Questions for the home brewers...

  I've been brewing for ten years or so and it really becomes very simple and second nature to whip up a batch after the first four or five brews.
   Check out  Charlie Papazian "s  book, " the joy of home brewing".http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0380763664/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
    I buy all my ingredients  from Seven Bridges in Santa Cruz. Entirely organic. They deliver by UPS.
http://www.breworganic.com/
    Once you know what your doing, Definitely go all grain  for a quality brew.
   I should of known there were a bunch of kayak fishing homebrewers. Somehow you just
suspect as much.
    Don't worry, be hoppy. My God! This is healthy stuff!!

I checked my journal and it's 1.5 bottles a day on average.  What can I say, I'm mostly German.    

I wouldn't buy bottles or the kettle from a brewshop.  Save up 12s and 22s and you'll soon have enough bottles, you could probably ask your local brewclub and get all the bottles you want for free.  Guys who've upgraded to kegs usually have boxes of bottles they'll happily part with. You can get boxes for the bottles at bevmo if they're loose bottles (ask for a box).  For a kettle the keg is a much better deal.  The 15g kettles are $300 (not sure what the 8 is), and you can retrofit a keg for about $70 and have a comparable platform.  You can use the savings to make a mash tun later. Wort chillers are also easy to build...

Also hold off on the temptation to make crazy beers at first, most new brewers push ABV (and sometimes hops) way over the top.  The thing about malt extract is the more you use, the more it affects the flavor because the extract is somewhat oxidized.  If you make a 5% beer it's subtle, but in an DIPA or barleywine it stands out.  Often the gravity is higher than the yeast can take, resulting in overly sweet beer with little carbonation. You can use 12lb of LME to make 10g of 5% beer, or 5g of 10% beer, it costs the same, but really it's more fun to have 10g of 5% beer than 5g of 10%.  Particularly if the 5% stuff comes out better.

>I'm interested in a prickly pear melomel if anyone out there has a lot of fruit that they don't need next year.

A friend of mine made prickly pear wine once and it came out very medicinal tasting.  There is a pretty wide variety in pricky pear fruit though, so if you find the right cultivar it might come out okay.  

I checked my journal and it's 1.5 bottles a day on average.  What can I say, I'm mostly German.   

I wouldn't buy bottles or the kettle from a brewshop.  Save up 12s and 22s and you'll soon have enough bottles, you could probably ask your local brewclub and get all the bottles you want for free.  Guys who've upgraded to kegs usually have boxes of bottles they'll happily part with. You can get boxes for the bottles at bevmo if they're loose bottles (ask for a box).  For a kettle the keg is a much better deal.  The 15g kettles are $300 (not sure what the 8 is), and you can retrofit a keg for about $70 and have a comparable platform.  You can use the savings to make a mash tun later. Wort chillers are also easy to build...

Also hold off on the temptation to make crazy beers at first, most new brewers push ABV (and sometimes hops) way over the top.  The thing about malt extract is the more you use, the more it affects the flavor because the extract is somewhat oxidized.  If you make a 5% beer it's subtle, but in an DIPA or barleywine it stands out.  Often the gravity is higher than the yeast can take, resulting in overly sweet beer with little carbonation. You can use 12lb of LME to make 10g of 5% beer, or 5g of 10% beer, it costs the same, but really it's more fun to have 10g of 5% beer than 5g of 10%.  Particularly if the 5% stuff comes out better.

>I'm interested in a prickly pear melomel if anyone out there has a lot of fruit that they don't need next year.

A friend of mine made prickly pear wine once and it came out very medicinal tasting.  There is a pretty wide variety in pricky pear fruit though, so if you find the right cultivar it might come out okay. 

This is good advice and I appreciate the detail. You already caught me looking at the crazy beers first!
Thanks for putting me back on the straight and narrow. I'm hoping to pick up the beer making kit sometime in the next two weeks, then I'll have to sit patiently for a couple weeks before I start making my first batch since I am about to do a lot of traveling for work.

I'll definitely post the first results, so Ben, you and Anita are certainly welcome to help me test it for quality control. 
In fact, I'll open that offer to anyone who has helped provide me some advice in this thread that is willing to come to Vallejo.

Keep the advice coming and if there are common noob mistakes (like wanting to make something crazy on my first try  ), please clue me in!
This has been a great educational thread for me, thanks! 

Not sure if anyones gone over it yet but sanitation is key..   I use iodophor 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodophor

and have great luck with it..  some people also use a product called starsan.   Anyway.. I always have an extra bucket that I have filled with iodophor solution ( usually only a couple capfuls of it in 5 gals is enough) , and I just keep all the small parts, hoses, spoon, chiller.. just anything I might need, soaking in that as I brew.

Basically, everything that touches the wort once its been cooled needs to be sterilized.

Yes, sanitation is key.  a frequent beginner mistake is lax sanitation.  If you are a homebrewer and ever meet home winemakers that haven't brewed beer, you will likely have a near coronary episode at their sanitation standards - I know I did.  I use iodophor.

>I'm interested in a prickly pear melomel if anyone out there has a lot of fruit that they don't need next year.

A friend of mine made prickly pear wine once and it came out very medicinal tasting.  There is a pretty wide variety in pricky pear fruit though, so if you find the right cultivar it might come out okay. 

Why so quick to blame the fruit?  I'd immediately think failure to add acid blend.  Any recipe, production notes, or tasting notes that you can pass along?

More beginner mistakes and some words of wisdom:

Don't try to cap a screwtop bottle.

Have patience.  Fermentation and carbonation take time. 

Every brewer can remember the first time he had a carboy full in the garage/closet, checking on it every few hours, counting the number of bubbles in the airlock per minute.  That is part of the magic.  Enjoy it.

KISS

Criticism is meant to be constructive.  Take a failure as a learning opportunity.  Check your ego at the door.

Speaking of airlocks - I fill mine with vodka.  I'm a bit crazy about contamination that way.

Branch out.  Try other fermentables. 

Try to make vinegar.  On purpose. 

One of these days I am going to try my hand at cheese.  Never stop branching out, never stop learning.  Brewing and craft food making is about 50/50 art/science.  Don't ignore either one.



Anyone else please feel free to add to this list.

We have done mozzarella a few times..  very easy to make and fun.. comes out great!


Good line about brewing I read once..  You arent a real brewer till youve had to mop your ceiling!  rofl.   

Hey Jay, let me know when you have your first batch done. I'll be happy to be
your taste tester. Goodluck to your new hobby.

Jedmo

Crap, I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. I'm going to have to re-think this.

   You can use two smaller stainless steel pots instead of one larger more expensive one, a longer cool down time however.

    I use hydrogen peroxide for bottle cleaning. I don't know if this is the best idea or not , but so far, no problems.

     Be very careful rinsing your bottles after sanitizing . You don't want sanitizer flavored beer. I always fill all my bottles with very warm water after cleaning and then let them sit for four hours before bottling so that all the pores in the glass clean out by brownian movement.
  There are so many things to suggest that I think you should spend some time on the beer brewing sites and read a couple of books as well.
    Again, soon enough, the whole thing becomes as simple as putting together a hamburger. Just more work and time. The learning curve isn't that steep. That is ,unless you drink and brew.Don't drink and brew. Save that for later when your more experienced.
    Drinking and bottling is a total gas and definitely one of the perks of homebrewing.I love that fresh uncarbonated beer. Quality control necessity etc.

My suggestions are as follows....

Sanitization before you chill your wort isn't that big of a deal. The boiling takes care of the buggers. You really need to be careful with sanitization as soon as you start chilling your wort, and all the way through to bottling or kegging.

I use Star San for my sanitization. I know some use Iodopahor, but I think most out there use Star San. It is a great no rinse sanitizer. IMHO rinsing after sanitizing just unsanitizes what you just sanitized. Almost all water is "dirty" unless it came out a autoclave. Use a good no rinse sanitizer like Star San and your brewing life will be so much easier.

Bottling is cheaper, but if you can invest in a kegging system you will be so much happier. However, if you do go the bottle route, when you eventually switch to kegging it will feel that much better:) Bottling is a royal pain in the ass. You can make a kegerator on the cheap with a dorm fridge off of craigslist, a corny keg for $35, and a CO2 tank and some hoses. Prolly for under $200. Never have to wash or save a bottle again! 52 bottles can be cumbersome.

It is easy to blow a ton of money setting up your brewing system over and over and over and over....... if you think you want to do this for real, only buy things once after thinking seriously about the setup and getting tons of advice.

I can't suggest enough that you listen to the Brewing Network Podcasts. Seriously, that stuff is gold. Brew Strong is a show where two guys, Jamil Zanischeff, the most awarded homebrewer in US history and John Palmer, author of the absolutely essential brewing book How To Brew, sit down and discuss specific topics of beer brewing. It is detailed, but it is the best advice you could ever get.

If you like hoppy beers buy em in bulk from www.hopsdirect.com

Counter Flow Chillers sound like a great idea, but I am selling mine. You can't beat an efficient Immersion chiller.  Whirpool chiller is the ideal way to go. Getting all of your wort from boiling to under 140 as fast as possible is key for flavor and infection purposes.

Sanitation is key. Don't open your carboy every other day to smell your beer. It will smell good in the glass, don't risk it in the carboy.

Lagers are a pain in the ass and are almost impossible without a fermentation fridge.

Putting your carboys in a big tupperware tub while fermenting will help to keep the fermentation temperature more steady. The smaller the temperature swings, the better. The thermal mass of all of that fluid will anchor your temp more. The swing affects the beer's outcome more than the average temp of fermentation.

A healthy fermentation is key. Use www.mrmalty.com and click on the fermentation calculator. Use it. Fermentation is where the beer is made. Make sure you pitch enough yeast. I use SafAle 05 dry California ale yeast for most of my beers. An aggressive clean yeast. BTW mr malty.com is Jamil Zanischeff's website. All info on that site is top notch.

I could go on and on..............

Good Luck, and keep learning, there is so much to learn, and it is so fun!