A Home Brewer in WNC

Growing Hops....

2011-06-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

So My mom is a Real Estate Agent and one of her clients grew hops for his home brews. He gave me some rihzomes to plant but they didnt survive the winter so I might look into planting some next year. But here is some cool videos but Hops Direct on how to grow and manage hops, check it out. http://www.youtube.com/user/hopsdirect#p/a

How to get started...

2011-05-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ok so some of you might want to know how to get started on making your own home brew. Well its pretty easy, and once you have all the equipment then making 5 gallons of beer, yes I did type that correctly making 5 gallons of beer will only cost you around $30 - $40. Also I like to point out that it is not illegal to make your own beer or wine, just your own spirits ie. Moonshine.

Ok now that thats out of the way, lets talk about brewing.

1) You will need to buy a starter kit so you can brew your own beer. I found my kit from midwestsupplies there you can find kits that they have already made up that will give you all the equipment you need! They also sale rookie beer kits to help you get started on your own home brew. You will probably want to start out bottling your home brew. I bottled my beer 4 times then decided to go to kegging. I suggest start with bottling 1) so you will know the process and 2) so you will appreciate kegging lol. There are a couple of kits that you can get with bottles, this would be a good idea.

2) Get a kit. Get a beer that you know you will like. If you like brown ales get a brown, if you like hoppy beers get an IPA if you like light beers go with a blonde ale, the choice is yours just make sure its easy. You do not want to start off with a high gravity beer or something that will take you 3 months to brew. Also I should add unless you have an extra fridge lying around you will be making ales, because Ales are top fermenting beers and the yeast can like in the 60-70 degrees rang. Lagers cannot and would have to be refrigerated at all times.

3) Once you get your equipment and brewing kit then happy brewing, if you have any questions please post and I will try to help you out. I will from time to time post my beers that I am working on. Also a good useful website with a ton of information and tons of people to answer questions for you would be HomeBrewTalk I am a member and everyone who is a member is dedicated to making home brews and helping out the noobs.

HAPPY BREWING!

Been away....

2011-05-28T11:01:00.001-07:00

I haven't been around in a while. I need to make another beer sometime soon, I just don't know what I want to make.

On deck, my Scottish Ale...

2009-04-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a pic of me brewing my Scottish ale, my starting gravity was 1.054 so I should be looking at about 5.5% ABV. We'll see how it turns out.

Completed Blonde

2009-04-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of my completed Blonde. As you can see it seems their is too much head. So I cut the CO2 down to 8 PSI and it seems to be getting better.

Kegging Day....

2009-04-15T19:36:00.001-07:00

Ok so today is my first time kegging, I started off with an OG of 1.051 and ended up at 1.01 so from what BrewCalcs says my Blonde should be around 5.5% ABV. Since its a Blonde I set it at 11 psi and im cooling it down to 40-42 degrees, in about a week it should carbonated and ready to serve.

A week later....

2009-04-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

So here is a picture of my Blonde about a week after transferring it to the secondary. As you can see it has cleared up very nicely, I am going to keg this beer sometime next week. This will be my first time kegging so we'll see how it goes.

So I woke up this morning.....

2009-04-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

And this is what I saw in my carboy. At first I thought it was an Infection, after consulting some guys on homebrewtalk.com we decided that it was just CO2 bubbles that had collected on top. Which this is the case cause when I picked it up to move it the bubbles separated and you could see each individual bubble, its weird how they clump together and can look like bacteria.

Blondes are better....

2009-04-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of my American Blonde, that I just switched over to secondary to help clear it up a little. It sat about 9 days in primary and now ill probably keep it in the secondary carboy for about 2 weeks then keg it. (this will be my first time kegging, so we'll see how it goes)

As Promised my first home brew an American IPA

2009-04-01T20:24:00.001-07:00

Whats Brewing right now...

2009-04-01T17:04:00.001-07:00

I have an American IPA in the bottle/Fridge, which is almost gone. This beer was an all extract kit from Williams Brewing you can google them. Well being how it was my very first home brew and all we read the directions wrong and add the hops to early (these were the bittering hops). At first the beer tasted like ass but since it has been able to sit in the bottle for 2 weeks it has really came along and is really awesome now. I'll take a pic of a glass of the American IPA sometime.

The second beer I did was a American Wheat, we got this from a local home brew store in Asheville, NC call Hops & Vines (which I like this store more than the other in Asheville, it seems like they have more choices and they are great people) we did this at my buddies house. Since I was still fermenting my American IPA we used my glass carboy as the primary bucket. Note to self, leave room for fermentation or you will get an airlock rocket that will shoot beer all over the ceiling and wall. This beer is in bottle stage but its going to take a good two more weeks to carbonate.

The third beer I have done is a Blonde, I got this kit from a company online called homebrewers outpost again you can google them. This was my first Partial Mash, which means this one has part grains that you steep and part extract. Well again I didn't read the directions well enough and ended up steeping the grains in way to much water. But I still got a good GO reading at 1.05 so the beer should be around 5% ABV when its done. I tasted it the other day it taste good! So I guess I didn't screw it up as bad as I thought, seems like it might just be more of a light beer then it is intended to be. I'm going to keep this one in primary for about 8 days then I'm going to transfer it to a secondary to help clear it up, I mean its a blonde right so it might as well look good.

New to me.....

2009-04-01T09:16:00.002-07:00

So, this is my first blog. I wanted to start bloging mainly about beer and my home brewing hobbie. I have been a home brewer since March. I have two extract brews and one partial brew under my belt with many more to come. Home brewing isnt hard and you can get 95% of everything you need to get started for under $100. Some websites that have homebrew kits to get you started are http://www.midwestsupplies.com/ or you can try http://www.ebay.com/ for people who are selling their old kits. To get more info on home brewing you can take a look at http://www.homebrewtalk.com this is a talk forum about home brewing.

2009-04-01T09:16:00.001-07:00