Any homebrewers?

[offensivename]

Anyone else out there brew beer? I've got a 10 gallon electric all-grain system in my ex-garage, current gun and beer room. Also a Picobrew Zymatic for 2.5 gallon batches. Currently I'm fermenting an American Lager and a Porter for the National Homebrew Competition.

[HuckleberryFun]

Nope. I’m one of the few people in Portland not home brewing nor in a band nor being creative-artisanal with my “art”.
I am truly an odd duck. (No, not a Ducks fan either)

[lurker]

in my ex-garage, current gun and beer room.

and some people say guns and alcohol don't mix.

[YankeeTarheel]

I'd like to help. Do you need someone to confirm it's delicious?

[methodmissing]

I experimented with it once then gave it up when I was unwilling to transition to a 5-Gallon brew size. These days I play with yeast by trying to bake wild sourdough. It isn’t going well.

It’s super satisfying to go through the process though. Just takes a lot of time and a bit of equipment. And an obsessive cleanliness.

[Maccabee]

I did for several years (even won a blue ribbon at the state fair!) but stopped a few years ago because we had a kid and I was getting fat. Lol. I miss it though and might pick it up again.

[SubRosa]

Here you had me going, thinking this was about homebrewing ham gear.

Good anyway, I love beer.

Subs

[zzrguy]

Haven't brewed in a few years but have distilled a few gallons for personal use.

Have been looking at brewing a summer batch lately.

Good luck on your competition.

[HuckleberryFun]

Here you had me going, thinking this was about homebrewing ham gear.

Good anyway, I love beer.

Subs

Haha! That was my very first thought when I read “homebrew”.
That it turned out to be about beer somewhat assuaged my disappointment.

[YankeeTarheel]

Anyone else out there brew beer? I've got a 10 gallon electric all-grain system in my ex-garage, current gun and beer room. Also a Picobrew Zymatic for 2.5 gallon batches. Currently I'm fermenting an American Lager and a Porter for the National Homebrew Competition.

"Ex-garage"? How do you divorce a garage?

[offensivename]

"Ex-garage"? How do you divorce a garage?

You make the already near impossible turn to get a car into your garage physically impossible by extending the garage.

Also you install a cold room to ferment beer and a nice floor and a bar.

I never liked the garage anyway.

[YankeeTarheel]

"Ex-garage"? How do you divorce a garage?

You make the already near impossible turn to get a car into your garage physically impossible by extending the garage.

Also you install a cold room to ferment beer and a nice floor and a bar.

I never liked the garage anyway.

That's not a divorce, that's a conversion! Hey! We're all about being picky about terminology here!

(but can I still get a chance to sample it if I'm in your neck of the woods? )

[Bisbee]

Anyone else out there brew beer? I've got a 10 gallon electric all-grain system in my ex-garage, current gun and beer room. Also a Picobrew Zymatic for 2.5 gallon batches. Currently I'm fermenting an American Lager and a Porter for the National Homebrew Competition.

"Ex-garage"? How do you divorce a garage?

Easy: you divorce the wife, she gets the house with garage. You get the doghouse. And maybe the dog.

[YankeeTarheel]

Anyone else out there brew beer? I've got a 10 gallon electric all-grain system in my ex-garage, current gun and beer room. Also a Picobrew Zymatic for 2.5 gallon batches. Currently I'm fermenting an American Lager and a Porter for the National Homebrew Competition.

"Ex-garage"? How do you divorce a garage?

Easy: you divorce the wife, she gets the house with garage. You get the doghouse. And maybe the dog.

Ouch! Sounds dreadful! No wonder one would want to brew 10 gallons of beer at a time--but you won't have a garage to brew it in!

[AndyH]

The bugs in my kitchen are making kombucha.

My first AF roommate brewed beer in his closet. Everything I owned smelled like beer for a couple of years after I moved out.

[Buck13]

I used to brew a fair amount, but I found that people who measure beer in gallons also tend to drink beer in gallons. I didn't have enough friends to take up the slack.

For a while I worked on a recipe for "children's beer," which was not for actual children. The idea was to make something beer-like that had only around 1% alcohol so one could quaff one or two units (where a unit is a glass that holds half a liter) without actually getting drunk. The project was fairly successful, in that *I* liked the product enough to repeat the recipe a couple of times after I found a method that was better than the first try. No one else's opinion was of interest to me.

To save work, I bottled this stuff in 2 liter bottles saved from fizzy water, so no bottle washing or capping! Careless packaging for careless drinking.

[SeanMoney]

I tried, but you have to be super clean. That knocked me out. Every style I tried tasted the same. Got some good buzzes though.

[MaxWyatt]

I used to brew ten gallon all grain batches "back in the day" when I had plenty of help brewing and drinking the results. Now I'm married with children and don't have time or room to brew. I sold the gear years ago to finance a motorcycle purchase. Good move. I lost weight once I didn't have several corny kegs of ale in my garage. go figure. If I was to do it again, I'd build a system geared toward lagers. Pilsners, in particular are what float my boat now. Of course that would probably require several trips to Plzen to do some research.

[Holler1]

I’ve been homebrewing for four years and have 20+ batches under my belt, only the first was extract-based, the others all-grain. My brewing system is a cobble-together: a converted keg, a 10-gal igloo cooler, copper coil wort chiller, Blickman burner, etc. But I manage some good brews with it, likely because my friend and brewing mentor is a brewing mensch. My preferred styles tend toward IPAs and APAs, with a black IPA and rye version the favorites of friends. I’ve also done porter, stout, hefeweizen, a Kentucky common, English mild and strong bitter and several others. I’m more a fan of ales than lagers, but will likely try a couple at least. I find homebrewing a perfect combination of cooking and chemistry and, of course, you get to guzzle your experiments.

[MaxWyatt]

That sounds a lot like my old setup. the 10 gallon mash tun works well for single infusion recipes. I mostly liked making pale ales and 'big' IPA's using classic British hops. There were many stouts and porters added to the mix along the way. It was a lot of fun for me to work out the process and the results were ... rewarding. :-)

[stl303]

I used to brew a fair amount, but I found that people who measure beer in gallons also tend to drink beer in gallons. I didn't have enough friends to take up the slack.

same here. I used to mess around with a "Mr Beer" kit.. and had generally satisfactory results. However if I didn't time a batch to be ready just before a big VW Bus campout (and then remember to bring it), it never got drank before going skunky or flat in the 1-litre fliptop bottles I used.

In the end it was just another hobby that didn't take hold and I wasn't able to sustain

[spittingglass]

I've been brewing for about 10 years now, but I've slowed down recently. Girlfriend started using the fermenting fridge to store kimchi and I don't want to mix the two.

[Buck13]

I've been brewing for about 10 years now, but I've slowed down recently. Girlfriend started using the fermenting fridge to store kimchi and I don't want to mix the two.

I would hope that the proper fermentation vessels would keep the respective micro-organisms in their place! Making a SMALL batch fermented with kimchi bugs might be interesting, though. Probably gonna be really sour. Some people like that sort of thing...I appreciate it in infrequent doses.

Were you brewing lager in the fridge?

[spittingglass]

I've been brewing for about 10 years now, but I've slowed down recently. Girlfriend started using the fermenting fridge to store kimchi and I don't want to mix the two.

I would hope that the proper fermentation vessels would keep the respective micro-organisms in their place! Making a SMALL batch fermented with kimchi bugs might be interesting, though. Probably gonna be really sour. Some people like that sort of thing...I appreciate it in infrequent doses.

Were you brewing lager in the fridge?

It'd definitely be a sour, the main bug fermenting kimchi is lactobacillus. They'd be all over the place, and short of bleaching every square centimeter inside, I wouldn't 100% trust the fridge to ferment a clean batch after. That and the smell of kimchi is like no other and seeps in to EVERYTHING.

And I have lagered in it a few times. I built an Arduino/Raspberry Pi temperature controller and have the fridge hooked in to one outlet and a heatgun in the other. Heatgun stays inside the fridge to raise the temperature if needed. It allows me to control the ferment temp to within +/- 0.1°F and set a full ferment temperature schedule (60° for 3 days, bring it up to 65 in steps for two days, then cold crash at 33° for 24 hours, etc).

With that kind of temp control and the ability to set a full schedule, there's no reason not to ferment everything in it. Controlling ferment temps is key in making good, CONSISTENT homebrew.

[YankeeTarheel]

It'd definitely be a sour, the main bug fermenting kimchi is lactobacillus. They'd be all over the place, and short of bleaching every square centimeter inside, I wouldn't 100% trust the fridge to ferment a clean batch after. That and the smell of kimchi is like no other and seeps in to EVERYTHING.

Isn't that why the traditional way to make kimchi in Korea was to bury the vat underground? Reminds me of "Thousand year old" eggs. Tried on once. Didn't like it but they last virtually forever.