First Time Brewing with Father!

[ErikHoppy]

Hello all,

I've been reading up on this forum in the past few weeks, really excited about home brewing with my father. We have a basic brewing kit and are looking into bottling/kegging options locally. I do have a few questions!

1. For beginners looking to enjoy father/son time and enjoy the brew at home only, would you recommend bottles or kegging? Cost is a factor.

2. My father loves chocolate stouts, guiness, etc and I enjoy more cream ales and less bitter beers. Any recommendations that would be a good first brew that we would both enjoy? We were thinking either a black cherry chocolate stout or a Irish Car Bomb recipe that I've read up on here.

Maybe we should stick to an extract for first time brewing...?

Any suggestions and recommendations are very welcome!

Thank You

 

[lady_brewer]

I haven't done any kegging, so I can only talk about bottling.

It is time consuming, but the beer is portable, you can put part of your first batch away for ages if you want to see what it will be like with time, etc. There isn't a lot of extra cost, have to have a bottling bucket and a bottle filler. My impression is that kegging requires a lot of equipment and set-up and so on, so probably going to be a money factor. I plan to move in that direction at some point.

Of course I am assuming that you can get your hands on previously filled bottles. I clean mine in Oxyclean, left to soak overnight the labels come off really easily.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Bottling is definitely a cheaper option, especially if you have been collecting bottles already or you can score some empty bottles from a local restaurant or bar.

 

[AFAJ Brew Guy]

Welcome to HBT! You will soon find that this little hobby will devour your soul!

Since you mentioned that cost was a factor, kegging can be bit more expensive. At the very least you will need liquid and gas lines, a cobra/picnic tap, a CO2 canister, the keg, and a fridge where the keg can stand upright. All in all I would say that this would run around $100. Cheaper if you could get the stuff used of CL or something. Also bottling really isnt as hard and a PITA as some people would lead you to believe, I keg but still bottle quite a bit of my beers.

On to the extract question. You can make very good beer using all extract. The upside to this is all you really need is a 20-24 qt stock pot, a burner, and the carboy/bucket. As you said cost is a factor so going AG at this point will run you quite a bot more money. When I started out I did extract with steeping grains. Makes for mighty tasty beers.

As for the recipe, are you looking to buy the ingredients or maybe just getting a kit. Austin Homebrew Supply makes some very good recipe kits and they wont cost you an arm and a leg. For what to brew, brew what sounds good. Maybe the stout you suggested, a milk stout, or maybe even a porter?