Few questions about doing this from scratch

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natural

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Hello,

So I recently bought some equipment to brew from home. The stores around where I live were pretty turned away by the idea of doing it from scratch because it's a "dying art". Maybe in my city it is. But that doesn't mean I can't order in the supplies.

I purcahsed a kit and simply dont ever want to buy a kit ever again. It sucks the life out of it. Mix. Stir. Check the temperature and add yeast. I had a no boil kit.

My main question is what equipment i'll need. I've been told the equipment can run me up to $1000 but looking at what I currently have that shouldn't be the case. I have a primary fermentor and a glass carboy, got my spoons thermometer,hydrometer and siphon. But to mill the grains and such down I dont have any equipment to do that.

Any recommendations on where to purcahse this equipment online and what sort of things I should be looking for? Also the only option I have for boiling is on my stove I have read it's easy to break elements on stoves doing it this way? Is that really the case?
 
What you need depends on how "from scratch" you mean. Brewing from extracts with specialty grains doesn't require much more than you already have. Going all grain would require more but still isn't all that bad if you build some of your own stuff or BIAB (brew in a bag).

I suggest doing some extract brewing.
 
TomSD said:
What you need depends on how "from scratch" you mean. Brewing from extracts with specialty grains doesn't require much more than you already have. Going all grain would require more but still isn't all that bad if you build some of your own stuff or BIAB (brew in a bag).

I suggest doing some extract brewing.
Click to expand...

Plus one. Do an extract with specialty grains kit first. Then research All Grain brewing around here.
 
Extract or not, get a turkey fryer or a burner and a kettle. 40 qt kettle is really a minimum for a full boil of a five gallon batch. You need to buy or make at least a 25 foot immersion chiller too.

All grain is the way to go if you have a little space and the time. It will save money and give you much more control. It doesn't take much more than a converted cooler for a MLT but another kettle for a HLT is a good idea (I use the pot from my turkey fryer.) You can use your boil kettle for a HLT but you will need to put the first runnings into a bucket. A trustworthy thermometer is a necessary for AG.

Some people go all out with a brew stand, pumps and different controls. You don't need that to make great beer. All you need is hot water, a mash tun and a boil kettle. All grain is so easy there is no need to ever do extract. You can just use a big grain bag and mash right in the boil kettle (BIAB.)

You don't have to have a mill. You can get your grain pre-milled. Spending $150 or so one one is a good idea. Then you can buy grain in bulk and be able to brew on the fly. A good scale (or two) is also important. Both for grain (lbs) and hops (grams) and someday possibly for water salts (mg.)
 
I've been making all grain batches for about a year now and the only things I have that you might not have are:
- 2 large, 16 liter each, stainless steel crock pots. I've done the boils on my kitchen stove.
- Mash tun made out of a large plastic bucket. It has a false bottom to hold the grains in and a spigot.
- Immersion chiller made from copper tubing.

The crock pots are just (barely) enough to make 23 liter batches (I'm Canadian and will die by the metric system - 23L is equal to about 6 gallons or 34 quarts). You shouldn't need 40qts to do a 5 gallon batch as someone else stated. That sounds like overkill. You just need enough to boil your wort such that the end result gives you 5 gallons.

Dan's Brewing web site has a pretty good method for making all grain beer, check out this link and scroll down to the bottom to see the process. It's all metric, but you can do the conversions to Imperial as necessary.
http://pages.pacificcoast.net/~dansmall/allgrain.html
 
I'd do a lot of reading on all grain brewing. You sound like me, and extract brewing is just one step removed from a kit. You won't be happy with the lack of control.

Oh, and you don't need a mill. You can order grain pre-crushed from a number of sources. You can build a mash tun out of a cooler and CPVC or a stainless braid for about 50 bucks if you shop right, and then all you need is a big pot and a heat source. And a chiller.

Once you have those things, it REALLY improves the quality of the beer if you have a place where you can keep fermenting beer at around 68 degrees F. So think about that.

All grain isn't hard, and once you read up on it, you should be able to go for it. I did, and I never looked back.
 
Yeah this kit that I bought after adding the yeast it tells you to keep it in this pale it's not airlocked has nothing like that at all for 3-6 days then transfer to the glass carboy with airlock. It just seems backwards.

Also with using the Malt Extract what are the major differences between doing this and purchasing a kit? I am asking this on the assumption that other kits are not like the thing I bought. But Malt extract and the bag of liquid that is in the kits. What are the differences?

In my kit it was "pre" boiled and I had to mix it with hot water. But from what I understand there are other kits that you can get where you do infact boil them or simply just should boil them from what i've read so far. What steps are different by buying the malt extract and dry malt extract? Or is this just a fresher way of doing this?

Any recommendations of websites that you can buy these ingredients from that ship into canada? There's only 3 brewing stores in Edmonton that i've found and man they're all pretty empty.
 
Was it a BrewHouse kit?

Fermenting it in the primary (pail, not airlocked) and then moving to the secondary (glass carboy) is correct and typically the way you'd also brew full and partial grain brews.
 
Okay that's good to know. I've been looking up on how to brew from extract and found a good website with all the ingredients so not bad and there's some awesome threads here about different hops etc. So i'll give this batch a try and after i've bottled it i'll start this next back and i'll have something to at least compare the difference to. The kit that I had was a Barons Premium Beer Kit.
 
I started with a "no boiling" equipment kit too (coopers). I recently bottled my first 2 extract brews (one with steeping) and the taste before carbonation looks way better, but I don't regret starting with the kit for 2 reasons. First, the coopers kit comes with a really nice fermenter, much nicer than the pails sold in most HB supply stores. Second, while admittedly it is boring and almost pointless to use an equipment kit in this hobby, I wanted first to make sure I could perform the very basics of homebrew before advancing to more sophisticated techniques. If you can't brew right using an equipment kit, you better stop right there, I thought.

I will be moving to partial mash or perhaps skip to AG in the future for more control and fun (and save money in the long run too), but I plan to continue doing extract batches with some grain steeping for a while until I'm ready for it. It's a nice progression.

BTW, I think you can do AG with an investiment of a lot less than 1K!
 
Indyking said:
I started with a "no boiling" equipment kit too (coopers). I recently bottled my first 2 extract brews (one with steeping) and the taste before carbonation looks way better, but I don't regret starting with the kit for 2 reasons. First, the coopers kit comes with a really nice fermenter, much nicer than the pails sold in most HB supply stores. Second, while admittedly it is boring and almost pointless to use an equipment kit in this hobby, I wanted first to make sure I could perform the very basics of homebrew before advancing to more sophisticated techniques. If you can't brew right using an equipment kit, you better stop right there, I thought.

I will be moving to partial mash or perhaps skip to AG in the future for more control and fun (and save money in the long run too), but I plan to continue doing extract batches with some grain steeping for a while until I'm ready for it. It's a nice progression.

BTW, I think you can do AG with an investiment of a lot less than 1K!
Click to expand...

Yeah that was the main reson for taking a kit. Next brew I will order some extract and such online and try that out. Just need to find a kettle and some scales to make sure i'm measuring everything out right.
 
Indyking said:
BTW, I think you can do AG with an investiment of a lot less than 1K!
Click to expand...

Yeah, a LOT less...on top of what you already have all you really need to do AG is these three items.

25 dollar turkey fryer with stock 7.5 gallon pot (more if you opt for a bigger pot)
50 dollar 25 foot immersion style wort chiller
50 dollar modified 5 gallon cooler (A little more if you opt for a 10 gallon)

That is really all you need. It's pretty much what I use for 99% of my 5 gallon all grain batches.
 
Revvy said:
Yeah, a LOT less...on top of what you already have all you really need to do AG is these three items.

25 dollar turkey fryer with stock 7.5 gallon pot (more if you opt for a bigger pot)
50 dollar 25 foot immersion style wort chiller
50 dollar modified 5 gallon cooler (A little more if you opt for a 10 gallon)

That is really all you need. It's pretty much what I use for 99% of my 5 gallon all grain batches.
Click to expand...

Revvy, I have been looking for that stuff lately and wonder where the heck I can find a turkey fryer with a stock 7.5 gallon pot for 25 bucks?
 
Indyking said:
Revvy, I have been looking for that stuff lately and wonder where the heck I can find a turkey fryer with a stock 7.5 gallon pot for 25 bucks?
Click to expand...

I paid 25 for mine at Meijer's or maybe Kroger's in late October/early November a couple years back, seems they were getting ready to stock a newer, an consequently more expensive, model for the Thanksgiving holiday, so they deep discounted the older model to clear them out. Look along the back wall where the seasonal stuff is, and you may be surprised, they may be moving last year's fall stuff out of the way to shuffle the summer stuff, like BBq's off the main part of the floor and into "seasonal" so the really old stuff may be on deep clearance.
 
Revvy said:
I paid 25 for mine at Meijer's or maybe Kroger's in late October/early November a couple years back, seems they were getting ready to stock a newer, an consequently more expensive, model for the Thanksgiving holiday, so they deep discounted the older model to clear them out. Look along the back wall where the seasonal stuff is, and you may be surprised, they may be moving last year's fall stuff out of the way to shuffle the summer stuff, like BBq's off the main part of the floor and into "seasonal" so the really old stuff may be on deep clearance.
Click to expand...

I see. I think right after thanksgiving is a good time to buy too... it's like buying Xmas stuff in that week before new years...
 
natural said:
My main question is what equipment i'll need. I've been told the equipment can run me up to $1000 but looking at what I currently have that shouldn't be the case.
Click to expand...

Probably many of us would be more than willing to set you up for 1/2 that price, since we're all such kind, compassionate types. (You can see from some of the other posts that it is not going to cost near that much--you're in the right place if you want advice on how to do this "dying art" as cost effectively as possible.)

Who said brewing is a dying art??!? My advice is that you'd be wise to seek advice elsewhere (like here).
 
Revvy said:
Yeah, a LOT less...on top of what you already have all you really need to do AG is these three items.

25 dollar turkey fryer with stock 7.5 gallon pot (more if you opt for a bigger pot)
50 dollar 25 foot immersion style wort chiller
50 dollar modified 5 gallon cooler (A little more if you opt for a 10 gallon)
....
Click to expand...

For the record, the wort chiller helps, but you can do without it. I don't have one, and I've done AG for a while now.
 
nebben said:
For the record, the wort chiller helps, but you can do without it. I don't have one, and I've done AG for a while now.
Click to expand...

Meh I find my fifty foot chiller can drop temps down in 5 minutes.... heck of a lot better then an ice bath of 40 minutes when i couldnt even clean anything cuz it was in my sink... if you're doing multiple batches in one day a wort chiller kicks butt... and heck for me doing two seperate batches in a day is maybe an extra 20 minutes for my brew day...
 
nebben said:
For the record, the wort chiller helps, but you can do without it. I don't have one, and I've done AG for a while now.
Click to expand...

Getting your beer down to pitching temps as fast as possible is crucial, getting a good cold break, which will make for clearer beer with little or no chill haze, and getting it pitched and sealed before the onset of infection are both important. Trying to get 5 gallons of boiling wort down to pitching temp quickly is more difficult than 2.5 gallons with top off, I didn't go to all grain til I got my wort chiller and could comfortably and rapidly cool my wort off.

If it works for you not to have one, fine, yrmv, but I place it as the most important tool to get to make the jump into AG.
 
Below is a Rachel Ray recipe.
It's a partial-mash. Therefore if you make it you are NOT cooking from scratch.
Poultry seasoning is a spice kit unless you ground and mixed the seasoning.
Italian bread crumbs is cheating unless you baked the bread.
Can chicken stock is to scratch as LME is to all-grain.

Have I made spice mixtures? Yes.
Have I crumbed bread that I made from scratch? Yes. [SWMBO used my spent-grain bread for a fig dressing on Sunday.]
Have I made chicken stock? Yes.

But I don't feel to bad using a commercial herbs de Provence, bread crumbs or stock.

All-grain is good, but its not that much better.

Turkey Croquettes with Mushroom-Rosemary Gravy

Ingredients
1 clove garlic, cracked from skin
1/2 small onion
1 rib celery, chopped
1/4 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup cooked, chopped turkey meat, white and dark
1 cup leftover mashed potatoes
1 egg
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
Few sprigs parsley, leaves only
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
12 cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 to 4 sprigs fresh rosemary, finely chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup grated Romano, a couple of handfuls
 
A dying art?! :drunk: Home Brewing is still picking up steam.

And who told you equipment would run your $1000?! I got all I needed to start for $150. They were running a sale but still.

What were they doing trying to sell you the starter mash tuns, and kettles with the built-in valves and thermometers?

As far as brewing kits go. They're a good way to see all of the parts of brewing come together.

I started with just one, and it was really cool as I went through the instructions everything that I had studied was falling into place. Once I had that down I started penning my own recipes.

Heck, my second version of my first brew even got a "Very Good" scoring for a home brewing contest. Might not have won, but considering the judges only had positive comments and constructive critiques, and didn't mark any negatives, I was kinda giddy.

You just gotta want to experiment and see what happens as far as brewing from scratch goes.
:mug:
 
Yeah I mean if you're buying the kettles with thermometers and going all out with mills for your grains, and buying burners and everything i'm sure it can stack up but like others have said i'm not missing a lot.

A dying art maybe in my city. There's really no where to get the ingredients but they even tried to tell me that you can't find it online.

Who knows maybe I struck a nerve. I'm 22 and he probably thinks i'm just trying to make cheap beer for my friends or something. I'm more interested in experimenting with different flavors. Something to go along with good BBQ haha.

Chilling the wort was definitely a challenge and I didnt even boil it! haha. I wasn't expecting it to take so long so who knows how this batch will turn out.

What about sanitization. I sanitized my thermometer everytime before putting it into the wort before pitching the yeast to make sure it wasn't too hot, I would put it down on a clean towel. Is this over kill? Or should I be doing that EVERYTIME I put it in there?
 
Don't need it every time as long as you are putting it somewhere clean. With starsan though it is easy enough to spritz it with a spray bottle or wipe it with a dampened cloth.

As for cooling it can be a real pain... got an immersion chiller which helps greatly. I'm augmenting that with a submersible pump that I can just drop into my sink full of ice water.
 
Those are cooper's EXTRACT kits. That is the most rudimentary of all types of homebrewing. They are also called kit and kilo, because usually they have you mix that kit, along with a kilo of sugar into 5 gallons of water (or half that water in a pot, then top off with the rest in the fermenter.
 
And sorry for my dumb questions here but how do these differ from "brewing from extract" methods?
 
The kits are already hopped and boiled so all you are doing is mixing water then pitching. Brewing from extract typically means brewing using liquid or dry malt extract which is just the malt extract from the grains. You still need to add hops and boil. This leaves you a lot of room to play with the recipe by changing up hops and their boil times, adjuncts, specialty grains, etc to get the final results you want.

It is like buying a can of chili (brew kit), making chili using canned ingredients/seasoning (extract brewing) or going out and getting all raw ingredients and taking the time to prepare them yourself then making chili (all grain). You can make a killer chili from canned ingredients and have plenty of play room but not quite the same as using all fresh... either way a can of pre-made chili is a can of pre-made chili and will never be anything more. OK so that isn't totally accurate but it makes sense to me.
 
That's what I thought. It's proving to be rather difficult to find anything that is just the extract liquid and most extract recipes i've found require both dry malt extract and liquid malt extract. All of the websites that ship within canada have DME but for liquid is just this garbage canned kits haha.
 
Those coopers kits presumably contain extract that's also been infused with hops and a few other goodies. They're probably the type where you just add water, stir, and add the yeast.

When you brew beer with extract and specialty grains, the extract is typically a syrupy, malt extract made from a single barely type (Pale Malt, for example). Whenever I've bought it, it's come in a non-descript translucent jug. The retailer probably gets a big barrel full of it and then divides it up for the end customer.

Brewing beer with extract and specialty grains, at it's most basic level, is still a couple of notches of difficulty higher than brewing from a kit.
Typically, you will mix a specific amount of extract (a few liters, perhaps) with water (10 liters or so) and raise its temperature.
Meanwhile you will have a couple of pounds of specialty grains (crushed/cracked) that you would also heat up with about a liter of water and then steep them for, oh I dunno, maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Then the liquid from the specialty grains can be added top the rest of your wort.
At a certain time, you will add hops, etc.

In my opinion, brewing beer using extract and specialty grains isn't too much more difficult than brewing with a kit. Brewing using just grains (All Grain) is somewhat more involved.
 
atchinator said:
Those coopers kits presumably contain extract that's also been infused with hops and a few other goodies. They're probably the type where you just add water, stir, and add the yeast.

When you brew beer with extract and specialty grains, the extract is typically a syrupy, malt extract made from a single barely type (Pale Malt, for example). Whenever I've bought it, it's come in a non-descript translucent jug. The retailer probably gets a big barrel full of it and then divides it up for the end customer.

Brewing beer with extract and specialty grains, at it's most basic level, is still a couple of notches of difficulty higher than brewing from a kit.
Typically, you will mix a specific amount of extract (a few liters, perhaps) with water (10 liters or so) and raise its temperature.
Meanwhile you will have a couple of pounds of specialty grains (crushed/cracked) that you would also heat up with about a liter of water and then steep them for, oh I dunno, maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Then the liquid from the specialty grains can be added top the rest of your wort.
At a certain time, you will add hops, etc.

In my opinion, brewing beer using extract and specialty grains isn't too much more difficult than brewing with a kit. Brewing using just grains (All Grain) is somewhat more involved.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what i'm looking to do, my problem is finding the ingredients. Do you go to a local store in victoria or do you purchase your ingredients online?
 
Another option is recipe kits... sometimes called extract kits, yeah I know confusing huh? The whole extract and kit thing is thrown around so much it gets confusing until you understand the basics and can figure them out on your own, lol.

Anyway, recipe kits are basically all the ingredients you would go out and buy individually from a LHBS. When you look at one of those you can see the difference by what is packed in the kit. The "no boil" kits typically just have a can and a packet of yeast. The extract kits typically have syrup and/or dry malt extract, grains (maybe), hops and yeast.

You might have better luck finding an online retailer that will ship those to you vs trying to finding just the extract.

One example...
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_452

Another option is find some dry malt extract, or someone that ships it. You can convert dry recipes to liquid and vice versa pretty easily.
 
TomSD said:
Another option is recipe kits... sometimes called extract kits, yeah I know confusing huh? The whole extract and kit thing is thrown around so much it gets confusing until you understand the basics and can figure them out on your own, lol.

Anyway, recipe kits are basically all the ingredients you would go out and buy individually from a LHBS. When you look at one of those you can see the difference by what is packed in the kit. The "no boil" kits typically just have a can and a packet of yeast. The extract kits typically have syrup and/or dry malt extract, grains (maybe), hops and yeast.

You might have better luck finding an online retailer that will ship those to you vs trying to finding just the extract.

One example...
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_452

Another option is find some dry malt extract, or someone that ships it. You can convert dry recipes to liquid and vice versa pretty easily.
Click to expand...

Thank you Sir they actually ship to canada. My inbox is full of "No we dont ship to canada" e-mails haha. The search is over and that website is loaded. Really appreciate it.
 
In Canada, my favorite website is www.homebrew-supplies.com

Shipping does get expensive, but if you can find just malted 2-row barley anywhere locally, buy it by the sack and get the specialty stuff online. For your first few attempts, you can get it all online and have him crush it for you if you want.

One other store in Canada I was going to try but haven't yet is http://www.homebrewgearcanada.com/ This one i haven't tried yet, the prices seem a little lower for some things.
 

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