Home Brewing Beer from Scratch

a reply to: RAY1990

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 think you can see the hidden value of the hobbyist.

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a reply to: crowf00t

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

How did that taste?

And I like the Saki too. My kids by me Gin, Saki and cigars for the occasions such as b'days and xmas.

Still, I would like to learn to do the beer making from scratch myself. In the supermarkets they have cans of "dried beer", and liquor essences. That is cheating in my eyes.

That is one of the reasons I give as much organic fruit as my neighbour wants, he drops me off a bottle.

I've always wanted to try making Mead but never got round to it.
I did have a family member who brewed their own beer from scratch when I was younger and like others have said it can be a continous many zapper as new gadgets are released all the time.
I'll never forgeot the repugnant over-powering smell when it's first being made.....

originally posted by: Kurokage
I've always wanted to try making Mead but never got round to it.
I did have a family member who brewed their own beer from scratch when I was younger and like others have said it can be a continous many zapper as new gadgets are released all the time.
I'll never forgeot the repugnant over-powering smell when it's first being made.....

Mead is easy check your pm's

a reply to: SprocketUK

Thanks.
Looks like I'll joining ATSers brewing club!!

a reply to: NobodySpecial268
It's an old German recipe for mead

Sort of like a fresh Budweiser but you'd need to add Riesling grapes to get closer to the "King".

Edit to add: If you put a clear bottles on say apples pears etc while they still fit in the hole and tie the bottle to the branch they'll grow in there then at adulthood pluck the bottle off then clear corn syrup and a little brewers and a bubbler lock for a nice gin.

a reply to: RAY1990

Yeast. This is what I know, although I may be wrong.

There is wine yeast, brewer's yeast, and baker's yeast.

Wine yeast produces less carbonation and more alcohol. Also, it works slowly.

Brewer's yeast produces a little less alcohol than wine and more carbonation, also, it works fairly quickly.

Baker's yeast is somewhere in between on alcohol but works faster and produces more carbonation than the other two. Plus it smells and tastes like bread.

When I make wild berry wine I use the natural yeast. I also start wines by growing a culture from the fruit I'm using, blueberries, grapes, plumbs, or any fruit you can see has yeast on its skin.

I know you can keep a yeast culture alive (like sourdough), but drying and freezing it is fairly complicated from what I was reading when I looked into yeast.

I know a lot of people who make honey mead. It seems more people make mead than wine or beer around these parts.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

There's a few ways to keep a culture, the method I used was harvesting the foam off the top of an ongoing fermentation then putting it into a sterilised jar with a bit feed in it, the jar is just kept in the fridge. It's been a while since I researched it all but this method seemed to be the cleanest, easiest and cheapest.

Attenuation rates ( how much sugar is eaten) varies a lot between yeasts with the key being the types of sugar they can consume, this is what really surprised me about those brown ales I mentioned. A yeast strain with high attenuation rates will make a dryer beer which is a game changer when it comes to complex brews such as darker ales, porters, stouts etc. There's a lot more too from the esters being produced to where the yeast prefers to feed. As a personal preference I tend to go for yeasts that have higher heat tolerance since they don't produce "off" tastes from the esters. Lighter more delicate brews really do need a good yeast and/or a low fermentation temperature to get the best out of flavours.

I like dry porter/stouts myself which is probably difficult to achieve without a high producing yeast. It'll just be sweet. Like I mentioned earlier I hardly ever lager my beers properly and my preferred temperature range is 15-23C°/59-74F°. Bad beer goes to others or down the drain here so I try to keep things simple and workable, I owe most of my successes to yeast selection.

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

These days you can get all grain kits around the same price as the high end dry kits, I got a hobgoblin clone that cost £22 quid just waiting on the holiday season.

The basics for someone to do an all grain brew is minimal too tbh, my first was a part grain mash using a dry kit... I'll probably never buy those tins again.

What's needed:

A large pot and a stove
A grain bag to hold the grains (optional)
A bag or container to hold the hops
A thermometer (potentially optional)
A fermenting tub/bucket

All that could be sourced for less than $30 I reckon, might even be able to get the grains and hops with the change too!
First time brewers I tend to advise making darker beers since they're a lot harder to be disappointed in or ruin.

Always wanted to try making a mead but it's damned expensive for those who don't have their own beehives

Fantastic thread btw. Thanks for keeping it going

I have been slowly brewing gallon after gallon as I see it as a perfect barter. A bottle of mead or wine lasts a very long time. Especially if you have a cool dry place to store it.

When everything goes to #, as it may or may not, who will fair better? The people with 300 gallons of mead and wine to trade for whatever, or the people that do not?

Simple arithmetic.

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

The dead yeast is supposed to have a very high amount.

Here's a whiskey recipe from the Old West.

Whiskey In The Old West

A lot of whiskey was consumed. There was good whiskey and there was bad. Or, as some would say, “It was all good, but some was better.” by Marshall Trimble | May 21, 2020 | True West Blog

One of the favorite whiskey recipes is Ol’ Snakehead. Ingredients were:
1 gal. alcohol.
1 lb. plug or black twist of tobacco for color.
1 lb. black strap molasses for flavor.
1 handful red Spanish peppers for spice.
5 gal. river water.
2 rattlesnake heads per barrel. This gives it “spirit.”
Then drop in a horseshoe. If the shoe sinks, it ain’t ready yet but when it rises to the surface and floats, the whiskey is ready to drink.

True West Magazine

a reply to: crowf00t
I have peaches on my tree at that stage. Gonna give that a go just to have fun and try it out.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck


Beer is good or bones , it is great source of silicon . Silicon also flush out aluminium from body.

Beer May Be Good For Your Bones

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

Oh a good drop in for that ferment once plucked would be a cinnamon stick, maple syrup, brown sugar and maybe a slice of dried orange peel.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck
Oh SwampBuck, that's only half a recipe. If you live in the wilds where do you get your Gallon of alcohol from. What you do is make your "wine" from whatever takes your taste and when it's done fermenting still the alcohol off and you've got your fire water.
When my brother was alive we made gallons and gallons. We only had one ingredient to buy (mainly for simplicity) and that was sugar. Everything else and I mean everything was foraged out of hedgerows and nature. You just have to be careful not to get the poisonous stuff.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

My Dad passed away a couple of years ago, and one thing I regret is not learning the art of brewing from him, he truly was a master at wine & beer, it was a staple hobby for him, he did it to keep himself supplied with booze throughout each year.

God bless the brewers of the world!

I can recommend several books that I own, and send you to a few websites for supplies. Though, Amazon seems to have about the best deals on all manner of kits. There’s a place on line where you can get an entire distillation system and it works quite well.

Zymurgy is a science made for people who wish to not only survive, but to be happy. Cheers Brother!

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

a reply to: RealFairtrade141

Thanks for the offer, but I will just pop down to the city and simply pick up what I need.

TheMichiganSwampBuck's beer from scratch recipe is the one I want to work with. Sprouting the barley and making the basic beer. I feel getting that right is fundamental.

The other one I want to make is the old fashioned gin with the juniper berries, wormwood and so on. I have a hunch that is a very medicinal spirit. The ingredients of gin are antiparasitic, and add in Indian tonic water which is another anti-parasitic (quinine).

Maybe the ol' British knew something important and why they sat about sipping gin and tonic on the subcontinant back in the days of the Raj.