Archive for the ‘Beer Brewing’ Category

Home Brew Steam Generator Helpful Yet Dangerous

Monday, May 26th, 2008

Raising the temperature of mash can be a slow, yet necessary process and using a home brew steam generator can cut the time. However, using steam to heat the mash can also be dangerous as steam can cause sever burns, quickly. While water heated to boiling at 212-degrees Fahrenheit is hot, steam heated to the same temperature will do more damage simply because boiling water begins to cool as soon as it touches your skin. Steam, on the other hand, will need to condense to water before beginning to cool off, giving it more time to inflict more damage and pain.

With that in mind, a home brew steam generator can decrease the time it takes to heat the mash by considering the same principal. Essentially, steam can be generated in a pressure cooker and then piped into the container holding the mash. As the steam enters, it maintains its temperature longer than boiling water will and increases the temperature of the mash at a rate of about one degree centigrade, 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit, per minute.

There are some precautions to be used for making your own home brew steam generator and having the right heat source is needed, or else the heat of the steam may lack enough power to produce the sustained release of steam that is needed to achieve consistent heat exchange.

Ease Of Construction For Steam Generator

To build your own home brew steam generator you will need an electric hot plate capable of about 2100 watt, along with a pressure cooker, copper tubing, the pressure weight for the cooker and a shut-off valve. The copper tubing is attached to the lid of the pressure cooker by drilling and threading the hole and using a copper connector available at most hardware stores. The other end of the first copper tube is connected to the input of the shut-off valve. Another tube, connected to the output of the valve goes into the top of the container of mash and extends to the bottom with at least 13-inches lying near the floor of the container.

The end of this tube is pinched closed and a series of small holes, about one-sixteenth of an inch are drilled a half-inch apart to complete the home brew steam generator. Fill the pressure cooker about three-fourths full of clean water and turn on the heat source, leaving the pressure weight off for now. When steam begins to rise from the top tube, clearing any air from the cooker, place the weight in position and the steam will be forced through the tube, in the bottom of the mash, beginning the heating process.

Stir the mash occasionally during heating to keep the temperature uniform. To stop the heating process, turn off the heat source and remove the pressure weight. You can also at this time close the shut-off valve.

Home Brew Shop: For All Your Home Brewing Needs

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Home brewing your own beer, liquor or wine takes the proper equipment, the proper ingredients and it takes a special kind of attention to detail. The latter, only you can provide. The ingredients and equipment can be bought at a home brew shop. You can find home brew shops in most major cities as more and more people are taking to making their own potent potables. However, you don t have to make a road trip to get all you need to brew your own concoctions, you can find all you need in catalogues and even on the internet.

Local Shops

If you are lucky enough to have a home brew shop in your area, make sure you ask plenty of questions of the shop keeper to ensure that you get everything you need. The people who work in the home brew shop should be very knowledgeable in brewing beer, liquor or wine. You can take instructions straight from them or you can buy a book on the subject. A home brew shop should carry all kinds of books on home brewing and they are usually sufficient for teaching you the ways of home brewing.

If you don t have a home brew shop near you, look one up online. There are many online home brew shops where you can buy books, ingredients, equipment and more. You can even buy bottle cappers, bottles and other extras that make the home brewing experience easy and fun. Online shopping affords you the convenience of being able to see full color pictures of products before you buy and the best part is that you can have the products delivered right to your door.

If you don t like shopping online, you can order catalogues from the online shops so that you can order through the mail. You can still view pictures and you can still get the home brew shop products delivered right to your door. The point is, no matter how you get the products, a home brew shop is waiting to provide you with everything you need to make your own beer, wine or liquor.

Then, once you have all that you need, you can sit back and have fun making your own beer, lager, wine, or whatever else you are looking to make. Then, you can invite everyone over to have a taste testing party to ensure that your creations are worth drinking. Even if you don t get it right the first time, as any home brew shop worker will tell you, don t give up. Try, try again and one day you ll find the home brew technique and ingredients that suit your pallet and make the entire home brew process well worth it.

Making A Home Brew Root Beer: What You Need To Know

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

Root beer is by far one of the most loved soft drinks in the world, but did you know that you can actually home brew root beer yourself? Surprisingly enough, not many people do, and so if you are one of those people who are not aware of this then you are definitely going to want to read on so that you can learn more about it.

You Can Home Brew Root Beer Yourself

Many people seem to wrongly think that in order to home brew root beer a difficult process or lots of time and money would be involved, however this is absolutely not true at all. In fact, the home brew root beer making process is one of the easiest of all brewing processes.

All you need is the right equipment and the right ingredients, and then you just need to get everything together at home and you are ready to go!

There are several ingredients in particular that you are going to need if you want to home brew root beer, and the first is cane sugar. If you like your root beer a bit sweeter, then you are going to want to add in a bit extra of this sugar. Then you need to pour one-fourth of a teaspoon of powdered baker s yeast into your funnel with the sugar, and then shake the mixture together.

Next you add a tablespoon of root beer extract, which will go right onto the dry sugar at the bottom of the glass, and then you simply fill the glass with fresh water. Generally, bottled water is the best thing to use because of its relatively low chlorine content. Once you have poured the water through the funnel, you will want to swirl the mixture around in the bottom in order to dissolve all of the different ingredients together properly.

After this, your root beer is ready and you can try it out for yourself. You just want to make sure that you do your research and make yourself as informed as possible beforehand, because although the process itself is quite simple, you do not want to end up wasting money by messing up the recipe because you do not know what you are doing.

Overall, just make sure that you take your time, have patience, and enjoy yourself, because this is what is important in the end and so this is what you should make sure of.

Home Brew Recipes: An Enjoyable Pastime That Will Give Great Satisfaction

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Many people will aver that the best beer is the one that is brewed at home. It will allow you can turn your hobby into an enjoyable pastime that will provide you with great satisfaction. All you probably need to get started is a home brew recipe or two. You may ask your friend or acquaintances for theirs or use one of the many home brew recipes available on the Internet or in books and magazines.

Let Your Imagination Loose

You will be confronted by a lot of options that will open up for you when you concoct your own home brew recipe and you will also be able to incorporate the best styles of making beer at home when you let your imagination loose. Most of the brewing styles are pretty much the same no matter what the style or brand of commercial beer it is. You too can learn this system and perfect it at home.

If you have tried out other people s home brew recipes and found them to be less than satisfactory you can learn the basics yourself with a simple method that involves choosing the ingredients, knowing right techniques and the processes involved. A good source for better home brew recipes ideas is a magazine called Brew Your Own that has many different interesting articles, resources as well as recipes that anyone can use.

You will find in this informative magazine a Style Profile column that deals with a new and classic style of beer making in each of its issues. There are not only normal home brew recipes available, but some out of the ordinary ones that a more adventurous brewer may like to try out.

There is also some amount of tweaking of the available home brew recipe s instructions by experts at the magazine to further improve the quality of beer and you will also get valuable feedback from readers about various recipes that they themselves have tried our, or who know some of their own. Some of these home brew recipes are sure to ignite a spark in you which should prick your imagination enough to go ahead and create your very own wild as well as wacky experimental home brewed beer.

These recipes are detailed and contain the list of ingredients to be used as well as step-by-step instructions on how to brew the beer at home, and they are diverse enough to allow you to experiment with different types of beer making techniques so that you can choose the one that is just right for you.

The Purpose Of Home Brew Pots

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

For all of you coffee lovers out there, you may wonder what the purpose of having home brew pots is when you can just go out and buy a cup of coffee each morning. Well, there are several different answers of particular importance to this.

For one, if you have home brew pots then you are going to save a lot of money overall because you are just going to have to actually buy the home brew pots and then you have them forever, whereas if you have to go out each day you are going to be spending much more money overall.

As well you will save yourself time and effort with home brew pots, because rather than you having to get up and go out each morning to get your daily brew, you can just stay in and brew it yourself.

More About Home Brew Pots

As well there is the fact of how it is thought that the taste of the coffee that is brewed with home brew pots is also considered to taste much richer and fresher than any coffee company s offering, because you know that you are making a fresh pot and that it has not instead been sitting around for hours before you got to it.

The Costs

If you are interested in getting a home brew pot for yourself but you are wondering if it is going to be expensive, then you should know that you can really rest assured because it is not going to cost you much at all.

In fact, a home brew pot is one of the cheapest brewing pieces of equipment that you can get, and not only that but they are incredibly durable and so you will not have to worry about going out and purchasing a new one anytime soon.

Coffee is one of the most popular and universal drinks in the world, and so if you are a coffee lover who is interested in saving time, money and effort, then you are definitely going to want to think about getting yourself a home brew pot as soon as you can.

You can even buy the actual coffee from the place that you usually go to when you want coffee, so that you can still have that same actual coffee flavor and taste, only from a fresh home brewed pot whenever you want it, which is absolutely more convenient, affordable, and timely.

The Wave Of Beer s Future? Home Brewing With Hydrogen Cells

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Imagine if George Jetson had his own microbrewery; what would it be like? Would the look be sleek and space-like? How much better and fast could it would it operate? How about the mighty S.S. Enterprise? Can you just see Captain Kirk or Captain Picard enjoying a pint of their own galactic brew? And what would power the machine making such out-of-this-world home brews? Hydrogen cells are making waves and news and everything in between in a world where energy shortages are not some economical urban legend.

The Hullabaloo About Home Brews And Hydrogen Cells

What exactly is a hydrogen cell? What does home brewing have to do with energy conservation anyway? Hydrogen cells are a type of fuel cell, which is basically an energy conservation device. Fuel cells produce their own energy, almost always wit the aid of a particular fuel source and an oxidant. Hydrogen cells use hydrogen as the fuel source and oxygen as the oxidant.

Breweries require power to produce their ales and lagers, and really cannot be without electricity at anytime That is where hydrogen fuel cells play an important role; they keep the energy flowing a the wheels turning. And being able to make energy in your own backyard is pretty darn cool. This also makes you both energy conscious and quite business savvy. You might even grace the covers of a few magazines.

What are hydrogen fuel cells good for? At the present, they can be looked at as very cool super back-up generators of sorts. Many companies, including a few well-known breweries are looking to fuel cells as a way to be more self-sufficient in terms of energy. This could be good news for the future of making beer as a hobby; home breweries running on hydrogen cells. There would be definite savings in energy consumption.

Can home breweries use hydrogen cells? The hope for those studying and working with fuel cells is that everyone will be able to take advantage of all the benefits that this product has to offer. You would be able to power so much, from your microbrewery to every appliance in your home by using less energy than you are now.

There is not a lot of information on the possible applications of hydrogen fuel cells. While some fuel cells are being used, the extent of what they have to offer is still being explored. The Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA has implemented the use of molten carbonate fuel cells in 2005 and are projecting a savings of over $400,000 a yeah in energy costs. No matter how you slice that bad boy…wow.

Where You Can Go To Get Home Brew Generators

Monday, May 19th, 2008

If you are one of the many people out there who need their morning coffee each day when you wake up, then you should definitely consider the option of home brew generators. Home brew generators are like mini coffee making machines which work more quickly and more efficiently than other coffee brewers.

Home brew generators are also very affordable, and so you do not have to worry about having to spend a fortune just to get one for yourself if you are interested in having one.

Where To Get Home Brew Generators

If you are interested in the home brew generators idea, then you need to first find out where you can go to buy one. Basically the best place to go first is your local large retailer, as they are sure to have the most selection for the most affordable price.

However if you cannot find anything here, then you are going to want to check out the specialty coffee shops that are in your area, and although the items here are sure to be at least a bit more expensive, the quality is great and they are sure to have a decent selection as well.

Another option that you have is to go on the Internet and check around at stores online, and one of the best things about this is the fact that you are going to be able to find so much variety this way.

After all there are so many different online stores across the world, and you will be able to shop at stores that you otherwise would most likely never be able to get to. As well, the prices at a lot of these stores are much cheaper than anywhere else, and so you will be able to save in this regards as well.

If you do end up shopping online however, you are going to want to make sure that you are aware of the shipping and handling costs, so that in the end the total with everything included does not come to more than it would have if you had have just gone out to a regular retail store, because then it would really be pointless.

Just be sure to take your time and have patience when you are shopping for something such as this, so that you can end up being completely satisfied and coming out with the best results in the end of it all.

Home Brew Electronics: Be Careful When Doing It Yourself

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Many people like to brew their own beer. They like to do this for many reasons. Some like to control the taste of their own homemade beer while others are looking to save money by making their own. Still, there are some who make their own beer because they enjoy the process and it gives them a sense of accomplishment. When these people set to make their own beer, they often go out and buy a book on the subject or they get their instructions online. However, no matter where you get your information from, make sure that you are extremely careful when putting together your own home brew electronics. As with most electronics, you should have a good understanding of how they work as well as how to handle them properly. So, before you set out to make your own beer, make sure that you take great care when putting together all the necessary home brew electronics.

The Types Of Electronics Involved With Home Brewing

There are several different types of home brew electronics that you have to choose from, depending on what type of beer you are looking to make. Once you have the type of beer in mind, you must then acquire the materials to make it and then you must get the equipment. Sometimes, you can buy entire kits that include all the ingredients to make beer and even wine and ports. The beer making kits come with everything you need, including the home brew electronics.

If you acquire the home brew electronics yourself, from other independent sources, make sure you handle them with care. Some home brew electronics you will likely use are thermometers, heating elements and even electric bottle sealers. These home brew electronics are usually wired by the user and pose a threat of electric shock. When using home brew electronics, make sure that any excess water or liquid is wiped up or you could get a very shocking experience.

Home made brew is fun to make, it allows you to control what your beer tastes like and it allows you to give gifts of home made beer to your friends. It s the making of the beer, when you are engaged in using home brew electronics, that the true experience of beer making comes in, but you also must be careful that you use the equipment properly to keep from injuring yourself. There are many resources available that teach you how to make brew and there are many sources that you can obtain home brew electronics. So, make your own beer, have fun and make sure you be as careful as possible so that you can enjoy your beer once it s made.

Join Home Brew Club To Learn New Tricks

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

Those getting into the hobby of home brewing their own alcoholic beverages may want to consider joining a home brew club, geared toward the type of home brew in which they are the most interested. Whether your beverage of choice is beer, wine or grain alcohol and regardless of where in the country you reside, there is going to be a home brew club to match your interest.

Many times people follow directions for so long they tend to ignore the possibility there are other ways of doing things. As people become more experienced in home brewing, they may try different methods or different ingredients and often willingly share these findings with other members of their home brew club. The associations are designed for this type of sharing as well as gathering and sharing their finished products as well as discussing potential legal issues surrounding the home brewing industry.

Many times a home brew club will have local competitions where members can enter their brews to be judged on their zymurgy, or their study of fermentation. Those planning to enter any brewing contest must plan ahead, as it takes about four weeks for beer to properly ferment in the refrigerator before it is ready to drink.

Home Brewing Can Be Fun And Rewarding Hobby

Making your own beer can be fun and challenging at the same time, but it will not take a lot of time or space. Usually one burner on your stove will be enough space, except for storage, and in about two hours, up to five gallons of home brew can be in the keg or ready for bottling. One of the advantages of brewing your own, is you can make your own labels and put them on the bottles, making them easily defined as your own.

By joining a home brew club, you can get many new ideas and can ask questions of your own, finding out if a technique will work before you try it. Others in the home brew club may have already tried and failed and can offer advice on how to do things correctly. It may be better to ask and save a lot of time, ingredients and effort than to fail miserably.

Many members of a home brew club are more than willing to share their knowledge and experience, despite the intense competition of brewing the best. Whether beer, wine or straight alcohol, sharing tips with new brewers are what some of the more experienced brewers do best.

Home Brewing Tips: Listen To The Experts

Friday, May 16th, 2008

When you set out to make your own beer, or wine or port, you want to make sure that you follow the instructions to a T. You wouldn t make a casserole by just throwing any old thing into it, right? Of course you wouldn t. Well, the same goes for your own home brewed beer. To start, you must first learn how to brew your own beer. You can find information on home brewing, as well as other home brewing tips not listen here, by looking on the internet or by buying a good book on the subject. Home brewing is no secret, many people know how to do it, but few people can actually get it right. It s those people who can t get it right that often give up, right before they have the ultimate home brewed beer. The first home brewing tip, then, is not to give up.

Don t Give Up

When home brewing your own beer, you often start with the ingredients that you can buy on the internet or though mail order companies. These ingredients vary depending on what kind of beer you are looking to make. Whether it s a light beer or a dark lager, you want to make sure you get the right ingredients. Once you have those ingredients, using the instructions you have obtained, follow them and see what happens. Most of the time, you won t get it right the first time. You may not even get it right the third or fourth times. Just remember that all the major beer companies took years to perfect their brews, so remember that when you are making your own beer. Home brewing tip number one is never give up on your home brewing aspirations. You ll get it one day but you must, just like everything else, practice at it.

Have Patience

Home brewing tip number two is to have patience. Beer takes a while to ferment. It s this fermentation process that gives beer its proper taste as well as potency. If the beer is tasted before this process is able to complete itself, you won t be happy with the results. Just remember that everything takes time, and that includes home brewed beer. So, your second home brewing tip is to have patience, relax and don t taste your beer until the process is completed to its fullest. You ll know after some practice when your beer is done and when the process is complete. Patience is a virtue and it s most important when making your own home brewed beer.

The home brewing tips above are the most important. Beyond those, you just have to follow directions. However, you should always remember to have fun with it. Many people enjoy their hobby of home brewing their own beer and you should never feel as though it s hard work. Making your own beer gives you a sense of accomplishment and it allows you to have complete control over the taste and potency of your home brewed beer. Just remember the above home brewing tips, don t give up, have patience and have fun.