TheCacheGuy
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Ok so I've been a wine maker for a few years. Looking to get into home brew. What's a good kit to start out with?
Thank you so much. And yes I do have most of the equip. I will check out some recipes.Qhrumphf said:If you're already making wine, you should have a lot of the same equipment and be familiar with it already. Anybody LHBS should be able to get you anything you're missing. As far as ingredients, nothing wrong with putting together a shopping list from someone else's recipe, or just using a kit. If you want to pick up a copy of Brewing Classic Styles, they give award winning recipes for every beer style, all extract based with additional info if you want to do it all-grain. I use that book as a starting point for a lot of my own recipes. Picking up an ingredient kit isn't too bad either, but you want to make sure the kit is fresh. Old ingredients plus old yeast = not the best beer you can make. The online shops seem to have good turnaround and fresh kits (so I've been told), can't say the same for your local shops.
One of my favorite places to browse for ingredient kits is austinhomebrew.com. They have hundreds and hundreds of recipe kits, and if you know of a certain commercial beer you like you can even find a "clone kit" of that. I highly recommend them- good ingredients, fresh ingredients, and good instructions.
I would recommend making an ale, and not a lager until you have some experience with brewing beer and good temperature control. There are some great ales, of course, and depending on what you like we could give you some recommendations. Let us know if you like brown ales, stouts, wheat beers, etc, and we can help you pick out a recipe kit that is perfect for you.
thanks for the link Yooper.they have my death beer .Stella Artois
Remember that Stella is a lager, so if you're not set up for lagers that could be an issue!
Most beginning beers are ales. Ales require roughly "room temperature" or cooler fermentation (cooler is better) while lagers require strict low temperatures in a narrow range for fermentation (48-52 degrees usually).
Yeah I know.......I'm looking at getting a chest freezer once I make room for it in my garage. Is that the only difference between fermenting ales and lager, the fermenting temps?
There is a difference in the method to the fermenting too. You'll start with the wort a little warm (not every one does that) and let the yeast get started a bit, then bring it down to the proper fermenting temperature until it is nearly done. At that time you probably want to bring it to room temperature to dispell DMS (D rest) and then chill it to near freezing for lagering.
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