Any other beer brewers?

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Flatiowa

Line Up and Wait
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Feb 21, 2023
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Flatiowa
The thread on “real beers” got me thinking, there might be some other hobby brewers here. I haven’t made any in a couple years but used to make about 15 gallons a year, mostly to take corny kegs to big family gatherings. I still grow hop vines (enough for about two 5 gallon buckets a year worth of buds but didn’t harvest them this year.
I still have all my equipment (glass fermentation carboys, wort chiller, pressure filtration system, co2 tanks/regulators, corny kegs, bottling stinger and capper, etc. winter is coming and I think I might make a few batches to pass the time.
Anybody have any recommendations on a recipe, or ingredient kit? I used to take a trip to Midwest brewery supply in Minneapolis once a year to buy malt, grains, a few “kits” with canned syrup, and beeing a bee keeper made more than a few batches on mead..
 
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I used to brew, but It’s been years since my last batch. I just got too busy. I keep saying to myself I need to break out my kit and get back to it.
 
It’s been years since I brewed. I got pretty serious about it and made some very good batches. Eventually life caught up to me and I sold my gear. I keep thinking about getting back into it but I can find a craft beer somewhere and scratch that itch.
 
My daughter gave her husband and I beer brewing kits for Christmas one year. It escalated of course and we both ended up buying better equipment. The big takeaway is that you can brew quite good beer, but it's a lot of work. Eventually I gave all my brewing stuff to my son in law... he does all the work and I still get to drink the beer. :cheers:
 
@masloki
@kaiser
These guys are responsible for feeding me my first homebrew and ruining me for boring beer.

455 Bravo Uniform said:
Maybe on the supply side, but not on the demand side. Might be cool to start a thread on what you do. I’d certainly pay attention.
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Funny you mention it. I used to smoke a pipe fairly regularly at the last house where my office was out in the shed. In the new house, my office is inside, and while Teresa didn't mind the smell, she also didn't want her whole house permeated with it. So I told her to get rid of all my smoking accouterments. Bad habit anyway. Well, about a month ago she must've got tired of looking at it wherever she stashed it, because it appeared on my desk. Turns out to be a nice way to relax in the evening while driving rivets and pondering plans in the "airplane factory".
 
Northern Brewer https://www.northernbrewer.com/ and Austin Homebrew Supply https://austinhomebrew.com/ are 2 of the big online suppliers these days. Both have kits (extract, partial mash, and all grain). I bought a few back in the day when i started out doing stove top BIAB. They were fine -- just depends on what style you want. Another source of just recipes is Homebrew Talk https://homebrewtalk.com/

I brew 5 gallon batches so I can keg in 5 gal corny kegs. I brew all grain on a 240v,10gal single vessel system (Spike Solo), ferment in a 5gal SS conical with a glycol chiller and I built a DIY keezer out so 7cuft chest freezer (holds 4 corny kegs although I only have 3 faucets). I typically keep an amber ale and a stout of some type on tap. Now that I have my chiller, I'm going to expand into lagers.
 
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Dana said:
My daughter gave her husband and I beer brewing kits for Christmas one year...
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My girlfriend, now wife, did the same for me. I brewed once and shelved the equipment. Years later when the first child arrived and I was looking for hobbies I could do around the house, the equipment came off the shelf and I've been brewing steadily for almost 30 years.

I brew 15 gallon batches. The last 5 or so years, I brew back-to-back weekends in the late fall and and then again in the spring, and that's it. I cannot control fermentation temperature and the house is the right temp at these times.

Flatiowa said:
...I still grow hop vines...
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Cascade grows well in NC and I grew it for several years. That stuff is like kudzu! I got sick of it taking over so gave it up. The HOA rules say no plants over 10 feet...this stuff grew to the roof of my 2 story house!

When I got into brewing, the micro-brewery scene was nothing like it is today. Sometimes it seems more hassle than it's worth. That's probably why I only brew 4 times now making large batches.

I've been in a rut in terms of recipes. I always have a keg of NoDa Hop Drop and Roll on tap all year. In the summer, I have NoDa Cavu. In the winter, Sierra Nevada Porter to which I add blueberry.

There's a local home brew shop which has been around since the 70s. It's soon transitioning to new ownership to a long standing patron. Prices are good and shipping is free if you buy enough. Every now and then I'll taste a beer I like, google a recipe, and brew it up. It's fun.
 
Jim K said:
Funny you mention it. I used to smoke a pipe fairly regularly at the last house where my office was out in the shed. In the new house, my office is inside, and while Teresa didn't mind the smell, she also didn't want her whole house permeated with it. So I told her to get rid of all my smoking accouterments. Bad habit anyway. Well, about a month ago she must've got tired of looking at it wherever she stashed it, because it appeared on my desk. Turns out to be a nice way to relax in the evening while driving rivets and pondering plans in the "airplane factory".
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Yup. I smoked a pipe many years ago and stopped for various reasons. Much later on, maybe 10 years back, started up again. I tried growing some tobacco plants a couple years ago, and it was interesting and left me with a couple pounds of leaf that I've been using, along with some purchased whole leaf, to blend my own. I prefer it to any of the commercially produced pipe tobacco I've tried - there's no humectants or flavorings, so I don't get that goopy, gurgling residue. I tend toward English blends, fairly Latakia-forward, and Virginia/Perique, but I'm expanding my horizons. I'm not a real heavy pipe smoker, but do enjoy the relaxing nature of it.
 
Matthew said:
It’s been years since I brewed. I got pretty serious about it and made some very good batches. Eventually life caught up to me and I sold my gear. I keep thinking about getting back into it but I can find a craft beer somewhere and scratch that itch.
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I’m about to jump out of that boat and back into homebrew. I haven’t brewed in a while and can’t swing a cat without hitting a brewery though many have closed recently. Many have closed and more will because the beer is hit or miss. I’m pretty tuned to styles and quality, and so many meh beers as of late. Paying $15 for a 4 pack of okay-ish tallboys is annoying. I can brew okayish beer for much less. :lol:
 
I haven’t touched my pipes in years, but still have a couple sealed tins of “real” Latakia. I also enjoyed burleys. I’ve been more into cigars lately. Maybe time to bust out my old stuff and see how the Latakia has aged.
 
I was an avid brewer for many years. Always full-mash, full boil brews in a Gott cooler DIY mash tun. Graduated from bottles to corny kegs early. Invented and marketed a product named PrimeTab. Tablets for bottle carbonation. Dedicated beer fridge. Grew noble hops. Had the REAL Fuller's ESB yeast. I worked for a biotech company and a coworker was heading to England. I asked him to take the Fuller's tour and during the tour he dipped a sample tube into the krausen atop an open square fermenter. Got the sample home, cultured and isolated it at work, and preserved it in a -80C freezer. I made a dozen batches from it before Wyeast came out with 1968 which was the Fuller's ESB yeast. Still have all my gear. Last batch was a stout a few winters ago.

I also wrote a C library of beer brewing tools and a bunch of programs for calculating brewing quantities. I released the C library into the public domain in the 1990s.

Here's a link to my old website. It's got my General Brewing pages including all the C code. You're welcome to it. I started a project to convert the C programs to Javascript, but eventually the project drifted off.

 
Jeez…it’s been at least 25 years since I homebrewed. I know that because the last time I brewed was before my last deployment from Eglin which started in November, 2000.

I still prefer a bourbon or scotch and a cigar from a relaxation / end of week routine and an occasional glass of wine with dinner.

I
 
I used to make beer. I have to say, it's pretty fun. As long as you're reasonably careful, you'll get something drinkable and often it's a cut above your average massed produced stuff. I've been invited to a insiders party at one of the local beer festivals that was split between two neighboring houses: one for the home brewers and one for the commercial guys. I have to say, the homebrewers were quite intresting. I've got a friend who wins top honors in every beer festival he enters who also drops stuff on me from time to time.

On the other hand, I've got a few friends who make amateur wine and I judge a few amateur competitions a year (along with a few commercial ones). You can certain go the gamut on amateur wine. It's really easy to make bad wine.

I judge commercial spirits occassionally. Someone asked about amateur spirits. We say we don't talk about that, but I've come into possession of moonshine from time to time.
 
Dana said:
My daughter gave her husband and I beer brewing kits for Christmas one year. It escalated of course and we both ended up buying better equipment. The big takeaway is that you can brew quite good beer, but it's a lot of work. Eventually I gave all my brewing stuff to my son in law... he does all the work and I still get to drink the beer. :cheers:
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Masterfully delegated lol
 
Mahneuvers said:
Cascade grows well in NC and I grew it for several years. That stuff is like kudzu! I got sick of it taking over so gave it up. The HOA rules say no plants over 10 feet...this stuff grew to the roof of my 2 story house!
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I actually used hop’s prolific growth ( and to those who have never had experience with the plant, it will grow over a foot a day.. spreads by rhizomes, and any vine that falls on the ground will take root at each leaf nodule and grow a new plant that can survive even if severed from the main bine) to my advantage. I put lattices right next to my south facing wall of my house and planted two hops plants. The second year I trained “runners” along the foundation line and late June of that year buried those runners, establishing a perennial wall of “shade” that grows every year. It shoots up fast in spring and covers the house in foliage, shading it from direct sun, then drops its leave early fall to let the sun hit the wall. It has had a measurable and significant impact on my yearly hvac energy consumption.
 
I used to brew but it just isn’t worth it anymore. The explosion of the craft beer scene made it so you can find just about any type or style of beer you like and you only have to buy it a 4 or 6 pack at a time. You no longer need to brew your own beer to get something good or different. It may be cheaper to brew your own 2 or 5 gallon batch of beer but for most people including myself I don’t want that many bottles one style of beer and they type of beer I want usually changes depending on what I’m eating or doing at the time.
 
kmacht said:
I used to brew but it just isn’t worth it anymore. The explosion of the craft beer scene made it so you can find just about any type or style of beer you like and you only have to buy it a 4 or 6 pack at a time. You no longer need to brew your own beer to get something good or different. It may be cheaper to brew your own 2 or 5 gallon batch of beer but for most people including myself I don’t want that many bottles one style of beer and they type of beer I want usually changes depending on what I’m eating or doing at the time.
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True, especially if you're like me and live in a craft brewery saturated area. I've found that generally I don't save any money by brewing my own (definitely not when you factor in the cost of my equipment) -- I do it simply because I like making something with my own 2 hands that others and I can enjoy. 5 gals is only a little over 2 cases of beer or roughly 40 pints so in reality it's not really that much -- I tend to drink my favorite styles in volume and will buy a 6-pack or order at a bar when I have a hankering for something different like an IPA or a Sour. Most people I know mainly drink one style (albeit not necessarily the same brand) consistently and like me only drink a different style on occasion.
 
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