…was also the first beer I ever made. A terrible first batch of beer can be pretty discouraging, and I almost didn’t give it a second try. Thankfully, by the time of my second batch, I had just moved mere miles from Northern Brewer. Had it not been for living near a quality, local, home brew store, I may not have gotten back on the horse. Here’s what not to do:
Failure #1
I made beer from a pre-hopped, canned kit. You can make drinkable (but not great) beer with these cans, but the dry yeast that comes with the can is a liability. I used the dry yeast from the can. Continue reading
Got a few batches of homebrew under your belt … feel like trying your hand at wine? An easy thing, and soon done, as you can see in this video.
If you already have a brewing starter kit with a six gallon carboy (i.e., Northern Brewer’s Better Basic, Deluxe, or Ultimate), then the list of add-ons is quite short:
1. A wine kit. Aseptically-packaged varietal grape juice (Merlot! Malbec! Syrah! Chardonnay! Pinot Grigio! Zinfandel!) from great vineyards the world over. These are user-friendly, complete (they include yeast, finings and clarifiers, plus oak for most reds and some whites), and they make great wine for about $2-$5 a bottle.
2. A big bucket for primary fermenter. (don’t forget a lid!) Wine kits yield six gallon batches, so we need a 7.9 gallon primary; the six-gallon carboy you already own will be used as the secondary fermenter.
3. A corker and corks. If you are just dipping a toe in the winemaking water or plan to only make a batch or two a year, you can get by with a handheld corker. A bench or floor corker is the weapon of choice for the large-volume or frequent winemaker (and they can also cork those nifty 750 ml Belgian beer bottles!). Use #8 corks with a handheld corker, and #9 corks with bench or floor models.
4. Wine bottles. Just as with beer bottles, buy new or scrub and reuse empties – you’ll have at least a few weeks to collect ‘em while the wine ferments and clarifies.
5. Stirring technology. Because the must (think of it as wine wort) needs to be mixed before fermentation and degassed after fermentation. All you really need is a long spoon or paddle that can be sanitized; optional but highly recommended is a hand drill-mounted device like this, which for our purposes is like a very, very fast and efficient spoon.
First round results are in for the yeast experiment! On a Friday afternoon several of us Northern Brewer folks sat down for a unique wine tasting. Some of you folks probably took a look at my previous post, The Grand Yeast Experiment, in which I described the set-up. Continue reading
(Fellow homebrewers, please feel free to cite, paraphrase, or cut and paste for your own birthday lists)
Let us consider the TopTier from Blichmann Engineering; more specifically, let us consider this particular TopTier – there are many like it, but this one is mine. Why?
I couldn’t build something this nice myself.
Even if I could, I would rather spend that leisure time making beer instead of building something that would eventually make beer (or go fishing [that is to say, I would go fishing, not the device]).
It shipped FedEx Home Delivery and it arrived 3 days after I ordered.
Its modularity gives me flexibility; I am not tied down to one method or batch size. I can do 5 or 10 gallon batches (or bigger, should I so choose), all grain or extract. Mount a pump and save my back – the only thing I lift is the grist into the mash tun. But if I get sick of cleaning a pump, I can loosen six bolts, raise a burner, and have a 100% gravity-fed system. I have been brewing for the better part of 2 decades and I know that change is a constant – the way I brew now may not be the way I brew in another 10 years. Or another year.
It’s portable – just one thing to wheel out to the patio (or to the front of the garage in inclement weather). When I move, it’ll move with me.
