It’s so hard not to make beer...

[Anyhowe]

Take 3 gallons of water and heat it to say 160 degrees. Take a mesh bag full of crushed malt and let it sit in that water for 1.5 hours. It will defy physics to NOT turn those starches into sugar.

Take out the bag of grain, and top off the pot to about 3 gallons. Bring it to a boil and add some hops and boil for an hour. Good luck NOT imparting a lovely bittering oil to your wort. Haha, no way, cant do it. If the liquid starts getting low, just add some more water.

After the hour, add cool water to get the quantity of beer you want. Let it cool to about 70 degrees and sprinkle in some yeast. Put it in a carboy and let it sit for 10 days. Try as you might to not let it happen, you will lose, it will happen, the yeast is going to turn that sugar into alcohol.

Bottle or keg it up. Drink when carbonated.

You and a few of your friends will have fun drinking it. If you do only one thing, and one thing only, and that is ferment it at 65 degrees, you will create a beer that none of your friends will believe your made yourself.

So go ahead, give it a try. You can’t NOT make beer. It just happens, it is in fact magic.

 

[Blazinlow86]

While I agree you will end up with beer I feel it's necessary to add not to get discouraged if it's not very good beer. I started brewing with the typical 3 vessel keggle setup and skipped bottling from the start. When I tasted my first batch while it seemed pretty good at first sip I found the honeymoon quickly faded and I was back to buying my favorite craft brews and forcing myself to drink my homebrew. For about 6 months I made small improvements one at a time until I got to the point where I could mostly drink my homebrew. 2.5 years later and I'm finally able to say I'm there. There's always room for improvement of course but now when friends come over they often choose my brews over the expensive craft stuff I have in the fridge. I guess it also depends on how picky you are if course. Cheers

 

[Anyhowe]

While I agree you will end up with beer I feel it's necessary to add not to get discouraged if it's not very good beer. I started brewing with the typical 3 vessel keggle setup and skipped bottling from the start. When I tasted my first batch while it seemed pretty good at first sip I found the honeymoon quickly faded and I was back to buying my favorite craft brews and forcing myself to drink my homebrew. For about 6 months I made small improvements one at a time until I got to the point where I could mostly drink my homebrew. 2.5 years later and I'm finally able to say I'm there. There's always room for improvement of course but now when friends come over they often choose my brews over the expensive craft stuff I have in the fridge. I guess it also depends on how picky you are if course. Cheers

With only a couple o exceptions, the only bad home brew I have tasted was due to warm and inconsistent fermentation. Take care of that and Mother Nature will take care of the rest.

 

[Blazinlow86]

It's definitely subjective but I'd imagine if you were to have brews made following the process you described judged against one using all the recommended processes or a pro brewed beer in think the difference is quite large. Again it's totally subjective. Cheers

 

[Blazinlow86]

Or a better way to say it as a buddy once told me. It's not hard to make beer but it's hard to make great beer. Not everyone is after great homebrew either. Cheers

 

[Anyhowe]

Agreed to a point. However, this is a beginner forum to get folks started. Too much complicated Shizzle being sold as a requirement for good beer.

I guarantee you with good fermentation I can make you a suprisingly excellent tasting beer with a pot, a couple hopped extract kits and some liquid yeast.

 

[Blazinlow86]

Of course my point was not to get discouraged if it's not the same as your favorite store bought beer is all. If I believed everyone that says award winning beer us easy cave men made it I woulda given up early on rather than doubling down. Cheers

 

[bracconiere]

i remember once making a 10 gal batch and only having a 5 gal carboy....so i just keep the extra wort in the mash tun for a couple days, god's love must have creeped in because i had active fermentation in the mash tun after those few days....must have been bret(SP)....

 

[Anyhowe]

i remember once making a 10 gal batch and only having a 5 gal carboy....so i just keep the extra wort in the mash tun for a couple days, god's love must have creeped in because i had active fermentation in the mash tun after those few days....must have been bret(SP)....

Well deserved. Lol.

 

[spanosspanos]

i remember once making a 10 gal batch and only having a 5 gal carboy....so i just keep the extra wort in the mash tun for a couple days, god's love must have creeped in because i had active fermentation in the mash tun after those few days....must have been bret(SP)....

That sound like a wild experiment! [emoji12]How'd the mash tun beer turn out?

 

[Anyhowe]

Actually I think the industry (us included) has the beginners process backwards. Fermentation (within reason) is the key to quality. I’ll take a beer kit boiled up with quality fermentation over the most expensive Herms/Rims/Zymatic/brewie/electrisational system wort with crappy fermentation qc most every time.

Maybe worthy of it’s own thread. Outside of a pot and thermometer I recommend one first spend their money on Ferm QC. Then work backwards through efficiency, PH, sparging, whirlpooling etc.

 

[Blazinlow86]

Actually I think the industry (us included) has the beginners process backwards. Fermentation (within reason) is the key to quality. I’ll take a beer kit boiled up with quality fermentation over the most expensive Herms/Rims/Zymatic/brewie/electrisational system wort with crappy fermentation qc most every time.

Maybe worthy of it’s own thread. Outside of a pot and thermometer I recommend one first spend their money on Ferm QC. Then work backwards through efficiency, PH, sparging, whirlpooling etc.

I agree 100%. Just in my experience I had ferm temp control from the beginning and still ended up with mediocre beer. All brewers I personally know have all gave up for the same reasons. They said there beer was drinkable but they didn't like it much. Not to discourage new brewers but just trying to keep realistic expectations so they understand there not doing it incorrectly. It's just simply takes alot more effort for GREAT beer that you may be used too buying than a simple extract setup will likely make. Cheers

 

[bracconiere]

That sound like a wild experiment! [emoji12]How'd the mash tun beer turn out?

unfortunately i was still just a young homebrewer back then, and to scared to try it....past regrets...i've drank worse i'd imagine since...

 

[Anyhowe]

@blaziniow86 Hard to argue with that. But gimme a couple more beers and I’ll give it a shot.

 

[bracconiere]

I agree 100%. Just in my experience I had ferm temp control from the beginning and still ended up with mediocre beer. All brewers I personally know have all gave up for the same reasons. They said there beer was drinkable but they didn't like it much. Not to discourage new brewers but just trying to keep realistic expectations so they understand there not doing it incorrectly. It's just simply takes alot more effort for GREAT beer that you may be used too buying than a simple extract setup will likely make. Cheers

and sadly statements like these are why i needed other homebrewers to reassure me, i am indeed a homebrewer myself...Because i make mediocre beer, and i like it because it's only 85c a gallon...

 

[Anyhowe]

and sadly statements like these are why i needed other homebrewers to reassure me, i am indeed a homebrewer myself...Because i make mediocre beer, and i like it because it's only 85c a gallon...

Hmmm. My yeast costs more than that... lol.

 

[bracconiere]

Hmmm. My yeast costs more than that... lol.

is there an emoji for a jesting middle finger? i reuse my yeast, and buy my barley at the feed store...lol

and when i do need fresh yeast, i just add about 3-4g's to about 3 liters of wort, put it on the stir plate over night and pitch it in the morning...

and i'm not sure how much bottling and dist would tack on, but i bet if i sold my mediocre beer at the store for 1.99-2.99 a twelver, i'd out sell you by a long shot....

 

[Anyhowe]

is there an emoji for a jesting middle finger? i reuse my yeast, and buy my barley at the feed store...lol

and when i do need fresh yeast, i just add about 3-4g's to about 3 liters of wort, put it on the stir plate over night and pitch it in the morning...

and i'm not sure how much bottling and dist would tack on, but i bet if i sold my mediocre beer at the store for 1.99-2.99 a twelver, i'd out sell you by a long shot....

Lol Please don’t misinterpret. I am impressed! Not many of us can do it that inexpensively.

 

[bracconiere]

Lol Please don’t misinterpret. I am impressed! Not many of us can do it that inexpensively.

lol, all i can say is while all the other homebrewing kids were trying to make $20 twelve pack GREAT beer, i wanted to make a 99c o.k. one...took damn near a decade to do it too...i've tried cracked corn, made it taste like vegetables, white flour tough to sparge and didn't save me that much...the break through was realizing that dry heat effects food different than wet heat and 170f in the oven for 12 hours is different than boiling for 2....now i make my own Munich malt for 32c a pound...and i get old stock hops at a discount....

and if this sounds like too much work for a thread that started out about how easy it is to make beer.....lol, there's always cider and wine too!

 

[Blazinlow86]

lol, all i can say is while all the other homebrewing kids were trying to make $20 twelve pack GREAT beer, i wanted to make a 99c o.k. one...took damn near a decade to do it too...i've tried cracked corn, made it taste like vegetables, white flour tough to sparge and didn't save me that much...the break through was realizing that dry heat effects food different than wet heat and 170f in the oven for 12 hours is different than boiling for 2....now i make my own Munich malt for 32c a pound...and i get old stock hops at a discount....

and if this sounds like too much work for a thread that started out about how easy it is to make beer.....lol, there's always cider and wine too!

I actually started out trying to make the cheapest beer possible. I'm frugal at heart but have a large disposable income. Like I said before I just didn't like it and ended up buying expensive beer still regularly. It's possible that my skills just got better as I went and the equipment made little difference but I can say the extra equipment allows me a large amount of packaged store quality beer in a very short period of time. Cheers

 

[davidabcd]

The original post wasn't a "How to Book" or about absolute reality. It seemed more of a general, positive essay on the bare simplicity of beer to me and so not about perfect procedure or a general warning on how hard good beer is to make. How does someone not get that? The post was fine all by itself and definitely didn't require any amending or all that negativity.
If I hadn't brewed already before I read this thread, I would have been put off of brewing as being too difficult. It isn't.
For the new people: start however you like but if you're having such trouble with all-grain to the point you wish to quit, then maybe do extract for a while? It's a great introduction, the beer is better than good and it's quite easy to do after a couple batches (not including those who fly out of the gate because they have an aptitude for it). Then move on to BIAB, etc.

 

[Blazinlow86]

The original post wasn't a "How to Book" or about absolute reality. It seemed more of a general, positive essay on the bare simplicity of beer to me and so not about perfect procedure or a general warning on how hard good beer is to make. How does someone not get that? The post was fine all by itself and definitely didn't require any amending or all that negativity.
If I hadn't brewed already before I read this thread, I would have been put off of brewing as being too difficult. It isn't.
For the new people: start however you like but if you're having such trouble with all-grain to the point you wish to quit, then maybe do extract for a while? It's a great introduction, the beer is better than good and it's quite easy to do after a couple batches (not including those who fly out of the gate because they have an aptitude for it). Then move on to BIAB, etc.

I agree and sorry this got off track. I was only trying to point out that *if* it's not what you were expecting don't give up as it's unlikely gonna be as great as your favorite store bought the 1st and even possibly the 20th time. Practice makes perfect just like everything else. Cheers