for a brewing kit or *gasp* in a homebrew store :P

for the purpose of research for this thread, i have spent the last couple of days drinking homw made whiskey with hill tribes in laos. i can happily report that it will produce the worst hangover you will ever experience and turn the contents of your bowels into a hot, firey liquid the next morning and leave you a shaking, quivering mess that is unable to drive

[subcal]

I&#39;ve just got all the gear from a friend of mine, its a still though. Wanted to try beer first but I spose beggars can&#39;t be choosers&#33;

[KappaDelta]

Subcal- you need to make one before you can distill it to make the other.
For vodka, smash up some nice potatoes and toss &#39;em into a big bottle or barrel with some yeast. Let it sit, between 70-90 degrees Fahrenheit, for about five days. This will produce an alcohol content of approximately 5-7%. Then distill that, and you&#39;ll have, in theory, true Vodka.
For whiskey, distill the mixture created by brewing wheat, barley, rye, and/or corn.
For tequila, find yourself some Agave and brew with that before distillation.
For brandy, the simplest (in my opinion), smash grapes and filter the resulting mash into a closed container (for lighter wines) or an open barrel (for dark, tannic wines). Let it sit for at least a week, burping the closed container every three days or so. If possible, let it sit even longer, to build the alcohol level. Distill that, and you&#39;ve got the basis for making fortified wines, like Sherry or Port, by tossing it into some of the previous brew, or just some good ol&#39; fashioned Brandy.

Personally, I like to make Clementine Beer with the ease of a three liter bottle, standard bread yeast, sugar water, and clementine juice. It&#39;s pretty schwah.

Note: If you see some white, bacteria-colony-esque deposits on the bottom of your container, the temperature is either too low or too high. Between 70 and 90 degrees, the yeast is the primary reproducer, but some other noxious baddies take over above and below that.

[che lives]

U can make a highly portable still out of a large pot and a wok

Method- fill pot with wash (google &#39;wash recipes&#39;). put a tall glass or jug in wash cover the top of the pot with the wok MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO GAPS put pot on stove for 2-4 hours and the liquid in the glass/jug will b a spirit ( which spirit depends on the wash)

This is a small portable still that isn&#39;t illegal and is great for apartment, shed or cell.

[anti-authoritarian]

I&#39;ve made beer before. Generally the easiest (best tasting) varities are the larger types (rather then stouts etc. which tend to taste worse then Millers). For the best beers I&#39;ve used some extra stuff (in particular some liquidy-type substance which I can&#39;t remember what it&#39;s called at the moment) to give it a better taste.

Generally provided you&#39;ve got the yeast timings sorted the only thing you need to watch out for is bottling (having two people for this stage helps).

I don&#39;t know too much about spirits or wine making. A guy I once knew made whisky which was quite succesful. But on the whole I would say beer is your best bet.

Good luck anyway&#33;

[Fawkes]

I made a post asking the same question about 2 months ago.

[Blue Collar Bohemian]

I just recently crushed and pressed graped with my father for this years wine and am eagerly looking forward to the results.

[armedpoet]

We&#39;ve set up a brews not bombs collective at a social centre (see: www.blackdovecollective.org) in Perth (Western Aust.).

It has been going great. We started out with kits but we&#39;re brewing some organic stuff now.

We usually have 2 brews on at once and always have atleast 30 - 50 bottles ready for drinking.

A revolution I can&#39;t drink to is not a revolution&#33;

[Lings]

www.voresoel.dk (http://www.voresoel.dk/)

This is a link to a danish "open source" beer, thats actually pretty nice. Made by danish beerdrinkin&#39; student geeks.
Fun concept, decent beer, open source:D

[lvleph]

Good book to read:
The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian
ISBN:0060531053
I have 7.5 gallons fermenting right now. They have been fermenting for a week and a half and are still bubbling every 15 secs. This is the longest I have ever had primary fermentation last.

Don&#39;t go cheap on your yeast. White Labs yeast is the best. A vile will cost you anywhere from &#036;4 to &#036;8.

[Fawkes]

Anyone know about making hard alcohol?