Fermentation bin

[chris_newton]

Hi all

I am very new to home brew, i have bought the equipment today, one of the things i have bought is a fermentation bin. Now i am sure i heard someone say that you have a put a little hole in it somewhere near the top, so when winter comes you can put a thermostat in it. Is this right??

Also what is the quality of home brew lager like??

Thanks for all your help

Chris

 

[Sasquatch]

Hi Chris... to answer your questions, in reverse order, homebrew can be the best or worst beer you ever tasted. I'm completely sold on homebrew - my intention is not to purchase commercial beer again, once I'm up and running with a good supply of homebrew. Also, it's a lot of fun, once you make a batch up, and realize that it really isn't hard to have GOOD homebrew... all it takes is cleanliness and patience, really.

As for your primary, you can certainly modify it and put a fish-tank style heater in it, but the beautiful thing about homebrew is that the stuff is happiest right around ordinary room temperatures, so if you aren't brewing in your garage, things will be fine anyway. Just kick some of the wife's junk out of the pantry and make space for beer! Who needs 237 cookie cutters???

Making a lager proper, you require a place to chill down your secondary fermenter, and store for awhile. (If you are using lager yeast). However, you can make lager-style beers with top-fermenting ale yeast, or even more confusingly, bottom-fermenting ale yeast) and they'll come out fine without the required temp drop.

For your first batch, you may want to go with the easiest homebrew, which are the kits you don't even boil or anything... basically, you sanitize your fermenter, add the wort, fill with water, add yeast, and ignore it for 5 days, then siphon into a carboy with an airlock, then ignore a further two weeks. Then you add some boiled sugar, and bottle. It's super easy.

 

[chris_newton]

thanks for your reply.

I have bought a begiiner lager kit called Geordie Lager. I appreciate it will not be anywhere near as good as your stuff, but i am quite lucky as in all lager taistes the same to me, so unless it really is bad ill enjoy it.

one day i would like to become more daring, but ill settle for a decent pint from a beginners kit!

Ill probablr be asking loads more questions!

Again thanks for your reply

 

[Sasquatch]

Chris, if you take care to clean, sanitize, rinse, etc... you'll make a beer that blows you away. Just don't expect it to be done tomorrow. As one of the others said to me when I started here - Welcome to the obsession

 

[cygnus128]

thanks for your reply.

I have bought a begiiner lager kit called Geordie Lager. I appreciate it will not be anywhere near as good as your stuff, but i am quite lucky as in all lager taistes the same to me, so unless it really is bad ill enjoy it.

one day i would like to become more daring, but ill settle for a decent pint from a beginners kit!

Ill probablr be asking loads more questions!

Again thanks for your reply

Just a bit of clarification...

Things are not *quite* this simple but as a rule of thumb any top-fermenting yeast will be considered an ale yeast and bottom-fermenting yeast will be considered a lager yeast. In order to make a lager you will have to ferment at temperatures between 7 and 15 degrees C (~45 and 60 degrees F). If you ferment at more traditional ale yeast temperatures (between 10 and 25 degrees C or 50 and 75 degrees F) then what you are making is essentially a "steam" beer.

That clean lager taste that you are familiar with is the result of fermentation at lager temperatures (the yeast produces cleaner beer at those temps). When you ferment at higher temps you will end up with a beer that is more ale than lager (I'm sure some would disagree but this has been my experience).

 

[2nd Street Brewery]

Lagers are not all that hard. The first homebrew I made without using a kit was a German Lager. Even with cooling it down to fast and too low it still came out great. Friends told me it was my best job yet. I've got another one going right now. I was lucky to be able to use my old refridgerator(ok I bought my wife a new one so I could get the old one but what the heck, it's for beer). The only real expense was for a digital thermostat to better regulate the temp in the fridge. Good luck.