Thanks for Everyone's help over Christmas!

So, I posted under the Equiptment/Sanitation Forum this past December. I just wanted to thank everyone for their helpful suggestions on equiptment and ingredient kits! My boyfriend loved the gift. We are just about to bottle our first batch tonight! For all of you who wanted to know, he posts under the name "jfotos"

*wave*

Hi Everybody!

Greetings! So what didja make?

Always glad to help a good woman get her man something he'll really appreciate! (Collectively speaking, since I don't think I had anything to do with it... )

Tis good to see another smiling face!

We went with the American Honey Wheat from Austin Hombrew Supply.
It smells amazing! It's going to be a tough 3 weeks waiting for it to be ready in the bottles!!

I'm curious, though. How many "kits" to people use before they venture out on their own with an original recipe?

....not that i'm getting ahead of myself....

colewoman said:

I'm curious, though. How many "kits" to people use before they venture out on their own with an original recipe?

....not that i'm getting ahead of myself....

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Do kits for a while to learn good sanitation practices, all the while reading and asking questions at places like this. You'll know when you're ready. For some people it happens very quickly, others are perfectly happy doing kits.

colewoman said:

I'm curious, though. How many "kits" to people use before they venture out on their own with an original recipe?

....not that i'm getting ahead of myself....

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Glad to hear things are going good for your first brew :rockin:

As for how many kits that all depends . . .
I did 1 "kit", an extract with steeping grainds as my first beer then started looking into developing my own stuff. I used a few sites online for ideas and to find out what the charateristics each grain and yeast would give me and just started exparamenting.

I cant post those links ATM since I'm not on my computer and dont have acess to them but check in tomarrow and i'll edit this post and add them for ya

DO NOT be afraid of coming up with ideas yourself, it's not rocket science and IMHO if you can make tea you can make beer, just takes more patience.

If you know what you like, there's no need to do kits. My first batch was just a recipe I cobbled together from a variety of sources combined with a couple of changes based upon the beers that I've tried and liked. The cool thing about extract brewing is that there's really nothing to making up a recipe. NorthernBrewer.com even tells you what they include in their kits so you can start with one of their recipes and then modify it to your liking. That's what I did for my first batch.. it was an ESB which I then modified because I like cascade hops.

With that said though, there's nothing wrong with kits. Right now I'm doing a Scottish Ale from NorthernBrewer, not because "I am only able to do kit brews", but because I thought it sounded interesting and tasty... I can't see any shame in that...
no matter how long you've been brewing!

I also have a homemade recipe for a Maibock that I'm brewing. What can I say? Sometimes you just want to brew something... Other times you want to obsess over a recipe. I don't think either approach is better or worse than the other...

Toot said:

I also have a homemade recipe for a Maibock that I'm brewing.

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Let's see it!

Chairman Cheyco said:

Let's see it!

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White Labs WL833 German Bock Lager Yeast

6lbs Munton's DME Light
3.3 lbs Cooper's LME Light

1 oz Perle (60 mins)
1 oz Hallertauer (10 mins)

O.G. 1.067


If I were doing it again, I'd start with a lower OG, maybe around 1.058 or so. I got a stuck fermentation on this one, probably from a combination of high OG and insufficient starter. It's restarted now with a large starter and some Beano.

Never thought about brewing options in those ways before. Now I can kind of put both kit brewing and recipe designing (saw a cool thread on that in another forum) in perspective. I've got a creative itch right now and am excited about the endless possibilities.

I'll just pretend I don't have classes, or tests, or board examinations in my future!!

Making your own recipe is easy. Just put ingredients in that you like.
Taste a lot of beers. Goto bottle shop and buy one of each! make notes on tasting.
Collect all your favourite tastes, smells, alcohol strength, fizzyness, sights... Then sit down and build something. From this will come greatness.

I have only just started but there are some software tools out there which are not that expensive which would help, plus posting the recipe here for advice.

It won't tell you what specific grains or hops will do BUT play around with this http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator it'll tell you IBUs and abv......plus it makes it easy to scale down recipes if you want to (IE 5 gallon recipes to 3 gallons or something...)


Hey if you want more control over your brew you should look into Partial Mashing....not to much harder and it gives you more control without much more equipment (like $15 worth....)

I've only done 2 beers so far and my next will be a PM....its REALLY not that hard....just do a search


take it easy and good luck

dibby33 said:

plus posting the recipe here for advice.

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Yeah, lot's of people here know what they are talking about, and give good recipe advice.

If you really want to get into heavy-duty recipe formulation, pick up the book Designing Great Beers, by Ray Daniels. It's about an intermediate-level book, but it's a fantastic read. It changed the way I brew.

I can't answer your queston about the kit- I don't know much about the "honey wheat" style or your recipe. But, about the water: definitely NOT distilled water. Distilled water is flavorless with all the minerals removed. Reverse Osmosis or bottled spring water is great, if your tap water is bad. I always use my (unboiled) tap water and it's fine. Now that I'm doing AG, maybe my regular tap water may need some adjustments, but so far so good.

Hurray!!!

We have cracked open the fist bottle of our Honey Wheat Ale!!!

How exciting, I couldn't believe it......it looks, smells, and most importantly TASTES like beer! And pretty good beer.

Our one concern is that it's pretty lite for an ale.....a bit like soda beer.....but the taste is still great. Any chance anyone knows what happened or is is maybe supposeed to be that way? Also, one last question.....a bunch of our friends were surprised we used tap water and said it definitely should be distilled...any thoughts?

Yippeee....off to drinks some more!

colewoman & jfotos

"Honey wheat ale" sounds pretty light. Tastes light, or light in color? If it tastes light, it just means you are ready for a darker beer or more extract in your next one. I would say for you next one, try a clone of a beer you guys really like from AHS.

colewoman & I were playing Jeopardy. I gave the answer, and then she gave the question! It makes me feel so smart!!!!!!!