New to Homebrewing

I think there was a thread identical to this recently, but I can't seem to find it. Short answer, yes you can homebrew in your apartment. Doing extracts will be easier, but all-grain may still be possible. Read this book (link) to get an understanding of the process, or do a Youtube search for someone going through an entire extract brew day.

 

You could start with extract brewing, since it doesn't require much space or equipment. You can even brew it on your stove. Here's a good link that includes an equipment list and pictures:
http://byo.com/mead/item/2129-extract-brew-day-a-pictorial-guide

 

How big is the deck?

 

First, welcome to this great hobby. Second, you probably need to check with local fire authorities before you try to brew on your balcony. Many cities have fire codes that prohibit grilling, etc.

However, you can still brew in your kitchen if you can't do it on your balcony. Of significant importance will be the size of batch that you brew and the type of fuel for your kitchen stove. One to two gallon batches should be easy for you. However, if your stove is electric, and if you decide that you want to brew 5-gallon batches, I suggest that you get a 7+ gallon cook pot and see if your stove can bring 6.5 gallons of water to a boil just as a test. Many electric stoves have difficulty doing this. You can still brew 5-gallon batches, but you would need to brew 3 to 4 gallons in your kettle and then top off with water after the brewing session to get up to the 5-gallon level.

These things involve factors/questions that you'll need to decide so that you can make good choices before you make good beer.

There are many recent threads in this forum that ask how to get started, so suggest that you read back 10-12 pages or so and look for those threads for more thoughts and information.

 

i brew in a very small studio apt (around 400-450 sq ft). as the previous poster mentioned, the limitation is going to be how much volume of fluid you can bring to a boil. i do 5 gallon all grain brew-in-a-bag batches on a gas stove and i have a 10 gallon kettle that cover 2 burners. with this setup i am able to bring a 7 gallon pre-boil volume up to boiling. if you can't boil that large of a volume, you can simply lower your batch size until you find a volume that your place can handle.

 

There are many "easy" beers that you can make. You should start with a style that you like.

 

Here are twenty different recipes for extract brewing that you can try, depending on your preferences:
https://byo.com/mead/item/31-20-great-extract-recipes

 

OP, all of these recipes are for 5 gallons (except the last one which is 10 gallons), so anticipating your next question, you can cut down the ingredients proportionally to get to a two or a one gallon recipe. However, yeast may be the exception there, and since it generally is not so expensive, I'd use at least a half packet of dry yeast rather than a proportional 20 or 40 percent. However, if you purchase liquid yeast, then you probably should use all of it rather than try to save a half of a tube of it. Dry yeast is cheaper and leftovers are more easily stored if you can use them fairly soon afterward.

 

And.... anticipating your NEXT question, many of the liquid yeasts (which are expensive) can be substituted reasonably well with dry yeasts, particularly those from Fermentis as Safale or Saflager (particularly S-23, S-04 and S-05).

Here is a substitution list by style of beer:
http://finnhillbrewing.blogspot.ca/2010/12/liquiddry-yeast-chart-by-style.html

 

That's the spirit!!!

 

d, just go all grain man. I've been brewing in a 990 square-foot house with a kitchen that is about 150sf. You would not regret just jumping into all grain. Space-wise the only difference is a 5 or 10 gallon igloo cooler. GO 5, go to ebay and buy a stainless steel spaghetti strainer near the circumference of the cooler.. you can put a aluminum foil edge on the strainer to make it fit tight in the bottom and you have yourself a running all grain system for 60 bucks(covers cooler/strainer/mill)... you don't HAVE to have a fabed false-bottom, you don't have to have a stainless spigot to start... it doesn't make anything easier process -wise, in fact a little harder not having it, but shows you how easy and affordable it is to go all-grain and fast. I do have 5-7 gallon fermenting bucket and 2 carboys(3 and 5), so I can get 7 batches going at the same time if I want to.. You can keep 6-7 batches worth of grain in one reg sized tub(get one that has a good lid so it'll keep your grain fresher). All the sudden the wave of creativity will hit you like it never will with extract/kits, and you be thankful you did it.. the stainless fermenters, the awesome equipment can come later but you can get the experience and quality now for practically nothing. Then by the time you get nice equipment, you'll be an expert, but your beer will be no better. I've brewed 100+ all grain batches, but the 2nd all-grain batch I did was the 2nd best of the lot. buy yourself a cloning recipe book and tweek stuff and write your own recipes, that type of book will give you a nice foundation of what specialty malts go in different styles. Any glass top stove should be able to bring about 6 gallons to a boil no prob... now old electric coil stove's will have trouble with that volume... if thats what you have then break out the foil again... fold a towel and then wrap that towel around the kettle and tie/belt it on(basically insulating/jacketing your kettle...wala fixed... sure, a fire hazard, but it's not like you're going anywhere while you're brewing.. with 10ish pounds of grain in a 5 gallon cooler, you can only add about 3.8 gallons in the mash, but ratio-wise thats about right anyway, and after you sparge with 3 more gallons you'll have a batch size of 5-6 gallons and yield 5 no prob... I can yield 6 no problem now, especially doing decoction mashes and increasing efficiency in different ways... you get stuck along the way... holla.

t-58 yeast is you're comfort yeast... works wonders for multiple styles... great for belgians, american steams, stouts, and just about anything under the sun.... cheap and burns through fermentation. Feel free to ask anything. Loads of stuff to be learned in that first 2-3 years.

Plus, soon after jumping into all grain, you'll be doing all sorts of other stuff you never imagined would come along so fast... kegging, protein rests/decoction mashing and other little mashing stuff, starters, yeast washing, making crazy stuff like sours, barelywines and other high-grav... using secondaries etc...

 

Yep. Read this book. It's a must read for any home brewer. I have a copy in my beer library.

As for getting started, I started with Mr. Beer kits. Mr. Beer didn't last long, I quickly moved to online home brew shops, for kits and eventually just individual ingredients. But I still brew small 2 - 2.5 gallon batches and I still use the Mr. Beer fermenters.

 

That is the same path I just took... and after one 1G batch from a kit I'm moving up to 2G batches and not relying on a kit of ingredients. But using an ingredient kit for the first batch was great because it removed so much of the uncertainty - I only had to worry about the process and not worry about having the right ingredients. Since I was just where you are, you might find it helpful to read through the thread covering my first batch and some thoughts on moving to 2G batches: http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/my-plan-for-starting-homebrewing.372019/
I've just now started a new thread to ask more questions about moving up to a 2G batch for my second brew: http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/my-plan-for-second-batch.383775/#post-4491274

Yes! The folks here are amazing and super helpful. Sometimes you may get some different opinions (especially as to what size batch is "worth" doing or whether you should go to all-grain or stay with extract) but you will get some excellent guidance here!

 

Thank You!!! This is extremely helpful since I'm now planning my second batch and the recipe I'm looking at calls for iquid yeast but I used dry for my first batch and was wondering if I could keep it simple and use a dry yeast again. This chart helped answer that question!