Home Brew/ Homemade Beer

[niclane]

Sorry about reviving this...
first among them to be stop using a Mr. Beer...

This. Second would be keg that shit. The prospect of fiddling with bottles is what kept me away from it for so long.

[Bootsy]

Alabama. We just got beer over 6% in 2009. And we still have container size laws.

Edit: And I just saw bigmike55 already said all that. Where do you live mike? I'm up in Huntsville, so I get to drive to Nashville for Stone/Dogfish and most everything else we can't get here.

Montgomery, reporting in. Favorite Summer beer is Rolling Rock. Winter beer is Southern Pecan (brewed in MS). Yeungling gets an honorable mention. All time favorite is a three-way tie between Big Rock Honey Brown (while TDY in Canada), Stella Artois (ON TAP in England), and Peroni (also on tap in England). I started out as an import beer snob (Grolsh comes in a cool bottle, so it must be good right?), but the bottles don't do them justice. If I could homebrew something into a kegerator, then I don't know. Happy, I guess...I would be...living the good life.

[allent]

I drink MI beer almost exclusively, which is just fine because I live about 10 minutes fom one of the best breweries in the world and about 45 minutes from another (Founders and Bells).

I bottle all my home brew, very easy- mix the priming sugar into the bottling bucket, gives pretty consistant carbonation.

[bigmike55]

Montgomery, reporting in. Favorite Summer beer is Rolling Rock. Winter beer is Southern Pecan (brewed in MS). Yeungling gets an honorable mention. All time favorite is a three-way tie between Big Rock Honey Brown (while TDY in Canada), Stella Artois (ON TAP in England), and Peroni (also on tap in England). I started out as an import beer snob (Grolsh comes in a cool bottle, so it must be good right?), but the bottles don't do them justice. If I could homebrew something into a kegerator, then I don't know. Happy, I guess...I would be...living the good life.

I'm happy to report that the Gourmet Beer Bottle Bill was signed by Governor Bentley today, which will raise the bottle size limit to 25.4 oz. in Alabama. I will most likely celebrate with a 22 oz. Stone Arrogant Bastard tonight .

I think today is the last day that the Homebrewing Legalization Bill has a chance in the Senate. It has to get onto the special order calendar, or something like that.

[Desp]

Starting brewing this last December, just recently started doing about 2 a month... At 5 gallons at a time, I'm going to have a lot of beer pretty soon. I have 3 in their primary and 4 in the secondary right now. I'm most excited about my Guinness Foreign Extra Stout!

[mikejm]

In my experience, growlers need less priming sugar. I bet you $1 that you have the same problem with the others.

Also, dissolve your priming sugar in a cup or two of boiling water and add that to the batch - it will distribute the priming sugar evenly throughout the entire beer.

If you're wanting to avoid bottling, get the tap-a-draft kit from midwestsupplies.com. It works pretty well.

Also, boiling the sugar for a while will break the sucrose into its constituent monosaccharides, fructose and glucose. They are more easily eaten by the yeast and it will save them the extra step of breaking down the table sugar, leading to a quicker and easier carbonation.

[william jackson]

Bump.

Brewed my first gallon batch on Monday. It was a shit-show. I used a kit from Brooklyn Brewing Company. Very incomplete directions, left a lot up to guesswork. I bought a book How to Brew by Palmer. The book is written in digestible pieces that make sense and expose the reader to some of the science behind the brew. I'm going to try to brew another batch with my new knowledge.

[Regin Smidur]

I'm about to go bottle a batch of Brewhouse stout as soon as I finish benching. I have to say after trying the all grain worts from Festa Brew and Brewhouse, I will never, ever go back to malt extract like Coopers. My first three attempts at brewing were coopers and 2 were undrinkable and 1 become drinkable only after 3-4 months bottle conditioning.

[Peoria]

Unfortunately, my favorite breweries (Stone and Dogfish Head) do not distribute here.

Those are AWESOME breweries. Obviously, you need to move.

[Peoria]

The bottles you buy at brew store tend to be thicker and sturdier then many bottles you will buy or find in the bushes.

I'm not sure this is true. I've been home-brewing for more than 20 years and recycling Sam Adams and Grolsch bottles has worked just as well as the botttles from the brew shops. Sturdiness isn't really an issue when dealing with beer carbonation.