What Is Possible

[bosox]

I just started brewing beer a little over a month ago, and have brewed one batch of 5 gallons of Bavarian Heffeweisen.

I bought a TruBrew kit that included 2 plastic five gallon fermentation buckets (one of them with a bottling spicket) and 1 glass five gallon fermentation container, along with all the necessary tubing, sanitation packets, and basic instructions.

What kinds of beer can I use to brew these? Are the options pretty open? Are there any basic recipied for specific kinds of beer that I can use, other then Home Brewing kits? For example, I want to make an IPA but I don't want to buy an IPA kit. I'd rather buy fresh ingredients.

Also, I would imagine there are sublte differences in brewing methods, but for the most part are the all similar? The Hefeweisen I brewed called for me getting 2.5 gallons of the wort mixed with 2.5 gallons of water, and boiling some of the water, adding the malt and hops over about an hour of time, letting it sit for a little, and then re-boiling and re-adding more.

So mostly I'm looking for basic recipies for different kinds of beer that I can do before I venture off into making my own flavors.

Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated!

 

[arturo7]

Hey bosox, welcome to HBT. Kits are an option but not at all necessary. I would encourage experimentation with ingredients and styles.

Pick up a copy of "How to Brew" and you're off and running.

 

[Pappers_]

Your equipment setup sounds just fine.

Two things I recommend for beginning brewers:

1. Take a look at www.howtobrew.com
2. You can get very good introduction to brewing videos at www.basicbrewing.com

And here's a recipe from the recipe database here for a basic english pale made with extract and steeping grains. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f64/english-pub-ale-extract-55434/

Good luck and cheers!

 

[aa_atw]

You can pick up the book, "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Charlie Pappazian." This has recipes and also some great instruction. It is broken down into 3 sections, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. He goes into detail on picking your own ingredients that include using dry malt extracts (DME) and Liquid malt extracts (LME). This is probably what u are talking about.

 

[bosox]

Thank you all for your insight and advice. I'll look into both of those books and see if I can buy one of them. My first beer I brewed came out ok. Some of them have a weird after taste, and still smeel very 'ferment-y' but overall I'd say they were a good first try though.