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Graablick, on 23 July 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:
When I get a apartment or a house I'm so going to start brewing beer. What kind are you brewing? Hope its a brown ale or IPA.
This one is a mild, not so keen on browns and IPAs I have to be in the right mood for. A mild or a porter go down any time.
Rather than using brew kits which we do most times just for convenience we've gone the whole hog this time - straight from malted barley. Total brew time of 4½ hours, not bad considering the 90min mashing, 90min boil and roughly 40min to cool it before pitching the yeast. We've now got a copper cooler made from car brake pipe that was laying around, one hell of an improvement over the maybe 12 hours it took the last brew to cool by itself.
You don't even need an apartment if you're doing it from a kit - a 40 pinter'll need a FV and a barrel, one after the other, no more space than 18"x18"x36" at a time. So long as you can keep it within a mile of the right temperature and not too much variety the kits are pretty bomb-proof. The initial outlay for a FV/barrel/hydrometer/etc should be taken into account though, find out where your local homebrew stores are and shop around. My local is Arkwrights who can be a little pricey on some lines - we get our malts and hops from The Malt Miller, one of their chaps lives a few miles away and has said he's happy for us to collect from his home after work rather than driving to Didcot.
Next on my shopping list is a separate malt tun rather than the combined malt/mash we have - currently we malt, empty into FV, clean malt/mash, transfer back in, boil. Bit of a mess around that may be worth spending a bit more on avoiding.
The combined ingredients for this latest brew (~20l) came to maybe £15, not bad going (although bear in mind equipment costs, power for the boil etc will add to it in the background)
Now to give it another 1½ weeks or so before it goes into the barrel, soon be drinkable. I've picked up a bottle capper too lately so might start bottling it.
Bread has almost risen the second time, almosst time to put it in the oven, woo!
