Homebrewing and such

Does anyone here have any experience with homebrewing of any sort? I'm tempted to try making all sorts of things - ginger beer, spruce beer, birch beer, maple beer, mead, cider - but I feel intimidated by the prospect, and feel like I'll do something wrong and end up poisoning myself. Any words of advice, experiences, recipes, etc? I have maple syrup and birch syrup on hand, and ginger powder. I'd like to make something light and tasty.

I think I might as well mention that my goal is to make a good drink that I and others can enjoy, not to get drunk or get anyone drunk. I don't want to trouble anyone here with the subject.

I've dabbled in home brewing.

First off, you won't poison yourself. Distilling (aka making hard liquor) can be quite dangerous, but beer making... not so much. If it's bad, it'll taste wretched. If it tastes fine, you're probably just fine to drink it.

I bought a kit for $80 or so that had everything sans the bottles and actual ingredients. You can then upgrade from there but the kits are a great way to get started. These are what I'm talking about. You can get pretty fancy but for starters, I say just get the super basic one. That being said, a wort chiller is REALLY nice to have...

Typically, the most difficult thing is keeping everything clean. If something nasty in the air gets in, your hands are dirty, there's dust in/on anything, your whole batch can be ruined. Many people have this issue. In the ~seven or so batches I've made, that has never been a problem though. You just gotta get the cleaning solution and clean EVERYTHING in it. (Basically just drop a few drops of this stuff in water and rinse everything in it.)

Process-wise, it's pretty easy though I definitely recommend doing it with a friend and not alone. Having two sets of hands really... comes in handy. (Har har... I'm so punny.) Also, like I said, a wort chiller is really nice to have. Otherwise you'll end up having to stick the whole five-gallon bucket in the kitchen sink with ice all around and stirring it, trying to get it to cool down. That takes a long time. It's definitely worth it to get one of those copper tubes wound up so you can run cold water through it.

For recipes, I suggest starting with a pre-made recipe and then varying it as you like. At the home-brew shops I've been to, they always have recipes for which you can get all the ingredients right there and a piece of paper with instructions.

Something else to keep in mind is that you need a cool, dark place to keep it while it's fermenting. However, one time we did have a bit of an explosion and it sprayed beer everywhere haha. So you may want to find a good spot that'll be easy to wipe up if that happens, i.e. not on carpet.

Enjoy! If/when you do this, I look forward to hearing how it goes!

kerrick wrote:

That being said, a wort chiller is REALLY nice to have...

Will this work?

Xid, more like "roll eyed"

Kerrick, what recipes did you follow and what were you aiming for?