I really didn't intend to write this much...
TL;DR executive summary: We don't have a lot of cash, so we're building our home brewery one piece at a time.
Introduction
I wasn't really expecting to get into brewing. It started off with an off-hand comment from my husband that it was something he'd like to try, so I bought him a basic Brewers Best kit for Valentine's day. I'm an planner by nature and I wanted to make sure we ended up with beer at the end of the process, so I spent the days leading up to brew day pouring over forums and YouTube videos to try and learn about the process. And so a new hobby (obsession) was born...
We started out with pretty basic kit: fermenting bucket, bottling bucket, 5-gallon pot that we already owned. We definitely want to move towards all grain brewing, but we can't really afford to go out and buy all the necessary equipment all at once. So I made a list of all the gear we want, and I've tried to prioritize the list in such a way that nothing we buy becomes obsolete and everything we buy becomes immediately useful in our brewing process, even if we acquire the list like Johnny Cash, one piece at a time.
I wanted to post our experiences and plans to develop as brewers here, both to get feedback from more experienced brewers, and in case it helps any other beginners. Some people can afford to jump in head-first, but with our modest budget, we need plan out what we need to buy and not stress about getting to all grain and making our own recipes right out of the starting gate. Our plan assumes an evolution from extract with steeping grains and a partial-boil, to partial mash/all grain with a partial-boil, to a full boil all-grain setup. These are not required steps... merely a road-map that we'll be using to try learn as much as we can, every step of the way.
1. Starting Out and Learning the Process
We started with this starter kit and an extract+grains recipe kit for our first brew. (If I knew then what I knew now, and if it was available then, I would have bought this kit instead.) The kit that we bought came with vinyl tubing, but did not include an auto-siphon. It had a hydrometer, but no testing tube. It came with Easy Clean, but no sanitizer. These omissions were discovered way too late on the night before our planned brew day, so we improvised.
We used a carefully-measured bleach solution for sanitizer and made sure to rinse everything thoroughly with boiling water. We didn't bother siphoning and just poured the cooled wort into our fermenting bucket through a strainer to remove some of the hop gunk. We tried to use a bud vase to collect a sample for the hydrometer, but it was too shallow to get a measurement so we said "**** it, brewing monks didn't have hydrometers in the dark ages!" and drank the sample instead. We pitched the yeast, covered it up, set up the airlock, and left the bucket in the basement for 4 weeks. (In that time, we made a trip to a LHBS to purchase an auto-siphon, wine thief and Star San.)
Bottling day went smoothly, thanks to our new friends Star San and Auto-Siphon. We took a sample and were pleased to see that we hit the target FG. It was pretty tasty too! A week later, we made another batch from an extract kit and it was like we were old pros at the brew day process. Normally, I'm a "Go big or go home" kind of person who would rather jump into making my own all-grain recipes right away, but I'm glad we took this step to work out the basic mechanics and learn a bit more about making beer.
2. Refining Our Palates and Processes
Between researching and making our first two batches of beer, I've really gained an appreciation and respect for brewing as a craft that takes time and patience to master. I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, but who ever heard of a chef making up recipes with ingredients they've only ever read about? Brewing opened up a new world of tastes and flavour combinations, many of which are foreign to me. It only makes sense to work with other people's recipes, perhaps tweaking them a bit here and there, while we learn about balancing the many flavours of hops and malt.
Additionally, since mashing technique will affect the amount of fermentable sugar and therefore the taste of the final product, I have no qualms about sticking to extract brewing to reduce the number of variables we're working with. Yes, we will be somewhat limited in what sort of characteristics we can get from different malt combinations; however it will be easier to learn about how the other ingredients (hops, specialty grains, yeasts, fruits, sugars, and other additives) work together if we leave mashing out of the equation for now. We're still going to make beer, and it's still going to be delicious.
In a way, I'm looking forward to the simple and low-stress experiential quality of just preparing recipes and drinking the results. Rinse. Repeat. Throughout this process, we will also be refining our technique and adding to our brewing equipment. We'll try secondary fermentation, dry hopping, adding fruit and spices, and get a good feel for what these techniques do to the final product. In this stage, we'll acquire some glass carboys, a propane burner, and we'll start building our wort chilling system. We'll also be using BeerSmith software to help us work out conversions and slight adjustments to the recipes we brew.
3. Mashing In
Once we start to get familiar with how to make tasty and balanced extract beers, it will be time to add another variable to the recipes we prepare: mashing. I didn't really, truly understand the difference between steeping and mashing until I watched these great videos by BobbyFromNJ on YouTube. Go ahead, block off an hour of your time and watch them all now. You'll be better for doing so. For reals.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
So at this stage, we'll be building our mash tun (obviously). If we have some extra cash laying around after the mash tun build, we'll probably get a grain mill. Wait!-- Did I just put the wort chiller, mash tun and grain mill higher on the priority list than a big fancy brew kettle? Depending on how our finances are at that time, we may spring for the 15 gallon brew kettle that we're planning to buy, but it's not necessary at this stage. We can work on dialing in our mashing technique with partial mash recipes, small-batch all-grain recipes and even partial-boil all-grain recipes as outlined in this excellent post by Revvy. The idea is to master our mashing technique and develop a fairly consistent efficiency. Besides, a quality brew kettle can be a substantial investment, so I'd rather wait and get the one we really want instead of the one we "think" we need.
4. A Lifetime to Master
Yeah, that's right. By now we've probably developed a good sense of what flavours we like, what we don't like, and which ones we'd like to try blending together. It's time to buy our brew kettle, if we haven't already done so, and start acquiring other nifty brewing toys that are more "want" than "need".
The goal here is to start making our own award-winning recipes, 5 gallons at a time.
TL;DR executive summary: We don't have a lot of cash, so we're building our home brewery one piece at a time.
Introduction
I wasn't really expecting to get into brewing. It started off with an off-hand comment from my husband that it was something he'd like to try, so I bought him a basic Brewers Best kit for Valentine's day. I'm an planner by nature and I wanted to make sure we ended up with beer at the end of the process, so I spent the days leading up to brew day pouring over forums and YouTube videos to try and learn about the process. And so a new hobby (obsession) was born...
We started out with pretty basic kit: fermenting bucket, bottling bucket, 5-gallon pot that we already owned. We definitely want to move towards all grain brewing, but we can't really afford to go out and buy all the necessary equipment all at once. So I made a list of all the gear we want, and I've tried to prioritize the list in such a way that nothing we buy becomes obsolete and everything we buy becomes immediately useful in our brewing process, even if we acquire the list like Johnny Cash, one piece at a time.
I wanted to post our experiences and plans to develop as brewers here, both to get feedback from more experienced brewers, and in case it helps any other beginners. Some people can afford to jump in head-first, but with our modest budget, we need plan out what we need to buy and not stress about getting to all grain and making our own recipes right out of the starting gate. Our plan assumes an evolution from extract with steeping grains and a partial-boil, to partial mash/all grain with a partial-boil, to a full boil all-grain setup. These are not required steps... merely a road-map that we'll be using to try learn as much as we can, every step of the way.
1. Starting Out and Learning the Process
We started with this starter kit and an extract+grains recipe kit for our first brew. (If I knew then what I knew now, and if it was available then, I would have bought this kit instead.) The kit that we bought came with vinyl tubing, but did not include an auto-siphon. It had a hydrometer, but no testing tube. It came with Easy Clean, but no sanitizer. These omissions were discovered way too late on the night before our planned brew day, so we improvised.
We used a carefully-measured bleach solution for sanitizer and made sure to rinse everything thoroughly with boiling water. We didn't bother siphoning and just poured the cooled wort into our fermenting bucket through a strainer to remove some of the hop gunk. We tried to use a bud vase to collect a sample for the hydrometer, but it was too shallow to get a measurement so we said "**** it, brewing monks didn't have hydrometers in the dark ages!" and drank the sample instead. We pitched the yeast, covered it up, set up the airlock, and left the bucket in the basement for 4 weeks. (In that time, we made a trip to a LHBS to purchase an auto-siphon, wine thief and Star San.)
Bottling day went smoothly, thanks to our new friends Star San and Auto-Siphon. We took a sample and were pleased to see that we hit the target FG. It was pretty tasty too! A week later, we made another batch from an extract kit and it was like we were old pros at the brew day process. Normally, I'm a "Go big or go home" kind of person who would rather jump into making my own all-grain recipes right away, but I'm glad we took this step to work out the basic mechanics and learn a bit more about making beer.
2. Refining Our Palates and Processes
Between researching and making our first two batches of beer, I've really gained an appreciation and respect for brewing as a craft that takes time and patience to master. I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, but who ever heard of a chef making up recipes with ingredients they've only ever read about? Brewing opened up a new world of tastes and flavour combinations, many of which are foreign to me. It only makes sense to work with other people's recipes, perhaps tweaking them a bit here and there, while we learn about balancing the many flavours of hops and malt.
Additionally, since mashing technique will affect the amount of fermentable sugar and therefore the taste of the final product, I have no qualms about sticking to extract brewing to reduce the number of variables we're working with. Yes, we will be somewhat limited in what sort of characteristics we can get from different malt combinations; however it will be easier to learn about how the other ingredients (hops, specialty grains, yeasts, fruits, sugars, and other additives) work together if we leave mashing out of the equation for now. We're still going to make beer, and it's still going to be delicious.
In a way, I'm looking forward to the simple and low-stress experiential quality of just preparing recipes and drinking the results. Rinse. Repeat. Throughout this process, we will also be refining our technique and adding to our brewing equipment. We'll try secondary fermentation, dry hopping, adding fruit and spices, and get a good feel for what these techniques do to the final product. In this stage, we'll acquire some glass carboys, a propane burner, and we'll start building our wort chilling system. We'll also be using BeerSmith software to help us work out conversions and slight adjustments to the recipes we brew.
3. Mashing In
Once we start to get familiar with how to make tasty and balanced extract beers, it will be time to add another variable to the recipes we prepare: mashing. I didn't really, truly understand the difference between steeping and mashing until I watched these great videos by BobbyFromNJ on YouTube. Go ahead, block off an hour of your time and watch them all now. You'll be better for doing so. For reals.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
So at this stage, we'll be building our mash tun (obviously). If we have some extra cash laying around after the mash tun build, we'll probably get a grain mill. Wait!-- Did I just put the wort chiller, mash tun and grain mill higher on the priority list than a big fancy brew kettle? Depending on how our finances are at that time, we may spring for the 15 gallon brew kettle that we're planning to buy, but it's not necessary at this stage. We can work on dialing in our mashing technique with partial mash recipes, small-batch all-grain recipes and even partial-boil all-grain recipes as outlined in this excellent post by Revvy. The idea is to master our mashing technique and develop a fairly consistent efficiency. Besides, a quality brew kettle can be a substantial investment, so I'd rather wait and get the one we really want instead of the one we "think" we need.
4. A Lifetime to Master
Yeah, that's right. By now we've probably developed a good sense of what flavours we like, what we don't like, and which ones we'd like to try blending together. It's time to buy our brew kettle, if we haven't already done so, and start acquiring other nifty brewing toys that are more "want" than "need".
The goal here is to start making our own award-winning recipes, 5 gallons at a time.
