Anyone brew their own beer?

[lilbill]

I think glass is an option too...but hey I started the thread so that admits how little I know.

Where do you all buy your equipment?  Should I find a local place or just order stuff online and get a book?

[jhutch2115]

Go to amazon.com and search for books on brewing beer (I can't ind mine off hand but i will look) and purchase the book with the highest reccomendations, Your best infomation and place to purchase brewing equipment  is at your local brewery store (look in the yellow pages), the one in our area has afree club where people hang out talk and drink beer! The class container is a Carboy, and yes if you don't strain out the liquid then you will have sediment. I bought a nice kit for about $100 bucks local. I will  look for my book and post its title and author. Best of luck and brewing! - JIm

[DoD#i]

I brew in glass, period. I bottle in glass, period. Using a plastic bucket for primary fermenter and glass for secondary can be OK, if you move it out of the primary promptly.

Metal is good, though cleaning metal (and verifying that metal is clean, since you can't see through it) can be somewhat problematic, but not insurmountable. Plus it usually costs more, but if you have"a source" may not.

Wood is quaint, but not really within the realm of homebrew that works for most people. Too many ways to get in deep trouble, no benefit for beer.

Look for a local supplier, since shipping can be a bear - but have a firm idea in mind of online prices with shipping, in case they are outrageous. Bulk (50lb or 25Kg bags of dry malt extract or grain) costs far less than "kits", if you are serious and can store bulk ingredients without having rodents and insects get into them. Kits spare you the bother of thinking, but what fun is that?

The murk in wheat beer is not affected by not having chunks of grain in the beer.   It's protein coagulation plus yeast, all of which comes after the mashing where you leave the grain behind. Hefewiezen is typically 40-50% barley malt - not 100% wheat. Beer yeast love barley malt, and it's good policy to give them what they want.

[yamahonkawazuki]

ive got one of those giant ass budweiser metal kegs, i wonder if i can use that somehow 

[theUBS]

I have this book, and I would definitely recommend it:

http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Brewing-Enthusiasts-Guide-Craft/dp/1592532934

...though admittedly, I've yet to put it to really good use!    Oddly enough though, my search for the link above also yielded an online store that sells kits (Pre-measured ingredients, NOT just a can of goo you add to water and boil.) for the beers listed in the book.  I'm sure you could probably get the ingredients for a better price if you buy them individually yourself, but I thought you might enjoy the joy of one stop shopping.  Also FYI, Stone posts homebrew recipes for their Epic series.  ANYWAY, I'm sure a web search will allow you to find clone recipes for many of your favorites.

[mikedrees]

i also dig the hefe-weizen. thats why i chose the wheat as my first batch. the kit i got came with 2 cans of malt extract & hops pellets (first gold).  boiled for an hour, chilled in the sink & into the fermenter it went.  tossed in my pitched yeast & sealed it up. the small amount of flocculant left in the bottom of the bottle is actually packed with b-vitamins. i thinks it might actually add a little somthing extra to the hefe-style. might even get a little pick me up from it.    i'll let you know in 2-3 weeks
in addition i always recommend buying local. any decent sized city should have some sort of brewers supply store. plus it is always good to have someones brain to pick. i recommend a book called The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papizan. i learned alot from it.

[DoD#i]

ive got one of those giant ass budweiser metal kegs, i wonder if i can use that somehow 

The most common use for those is to cut the top off and use it as a big boiling pot. There's limited info on using them as fermentors - cleaning is a huge problem, and a 15 gallon batch is a bit large to manage. 5 gallons/20 L you can pick up and move.

[Cal Price]

When i started I bottled in glass but after a while switched to the screw top plastic, I never found this affected the taste and they were plentiful, cost nothing and were durable. Perhaps I never had taste problems because the beer was not in them long enough. The bottles that I used were mainly1 litre lemonade and "mixer" bottles, sometimes i used larger bottles, two or three litre. I brewed in batches of 5 UK gallons (22.7 litres)

Yes -Wine is good if you have the patience, (and space)If you have a means to press apples/pears Cider and Perry can be interesting although I prefered to make what i called "applejack" as an apple wine slicing the apples and bringing them to the boil in an ancient wash-boiler. If you use this thype of woody-stemmed fruit you need to be careful not to let the spiggots/ stems into the mix that's how you get wood alcohol which is not a good thing. Big difference betweeen ethyl and methyl alcohol.

[Kasumi]

Interesting topic i shall bookmark it to follow. Were in the process of setting up a small cider brewing operation with a couple of members of our Aunt Sally team, yes this is like a snapshot of escape to the country lol.

We are the Toxhill (Tysoe & Oxhill - the villages where we are based) Tipple Company and our current drink is 'Blind Man's Bluff' just a basic apple cider. We hope to branch out to do pear and other fruit