Any Home Brewers on the site?

[bartjo06]

I don't come on here often anymore since the truck is gone, but I figured I'd chime in. We (myself and two coworkers) are just getting into brewing and we're having a ton of fun with it. First two batches were a summer wheat similar to Blue Moon and an IPA similar to Sierra Nevada. We recently bottled our 3rd and 4th batches one being Belgium Wheat and the other a Chocolate Ale, those should be ready on Friday.



Like Gus said, we're usually into it for about 60-75 for two 5 gal batches that yields ~100 or so bottles. We also usually manage to screw them up somehow because we are inherently drinking beer while brewing and we usually get pretty drunk before the process finishes.

[Gus]

Definitely a labor of love if you count all the equipment I purchased I could of bought A LOT of store beer. Cool to come up with new combinations and its "your beer". I cant stand bottling, there is to much cleaning and capping involved so I bought a bunch of kegs to make it easier.

[bartjo06]

Using bottles is definitely very laborious. We were thinking of eventually switching to kegs as well. Our boss has a kegerator at his house so it would be a pretty seamless transfer to kegs.

[ducky]

Do most of you guys buy the used equipment or new? Any links to learn how to would be much appreciated

[Gus]

My very first kit was new as a xmas gift from a friend. I have since expanded by purchasing used items from craigslist. We have a store that is somewhat local and they ship international. If you think you want to get into it start with something like http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/t...et/4,9467.html it will give you all the required items, Buy lots of One Step sanitizer also. Stay away from the Mr. Beer kits since you will outgrow their capabilities really fast and it will just be something you have sitting in the corner. I started with extract kits like the ones at the next link. They give you really good instructions for water temp and actually label each ingredient so you start to under stand what your putting in and why.. http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/g...ts/2,1352.html We all start somewhere and I'm not a professional by any means so learn something new all the time, if you have any more questions then don't hesitate to ask.