I know of at least 2 homebrewers on here so I thought I'd post about homebrew now that I'm starting to dabble.

I've been wanting to get into it for a while but didn't want to do it half arsed. For my 30th (even though it's not til august) my wife got me a Kegerator. I've only got 1 19 Litre keg at the moment but I'll probably get another for my 30th party itself.

I'm only using fresh wort kits at the moment, if all goes well I'll eventually move onto all grain brewing, but for at least a year or so I'll stick with the kits. I put a hefeweizen on to brew on saturday, only took 4 days to ferment which is a bit worrying, but I've been trying a little bit each day since it stopped and it's slowly improving, I'll likely keg it all tonight if all goes to plan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v495/fordy44/KEGERATOR/kerator1.jpg

Looks alright.

That's rad. My dad used to make homebrew when I was a kid, so I'm got quite interested in the process. I'd love to give it a crack when I have the time and space for it.

How do you get the beer into the keg?

I'm not using a big 50L keg, just small postmix kegs which can open easily at the top via a handle

How do you get the beer into the keg?

Yeah, these are the kegs generally used for homebrew:

http://www.mikesbrew.com.au/images/keg_19lt.jpg

You just open the top, put in the beer, close it again, then pressurise it with CO2.

That kegerator is identical to mine, including the taps. The taps on yours are a little different to the ones in that picture, yeah?

nah that looks like them, they have the little flow regulator on the side like in the pic

Best beer I ever had was my home brew Coopers Lager which was aged for 2 years and served ice cold. Tried to age a few bottles from each batch for at least 6 months. Tastes soo good. I urge you to try it.

and refrigerate you fermenter before you bottle and you wont get sediment in your brewed bottles.

I've been thinking about starting home brew for some time now.

Roughly how much coin do you need to get it off the ground?

some mates of mine just did a brew through a microbrewery in sydney;

im getting sick of them rabbiting on about how awesome their brew is

Ive been getting from a microbrewery in East Brisbane for maybe half year now. The brew is tops...tried heaps of different types and it's CHEAP! They sell those keg fridges there too. I think they said you can fit two 18ltr kegs inside it. Two flavours on the go at once, oorrr yea.

Roughly how much coin do you need to get it off the ground?

About $85 will buy you the Cooper's micro-brewery kit which has everything you need to get started, including the ingredients for your first brew and 30 bottles. You can get them from most department stores, I got mine from Kmart.

I think they said you can fit two 18ltr kegs inside it.

If it's the same size as the one pictured, you should be able to fit 3. And they're 19 litre kegs =)

Homebrew is awesome. It's so damn easy to make beer that s***s all over the crap most people take for granted, and it's incredibly cheap. And having beer on tap in your own home is nice too =)

^ yea it is the same size fridge and u're right, it is 3 you can fit in there. My bad.
If you have the set-up and can't be arsed making the brew yourself, you can leave your kegs with the microbrewery to fill up for you. It would be the same price as it would be if you took a bunch of bottles in there to fill...but it's cheap, labour free and On-Tap.

yeah I skipped the whole bottling thing, after doing microbrewing for a while at brew brothers I got the s***s, decided I wouldn't start doing it at home til I had the gear to keg it. I literally just kegged my first one, it was in the fermenter in the fridge up until tonight. Should be carbonated and ready to drink tomorrow night, though it will get even better over time. the fridge itself cost $452 on ebay, the usually go for about $580-700 but I was patient and kept waiting, one went for cheap over the easter break when no one was home to bid and fiona paid for it as my 30th

Had to get a keg which was another $65, CO\2 Soda Stream adapter another $30, $75 for postage, Co2 soda stream bottle $40, then fermenter and bits and pieces plus brew and yeast added another $150.

Probably all up with new seals for the keg and other bits and pieces like a thermometer, hyrdometre, it all came to about $800 or so

How long does a bottle of CO2 last?

I haven't asked them at brew's bros, but what does the boiling process do to the beer? They have all those boiling kettles there before the beer goes into the filter system, but you don't boil home brew (at home). What's the diff?

the soda stream co2 bottles will usually be good for 2x 19 kegs

the boiling is a required part of brewing, it releases all the flavours from the hops and grain, it's only later after the temperature has reduced that you add the yeast which eats all the sugar and turns into alcohol :)

I haven't used the coopers powdered brew kits, so I don't know how they work, the one I got is a liquid solution, basically they boil and add the hops, grain and sugar and then filter it, put it in a container and sell it to me, then I just add yeast and ferment it at the correct temperature.

So the kegfridge ended up costing about $650

It takes me about an hour to bottle a brew. So lets be generous and say my time is worth $50 an hour its 13 brews to break even, and I lose the ability to put a few bottles away from each brew to see how they age ?

I haven't found leaving my beer to age in bottles to really have that much of a desirable effect. They've barely changed in my experience, so I never really saw that as an advantage.

The bottling process isn't too bothersome, but I was still happy to do away with it. And I was also happy to get rid of the clutter from having all of these bottles lying around. The kegerator for me is more about convenience than anything else.

I hope to eventually get 3 kegs, 2 can be plugged into the fonts and another spare aging. That said there's nothing stopping me or anyone who has one of these putting some of their brew into bottles to age or take to parties etc. I just never cared for the hassle of all the bottles around, I never had anywhere cool enough to store them and they're a pain in the arse to clean each time.

pain in the arse to clean each time

Clean as you go

Rinse them (properly) with in 24hours.

Yeah I picked up a Homebrew kit from the shop at Annerley for $70 and managed to collect about 70 crown seals to get my brewing operation up and running again. My fermenter looks like this:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9375/web1001259.jpg


It's been years since I brewed, and a few things have changed, but I found this forum really helpful:
Aussie Home Brewer

There's so much to brewing and you can make it as simple (kit and kilo) or as complicated (full grain etc) as you like. I stick to the kit and kilo method, and so far the results have been ok. Still experimenting, and I really need to get the temperature spot on in order to see better results. Looking forward to winter as the cooler temps mean better brewing conditions. The three brews I have made so far have certainly been drinkable, but I am confident I can make them better. I found when I put the bottles in the freezer for an hour or so so that they are super cold, the beer does taste a lot better.

The whole keg thing is tempting but I kinda like the process of bottling etc. At the very least it gives me some man time up at the back shed.

I cannot recommend the home brew shop at Annerley highly enough though. It's a family business that has been there for 30+ years and they know their stuff.

I found when I put the bottles in the freezer for an hour or so so that they are super cold, the beer does taste a lot better

Sounds like you're brewing bad beer. Trying loading your mouth up with anesthetic - if it makes your beer taste better than it's definitely bad.

^agreed.

Roughly how much coin do you need to get it off the ground?

My brewing setup (for all grain) cost around $2k. You can get started for alot cheaper though. If you are interested I recommend the AHB forum as linked above.

**edit - that figure does not include kegs, taps, fridges, fittings, etc. Just the brewing equipment.

last edited by Crunch at 10:02:08 24/Apr/09

yeah I'm gonna try and slowly work up to all grain brewing, but baby steps.

you really need an old fridge or something to ferment in if you wanna do it properly though, you need to keep a good consistent temp.

What type of beers have you been doing crunch?

Hmm, lots :) This weekend I'm going to brew an ESB and the brew after that I'm going to try and get something close to a Little Creatures Pale Ale. I've also brewed a few belgian beers lately including a Belgian Dark Strong Ale and a Blonde Ale. The Blonde turned out really well but I haven't tried the dark yet as I only kegged it last week.

The problem (if you could call it that) is that there are just so many different beers to brew it's hard to decide on what you want :)

Grain brewing gives excellent results, and once you've done it a few times you'll find that you don't have to complicate things if you don't want to. The main thing is that you have to do a lot of waiting around (which is a good opportunity to drink some beer).

When I got started mashing I just experimented with 13lt batches, which meant I didn't have to buy anything particularly expensive initially. I used a 16lt pot, an esky, a strainer and an old flour mill set to ridiculously course (you should probably get the homebrew store to grind it - make or buy a roller mill if you know you're going to seriously get into it). This was all a ridiculously inefficient way to do it, but it's a pretty cheap way to get your feet wet.

Edit: I used this guy's method - http://www.classiccitybrew.com/homebrew.html


last edited by Chancre at 10:55:49 24/Apr/09

i think the drunkest ive ever been was after consuming a stack of ginger beer homebrews

man did they pack a wallop!

I found when I put the bottles in the freezer for an hour or so so that they are super cold, the beer does taste a lot better.

Your tastebuds are less effective at determining taste at really low temperatures, so maybe there was something funky going on with your beer. I leave my kegerator on 5 degrees celsius, which I've found to be optimal.

i think the drunkest ive ever been was after consuming a stack of ginger beer homebrews

man did they pack a wallop!

Haha, yeah, it's so easy to make a strong ginger beer. I've actually got one on at the moment, with about 2KG of sugar in it. It should come out at around 6.5%, but they barely taste any different to non-alcoholic ginger-beer.

I'd like to work my way up to all-grain brewing in the future, but it can cost so damn much. One of my mates at work here has all the equipment for it, so I've been round to his place a couple times, when we've made some double-batches of all grain wort. Takes a long time, but it's worth the effort. Such amazingly good beer.

The guys are craftbrewers apparently will mill grain for you for free, assuming you buy it from them. They're only 10 mins from me too which is good. Though I'm still only using fresh wort kits for the foreseeable future

you really need an old fridge or something to ferment in if you wanna do it properly though, you need to keep a good consistent temp.

Old small box air con and a temperature switch from jaycar (tempmaster // wine cooler kit).
Fridge imo is too cold for fermenting, since you are aiming for 16-21C (sub 24 atleast).
Lagers are colder tho.

I just use a fridge with a temperature controller. It doesn't really matter that the fridge is cold, because the temperature controller will just keep it turned off most of the time.