Home Brewing Beer from Scratch

The idea eventually is to have enough knowledge and experience to make drinkable beer, wine and booze along with smoking products like tobacco and cannabis, you know, high-value black market items for after the SHTF. Reloading ammo would be a good one too, but I only helped do that once with my older brother years ago. Understanding how to make effective bows would be a good one as well. Then there's always trapping and fishing.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

Re the temp, I saw a guy doing old fashioned brewing on telly years back and he said without a thermometer he used to guage t6he temp by when his reflection was visible in the water and not completely obscured by steam.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

I've been brewing beer for 26 years and do my brews from scratch, I have my cost down to less than 10 cents a beer. I do 7 carboys at a time to save money and time. I also keg my beer as well because who wants to wash 66 beer bottles, not me.
If you want I could tell you how to get your cost down and make deadly beer too.

a reply to: RAY1990

People do not realize that you don't need a still to extract alcohol out of a fermentation.If you add some food coloring and keep stirring salt into the brew, the salt grabs the water and it settles to the bottom with whatever food coloring that you are using and leaves the pure Ethanol on top for decanting..Plus you can filter the leftovers and use the salt indefinitely.

I really appreciate a great beer. But my personal preference for homemade beverages is to make wine since it's much easier and fewer ingredients. Fruit, yeast and a container to ferment in. Of course there's a bit more to it but I've made both. Wine IMHO is more versatile and forgiving in what you can use. Like dandelions and many other edible flower varieties, any fruit and even some veggies. Speaking of which, years ago a friend and I came into a large amount of celery and nothing to do with it so we made a small batch of celery wine just for the heck of it. G R O S S is all I can say. So we had another friend distill it for us. G R O S S E R. But hey, we could breath fire really easy. Boy those were the days. Fun and crazy good times.

I wouldn't be so experimental now plus I have a very large, old and established grape arbor and apple trees. I just need the time which I am hoping for in a year or two.

Making wine and beer is a fun and challenging hobby to have and almost anyone can do it.

I actually just finished brewing so this thread is hitting just right!!

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originally posted by: annonentity
a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck



If you have a beer, smokes, a few chickens, and a garden. There really isn't much point in working for money to buy them. The main problem will be thinking of things to do to stay relevant. Even transport is solved by using alcohol as a fuel alternative. The problem will be getting the sugar. If you can grow the cane I guess you have it made, one plant makes a teaspoon of sugar.

I tap and reduce maple syrup every spring. It isn't difficult to make maple sugar, it would however take a lot of maple syrup to make enough maple sugar and the sugar would taste like maple of course. Maple-flavored beer might be good if you use just enough maple sugar to keep up the ferment, but not enough to overpower the hops and barley with maple. It could be really good but might take awhile to perfect, or it could be completely crappy and a waste, well, no waste as I'll probably drink it anyway.

originally posted by: TheMichiganSwampBuck
Before anyone poses the question, "Why put this in the Survival Forum?" I will ask, "How can you expect to survive without beer after the system breaks down?"

Wine might be healthier when there's little else.

originally posted by: enament
a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

I've been brewing beer for 26 years and do my brews from scratch, I have my cost down to less than 10 cents a beer. I do 7 carboys at a time to save money and time. I also keg my beer as well because who wants to wash 66 beer bottles, not me.
If you want I could tell you how to get your cost down and make deadly beer too.

Very cool, we will get together soon.

I thought I should explain, to those who don't know, that a carboy is those large water bottles that hold 5 or more gallons of liquids, like on a water cooler. Traditional ones are made of heavy glass, but they make them from plastic as well.

A carboy, also known as a demijohn or a lady jeanne, is a rigid container with a typical capacity of 4 to 60 litres (1 to 16 US gal). [1] [2] Carboys are primarily used for transporting liquids, often drinking water or chemicals. [3] They are also used for in-home fermentation of beverages, often beer or wine.

- Wikipedia

a reply to: annonentity

I have heard that vodka left to freeze in winter on a windowsill will separate the water and alcohol.

originally posted by: NobodySpecial268
a reply to: annonentity

I have heard that vodka left to freeze in winter on a windowsill will separate the water and alcohol.

I used the cold distillation process on some apple wine I made. As a wine, I didn't like it, but after freezing and extracting the alcohol, it became more of a brandy and I could drink it. Applejack or Apple Pie is what I've heard this called. I thought cinnamon would be nice to add, but didn't try it.

I think that cold distillation retains the flavors better than using a still, it certainly kept the yeast alive and working. That's what I like about homemade beer and wine, it's unpasteurized and living, it sizzles with life.

a reply to: RAY1990

I was thinking a few weeks ago the survival forum on ATS is a bit quiet, beer making is a funny one when it comes to survival because I suspect it needs a society without the aid of machines. It's a real coming together of many talents that I find to be reflective of society and culture. Beautiful really, no matter where you go you'll usually find someone looking for a drink or smoke... All that variation of what is, it all starts with a "could be" and I just find it all a bit magical tbh lol.

You got me thinking post apocalypse. "A society without the aid of machines" as you say would probably be without electricity too.

I guess there would be plenty of opportunity to develop our talents beyond the hobby.

Brewing and distilling as a hobby would quickly turn into a lot more.

The hobbyist today would become the craftsman.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

The thought just struck me that maple syrup, instead of sugar in ginger beer would make a nive brew.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

Wow . . .

think that cold distillation retains the flavors better than using a still, it certainly kept the yeast alive and working. That's what I like about homemade beer and wine, it's unpasteurized and living, it sizzles with life.

For a while I worked with medicinal herbs creating tinctures. My big concern was the preservation of the living medicinal properties of the plant.

Distillation of the volitiles and oils crossed my mind too. But thought one might loose something in the process.

Gin for example has medicinals in the basic recipe. Wormwood is an anti-parasitic. Juniper and so on. I think there would have been a very good reason for the original ingredients.

I wonder how making gin might go with an old recipe and cold distillation

Every household has a freezer. Do you think 30/40 % gin might be made that way?

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

Another thing to remember after fermentation, all the debris at the bottom contains the only source of fractionated DNA besides urine. It is supposed to be made into biscuits but probably other things as a health food which is easily digested.

a reply to: annonentity

"fractionated DNA"?

originally posted by: annonentity
a reply to: RAY1990

People do not realize that you don't need a still to extract alcohol out of a fermentation.If you add some food coloring and keep stirring salt into the brew, the salt grabs the water and it settles to the bottom with whatever food coloring that you are using and leaves the pure Ethanol on top for decanting..Plus you can filter the leftovers and use the salt indefinitely.

I had to look into that, cheers I might run an experiment next time I brew. Even if the salt mixes with the alcohol there's ways to remove it... I'd need to learn more about methanol production although apparently it really isn't an issue outside of fruit based liquor which might not even be a problem anyways?

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

Thanks for detailing your methods! I've got a good idea what you're doing and I'm impressed. The only suggestions I can offer is kegging instead of bottling and developing your knowledge of yeasts. There's this chap who helped me early on with my recipes etc who literally had about 30 19L Cornelius kegs. Apparently he did all his fermenting in them too including his secondary ferment. I personally only bottle from keg on occasions that call for it but I do use C02 instead of priming most of the time except for cider. You could probably pick kegs up for 30-40 dollars 2nd hand.

The yeast I only mention because of what it can do for flavour, one of my better experiments was with a brown ale recipe that I replicated 3 times all with different yeasts which produced different flavours and most importantly different attenuation rates, I knew they'd be different but I was totally surprised by the differences in dryness and taste. The alcohol range was 3.4% to 4.4% which is significant. Might be worth looking into harvesting the krausen (foam on top of fermentation) for yeast too as under the right conditions a yeast can store for a year plus, I've also had success when continious fermenting where I've just added a new brew onto the cake left from a previous batch. 3 brews is how far I've took it with that method and I've never had issues although I was weary of doing it again by then... Figured I was asking for an infection or mutations...

From what I gather kegs perform better when it comes to storage, that guy with 30 kegs told me he had brews going back 3 years that are good. Bottles can last 2 years from personal experience. My main reason for bottling is usually when I need the keg space for the next batch. I'll try some of my old stuff this weekend, from experience I'd say strong brews tend to need 6 -12 months conditioning for a superior brew but I've only did stuff like that 2-3 times.

Figured I'd add that I only use gas due to laziness, a 6.4kg cannister does 20-30 batches (upto 1000l) so all in all it's not that expensive. I also use the stuff when cleaning as I can clean out multiple kegs at once then store them slightly pressurised. Cask ale style dispensing can be done with proper beer bags without the need for Co2. The bag simply collapses as the beer is drawn out so there's no loss in pressure or anything, no risk of infection.

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

In this day and age a hobbyist is useless to the majority yet the majority don't have a clue how to do the majority of things.

I find it funny how much society is taken for granted. Thank god for tiktok and YouTube eh? At least the kids can somewhat cook and freely eat tidepods these days Heck, some can even use the washing machine whilst they make weird videos!

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

if you like online auction and second hand sales sites try "carboy" and "Mr. Beer"

Hops water molasses and brewer yeast is the simplest I know of.

When I was into brewing i enjoyed Saki the most... Still mad someone broke a time lock on one I was saving til it cleared.