home grown

I would like to make a beer one day from only ingredients I grow. How realistic is that? What direction would you go?

It's doable. Hops are easy enough to grow... malting the barley could be the trickiest part, here is a start:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/happiness-home-malting-107409/

Yeah I would think groeing the grains would be the biggest challenge. All grain recipes call for what? 8lbs or more of grains? I'm not a farmer or even a gardener but I think it takes alot of crop to get that much yield???

I agree. i think growing the amount of barley would be the toughest. People will tell you it's too hard and just plain not worth it when you buy perfectly good malt but, if you have the land, the time and the desire, don't let it stop you from trying!

It's ambitious. I have 3 hops plants that take up less than 10SqF of space. But growing enough barley would be tricky for a lot of people. But if you had space, you could certainly grow it and malt it yourself.

You'd still have to get yeast. You could go with wild yeast, which might be fine depending on what you have locally and if you like sour beers, or you could simply "grow" yeast starters from store bought beers. Washing and keeping yeast could be a fun option.

Also harvesting the grains by hand and all that's involved in sperating the grain from the rest of the plant would be a PITA I would imagine.

I think it would be awesome to say, this beer is mine from start to finish. But seems like a ton of work for some bragging rights. But if you are handy in a garden/field and that is your thing, it would be awesome to combine your 2 hobbies....Homebrew and Gardening.

Good luck with it! Take pics I'm interested in your progress for sure!

Know some folks that grow barley for Miller/Coors up in Montana. Their fields yielded 190 bushels per acre. That would make roughly 9,500 gallons of beer!

So, that is roughly 1/4# of barley per square foot of crop space. So, if you wanted to do say, 50 gallons of homegrown brew, you would need roughly 400 square feet of barley growing space. That's if you got the required 190 bpa yield. You would realistically only get 1/4th of that by hand cultivation, so you would plan accordingly.