First Batch of Beer
- Thread starter Springfield 1911
- Start date
what recipe/ingredients did you use? I have had good luck with kits from Austin Homebrew Supply and on the south side of town, Barley and Vine. Their clone kits of Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale is good, as is Sweetwater MotorBoat, Bells Two Hearted and Green Flash La Freak.
I'm starting to branch out on my own now, waiting another week for my own Two Hearted clone to finish then into the keg it goes.
I'm starting to branch out on my own now, waiting another week for my own Two Hearted clone to finish then into the keg it goes.
I used Brewers Best, ingredient kit. The recipe came in the kit. I also checked it to a recipe that I have in my Homebrewing Book. I am glad you brought this back up. Here are some pics of the beer. I had to use some clear bottles, yeah I know...not good. On the bright side I did try some of it and it was not bad,even with no carbonation it was pretty dang good.
Oh and I got 46 Bottles!
if you want to branch out I have a few good extract recipes. I bottled for a few batches and have recently moved to kegging my beers. nice to have cold beer on draft in the garage.
How do you keg it?
it's pretty simple but takes a lot more equipment. Look around for the old Coke/Pepsi cornelius kegs. they are getting harder to find a good price on them, now about $60-70 each. I use the Pepsi/Ball lock versions. The advantage is the center of the top pops out so instead of transferring your beer into the bottling bucket and then bottles with extra sugar to carbonate, you just siphon the beer into the keg. then you have to keep it cool, and get some sort of CO2 system to carbonate and serve it.
Most people if they do it a lot get an old (or new) chest freezer and put the kegs in there, with a temperature controller to keep the temps around 40 degrees or whatever temps you want. I built a wood collar and put the taps thru that instead of drilling holes in the freezer for them..
I can hold 5 kegs in mine, and have 5 tap handles to dispense the beers. this is a bit older picture but you get the idea. it's not cheap but scrounging around on craigslist will significantly cut the costs.
basically you need a CO2 canister (usually 5/10/20lb cans), a regulator to drop the pressure to keg levels (about 10psi), and if you have multiple kegs some sort of distribution system. Then the hardware that attaches the lines to the kegs (gas and liquid lines) and the taps. You can go cheap or high end. or you can just buy a kit with all the stuff you need besides the kegs (check out birdman brewing in Ohio, I've gotten good prices and service there in the past) or most of the local shops have most of the hardware as well. I made my own controller (posted the how to on homebrewtalk forum) and got parts as I found them on craigslist. I bought all the connectors, lines, regulator and taps over time new when I had the funds. I can also fill a growler if I want to take my beer "to go" somewhere.
in the photo, the CO2 line comes into the freezer from the left side (I have a 20lb tank with a QR attachment on the line, you can see the white faced gauge on the tank in the bottom left corner). It goes into the two dial gauges which are a two step regulator. So I have one set for ~30psi for carbing the kegs (instead of putting sugar in to carbonate, put fresh beer on the high pressure line for 24 hours) and sodas. There are two hoses coming off that guage. The other gauge is set to ~10psi and that line goes into the 4 way splitter and that goes to the other 4 kegs for beer. Keeps them carbonated and the pressure feeds the beer to the taps. Red lines are gas, clear/white lines are beer. I've got 5 taps now, 4 for beer and one for a dark cream soda for when i don't want a beer or kids. (gnome brand, excellent!).
