Getting started in home brewing.

Welcome to brewing. It is always worth the effort.
Sure, start with kits. They do most of the driving for you and they get your feet wet with process, and give you ideas of what to look for and work with when and if you decide to make the jump from kits to making your own. I've made some mediocre to excellent beers using just kits. Learned what I could and moved over to grain and making my own recipes.
It's quite easy to make good tasting beer at home. in my time with a homebrew club and also judging. I've tasted many amazing homebrews that easily rival what the breweries are putting out. Just be mindful of your process because you are free to do what you want and are not tied to a schedule that demands you rush things to packaging.
On the short end, I have turned beer around in house in just over a week for an IPA using Omega Yeasts Hothead that I believe can hold its own against several of the local ipas I know and love, and on the long end, six months for a sour.
Enjoy the ride.

 

I'm not far ahead of you. I'm on my 4th extract beer, and here's what I've learned the last few months as I've started.

- read Palmer's How to Brew. There's a free online version. One or two hours of reading his book will help you understand the basic process of brewing. I've gone back to some chapters many times, and had his brew day run down open during my first brew day.

- start with extract beer kits and distilled water. Order any basic extract kit from a home brew store online that has a good reputation, or better yet, go to your local home brew shop if you have one. The higher price you might pay in a shop will be more than worth it for the advice you get. $5 in distilled water from the grocery store will eliminate any worrying about water chemicals and chlorine. The biggest thing to watch for or worry about here is that you get a yeast pack that is in good health. Dry yeast is the easiest for the first time. A "kit" from the likes of a northern brewer or Midwest supplies will ask you to choose your yeast. A kit where 100% of the ingredients are in one box is probably best to avoid.

- I started with a pale ale recipe, and have brewed two ipa's since. These beer styles seem to be recommended as good styles to start with.

- be organized, be thorough. Brewing isn't that hard, but it might seem to be when you first start. Make notes of what you need and when in your first brew day. Make sure you have everything ahead of time. Palmer's book will give you a great primer on what you need at each step of the process.

- take cleaning seriously. I've tried to clean my stuff immediately after each use and follow the recommended cleaner>rinse>sanitize right before next use protocol and haven't had problems yet.

My only regret with home brewing is that I didn't start doing it earlier!

 

Also how hard is it to make a good tasting beer at home? I like belgians and IPA's especially citrisy IPAs. Also a lager fan. Is it worth the effort? Can it be better than local breweries? How long does a batch take?

The styles you mention might actually help a beginner as they can hide some basic flaws. Start with extract, control the fermentation temperature as much as possible. Buy some star san, put some in a spray bottle and use it liberally. Sanitation and temperature control at fermentation are the two most important things for a beginner.

I think it is worth the effort but that is for everyone to decide, you have to brew first to find out. I almost quit brewing after several contaminated batches, then I took sanitation and process seriously and have not had another contaminated batch in 2 years.

You can have a batch ready to drink, depending on the style in 2-3 weeks.

Good luck! There are a lot of experienced people on here so stick around.

 

Welcome to the BA site and to the Homebrewing forum, marjen. Your question gets asked frequently here, so here is a link to a search that I did using 'newbie' as a search word. Reading thru it will get you many other opinions from what is already posted above. http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/search/32497877/?q=newbie&o=date&c[title_only]=1&c[node]=8 You can also do a search of thread titles using 'equipment' as your search word and probably get other threads too.

It was mentioned above that you should read John Palmer's book howtobrew.com which is free online, or purchase the newer edition so that you have something to mark up with notes, highlighting, etc. It is not an expensive book, and it is considered to be a 'must read' in this forum. Palmer discusses equipment, starter recipes, etc. in the book along with just about anything else that you need to be new at this hobby as well as info for experienced brewers.

Somewhere in the reading of how to get started it will be said that you need to decide what you want to put into this hobby and to get out of it. You can make very good beer on a budget, and you can make bad beer with pricey equipment. It's mostly in understanding the techniques and polishing your skill.

Two key things to look at before you think about getting started are:

1. Do you live where you can get a good rolling boil on 5 gallons of liquid. (You can make beer in smaller quantities, so that point is not critical, but 5 gallons is a popular batch size.) Apartments frequently have electric stoves that can't boil 5 gallons, so that is a key limitation if you want big batches. Using a gas-fired burner outdoors is the most popular way to accomplish a 5-gallon rolling boil. (To give you an idea of how easy it is to get some key equipment, I bought an $80 turkey deep-fryer for my boil pot and gas burner equipment, but that's only half of what you'll need.)
2. Do you have a place with an ambient temp that stays around 65 degrees? That is a key item for adding the yeast and keeping them happy until the beer has fermented. Lagers require a fermentation temp around 50 degrees, so you'll need some sort of temperature-controlled appliance to brew a lager.

I hope that gets you started. Hang around here as much as you'd like, browse the rest of the site to discover all of the features, and enjoy your time while here.

 

If you screw up sanitation, you increase the risk of, but don't guarantee, infection. People were making homebrew before they understood sanitation. And remember, you only need sanitize everything that touches your wort/beer after the boil, not before or during the boil. Everything should be clean, but not everything needs to be sanitized.

 

You can do it! All it takes is an awareness of the need for sanitizing and an understanding of what/when to sanitize. ONce your wort is off the boil just keep it in the forefront of your thoughts that nothing touches the wort that has not been sanitized. I fill a dishpan with starsan solution and dunk all things that I need to sanitize and let it sit there while I cool the wort. And I keep some starsan solution in a spray bottle and spray things just before I need them - one minute of contact time is enough to sanitize.

I spent much time just reading and reading and asking questions before I did my first batch. Knowledge is power! And the experienced folks here (not me... I've only brewed twice!) will answer all your questions and help you get through it. They are truly an amazing resource!

 

That is what I did. But there are pros and cons of starting with a small batch kit. For me it gave me an easy way to try it out. And I also knew that I did not want to brew 5 gallon batches, because that just seemed like more beer than I'd know what to do with. So I got a 1 gallon equipment kit and a 1 gallon ingredient kit, but after 1 batch I realized that 1 gallon was too small of a batch for me. I have since bumped up to 2 gallon batches and needed to buy some additional stuff to do that - but not too much extra stuff. But the big downside to sizes other than 5 gallon is that there are lots of ingredient kits and recipes that are for 5 gallon batches. So if you want to do other than 1 or 5 gallons you have to learn how to muck around with the quantities in the recipe and you need to get a good scale to weigh your amounts, where as with 1 gallon or 5 gallon you can buy ingredient kits to get you into the flow initially. On the other hand, with less than 5 gallon batches you can more easily do a full-size boil, which can be important.

You'll find that the homebrewing retail world is more aligned to 5 gallon batches so that makes it easier to some degree - at least that has been my experience in the little bit of time I've been doing this. But for now I'm sticking to 2 gallon batches not that I've got that going!

 

Great info in this thread for beginners. Definitely read How To Brew, online or get a paper copy.

With respect to cleaning and sanitizing, keep in mind that they ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Clean first using your cleaner of choice THEN sanitize.

 

The brewing process is the same for small batches as it is for larger ones. But so is the amount of time that it takes to make the beer, so I'd consider something larger than one gallon batches. Going with two or three gallon batches is much more worth it for the amount of beer that you get in return. Think in terms of for every gallon of brewed beer you'll get around 10 12-oz. bottles. A problem arises when you brew 1-gallon batches, you have to take sizable samples for taking your hydrometer readings so that you actually end up with something less than 10 bottles, which hardly makes it worth the effort.

Scaling down 5-gallon recipes to smaller batch sizes is not an issue because all of the ingredients are directly proportional, so like @mfowler314 says, you'll need scales to downsize the ingredients that are prepackaged in larger amounts. The thing to avoid when scaling down your batch sizes is NOT to purchase equipment that is sized for small batches. If you put out money for a small brew kettle and later decide to brew 5-gallon batches, you'll be stuck with small equipment. So over-sizing is good for this hobby.

There are several threads in this forum about small batches, so you can read more by finding those threads.

 

Welcome! I would highly recommend finding your nearest Homebrew shop and stop in and introduce yourself and see how he can best assist you. They may offer a class you can take with other newbies or point you to some great books to get started or even gave you join a local club.
Have fun with your new adventure!

 

How much do you drink in 6 weeks? A small scale, (1 gallon fermenter), will only yield 8 or 9 beers. Most beers aren't drinkable for 6 weeks. If the answer to my question is more than 9 beers in 6 weeks, you should be looking at a 5+ gal system. I'm assuming you have a little closet space for this hobby and maybe a little garage space. Brewday is a 3 hour day with extract and 4-6 when you step up to all grain recipes. Make it worth your time and get 5 gallons of beer for your work. (That's 2 cases). Food for thought.

Now, the best piece of advice I can give to someone who's never brewed before:

Go find someone who brews. The price of admission to a local homebrew club is usually a bomber or a 6er of good commercial beer. Sit in, ask questions, make friends. Someone will undoubtedly take you under their wing and let you sit in on a brew session. You get to see how others do it and you get your hands into it. Very little money invested this way and you start to think about how big you want your brewery to be.

Find a club: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/community/clubs/find-a-homebrew-club/

 

I agree with @inchrisin Go watch somebody brew and ask questions. That's exactly what I did. And before you know it, I've got my own system and am brewing frequently. I would also recommend Brooklyn brew shop. This was started by a group that brewed in small places like apartments in NY. They specialize in 1 gallon batches. That helped me on my start. Brooklynbrewshop.com.

Enjoy!

 

Interesting that many people suggested starting with extract and eventually moving on to AG. Many homebrewers I have talked to jump directly into AG...would most of you recommend against that?

 

It's a more expensive front end cost for someone who isn't sure on the hobby. I think that's the biggest reason people advise the extract alternative. You have to be on your game more with AG, experience helps. With AG your first batch or so might not end up that great. Extract is pretty hard to f up.

 

Starting with extract brewing with a mini-mash or steeping of specialty grains will allow you to get exposed to the steps of brewing, fermentation, bottling/kegging without the extra steps of mashing. But the extract recipes that have a mini-mash or steeping will give you a little exposure to the mashing process, just on a tiny scale when compared to a full all-grain mash. Mashing is not that complicated to understand, but it's a bit tricky to do when you're new, and that can add a bit of complexity to a brew day that will be very busy with just all of the steps for the equipment cleaning and the brewing and fermentation processes.