Franconian Beer Message Board
Question for brewers |
| Posted by Mark Andersen on 2010-01-12 09:48:54 |
| Feel free to email my me off the forums if you want more detail than what I've answered below and so we don't temporarily turn this into a homebrew forum. Here is my email address: mandersen2002@yahoo.com I think the biggest questions for a homebrewer to consider are: 1. Are you going to brew all grain or use extract? 2. Are you going to brew indoors or outdoors? This question maybe determined by question #1. If you doing all grain you're most likely going to have to brew outdoors or at least in a garage. 3. Are you going to bottle or keg? 4. Are you planning to brew some lagers or only ales, porters, and stouts? My recommendation would be as follows: #1 - All grain is IMO without a doubt the way to go. More fun to brew, more flexibility, and a more consistently higher quality end result. Also more work on brew day and more equipment. You'll need a mash tun and a lauter tun. These can be fashioned out of coolers. I bought mine because I'm a poor handyman. #2 - I brew outdoors, partly because my wife would have to kill me if I mashed grains and boiled 6 gallons of wort in the kitchen but also because I use a propane cooker. You'll need a high powered outdoor propane cooker and a good sized kettle (I recommend a 10 gallon kettle) do brew outdoors. Otherwise you'll be doing smaller size boils on the stove top and mixing with cold water and messing up the kitchen in the process. Trust me the outdoor method is best #3 - I highly recommended kegging. Botting is a royal pain in the arse. However, where you dislike CO2, you may prefer to bottle because if you keg you'll be able to naturally carbonate but you'll most likely need to push the beer out of the keg with CO2 unless you want to spend even more money. If you're only going to do a batch a few times a year bottling isn't so bad. If you brew as often as I do it will kill you. #4 - Is a personal choice. I brew at least 50% lagers because good quality lager is what we're lacking in my part of the world. But I've got the spare chest freezer and temperature control device to make it work. |
| Followups: |
 Question for brewers by Mark Andersen on 2010-01-12 10:15:36 |
| Question for brewers by Barry on 2010-01-13 01:46:51 |