First time brewing

[jonandtim]

You need to give Tim and I some serious tips! We have a good selection of pub's Ale's on tap locally and our bar with over 50 varieties of quality bottled ale and ciders. And a damn good beer festival - (the hangover from the Perry was indescribable though.) As we are now utterly, utterly skint we have decided to brew our own.

So any easy for the amateur recipe suggestions would be heartedly appreciated.

Cheers,
Jon

 

[jonandtim]

Actually now I come to think of it, the impossibility of finding a good pub and the prospect of a year on "bud," are one of the reasons why I haven't made any attempt to spend a year studying in America. Our student union building used to have a pub in it but they have changed it into a bar which looks like most of the furniture was bought from Ikea. And the bitter on tap is worthington. I almost cried.

Jon

 

[Darth Konvel]

Okay, serious! (sorry, having a hard time keeping a straight face atm, but I'll try to "keep it real")

- As has already been mentioned, don't throw regular sugar into your beer (wort at this stage), but rather use additional extract for a standard 5 gallon batch. Using cane sugars (ie table sugar) can result in off flavors in the end product.
- Recipe: Make it up. Honestly. A couple cans of extract, maybe a pound of some crystal malts for steeping (and a grain bag if you don't have one), whatever sounds good for hops. As long as you don't go overboard in any department, you'll probably create some decent beer. You can go here http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipes to get an idea for how much to use.
- Tips for reading recipes: SRM is typically used to indicate color, 1 being extremely pale, to 40 being nearly black. Hop bitterness is rated in IBU's, with higher being more bitter. For that recipe database, it's also a good idea to keep an eye on what that individual’s batch size is (I've see recipes for 12 gal batches on there )

 

[Orfy]

Tim (or John)

Get hold of some hops and chuck them in at some stage!
I'll probably get shouted at for this but I use 40 pint kits that say add sugar but make 20 pints without sugar and steep it with grain and add some hops.

 

[Walker]

Tim (or John)

Get hold of some hops and chuck them in at some stage!
I'll probably get shouted at for this but I use 40 pint kits that say add sugar but make 20 pints without sugar and steep it with grain and add some hops.

I think that's a fine approach. You would probably get yelled at for making the 40 pint batch with the sugar.

-walker

 

[Darth Konvel]

Exactly. Nothing wrong with making half or split batches, just don't use table sugar for beer (note that using it for priming would be passable). It will result in thin, less flavorful beer.