Q & A: What is the best home brew beer recipe?

Question by ZBR: What is the best home brew beer recipe?
I have recently started making my own beer at home and I have yet to find a recipe that I really like. Do you have any suggestions for finding a good recipe, or website which sells them?

I typically like lagers (but they are tough to brew at home due to the temperature requirements). An ale would be suitable.

Best answer:

Answer by Anonymous
Fantastic web site for you http://reviews.mybeermaking.com/

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Tags: best, temperature requirements, Types of beer, Human Interest, recipe, beer, brew, home brew beer, Home Beer Making, home

Home Brewing 101: FAQs

Four weeks ago I bottled a new batch of beer and set it out in the garden shed. I opened one today and it doesn’t taste right. What’s up?

The chances are that it’s nothing you’ve done in the brewing process. Remember, brewing is a temperamental process and the most likely reason for your beer not coming out right is that you moved it from somewhere warm to somewhere cold. It is probably that the yeast you used needs to be at brewing temperature – that is, in the same room where you are brewing – in order to carbonate your beer. Leave it in the brewing room for two weeks before moving it outside next time.

This is the first batch I’ve brewed and it actually tastes OK but … it’s a little watery. What does it sound like I did wrong?

Just one thing, and it’s easily remedied. What you need to do is use blended sugars – something more attuned to the brewing process. What you have described sounds to me a lot like you have used white sugars in the brewing process. What comes out of that normally tastes a bit like cider – as you say, it doesn’t taste horrible, it just doesn’t taste like beer.

My first brew is really cloudy, having been in the keg for three weeks. I would have expected it to be mostly, if not totally clear by now. What’s happened?

It sounds like you have done things pretty much right, but to avoid this happening you could try leaving it in the fermentation vessel for four or five more days next time.

Tags: white sugars, Types of beer, home brewing, brewing temperature, Home Breewing Tips, fermentation vessel

Variety Is The Spice

There are several great lies about beer. One of those is that it makes you funnier. It doesn’t, it only makes other people more likely to laugh at your jokes, and they need to be drinking too. Another, and a more serious one, is that all beer tastes the same. This line is so untrue that there should be disclaimers issued on national TV every time someone says it. One can only wonder how many people are sitting in bars, drinking just to get drunk, who have only ever tasted a couple of beers and don’t really like them.

When you brew your own beer, you come to appreciate just how much variety there is in the process of making certain beers and in the taste of the end result. Many home brewers never make two batches that taste exactly alike. One small change to the brewing process can lead to vastly different results. It might not be a change you enjoy, but it will certainly be different.

There are so many different kinds of beer that the idea of them all tasting the same is flawed right from the get-go. You have light, crisp lagers and heavy, dark ales. You have thick stouts and sharp white beers, and these are just a few of the options out there. That is before we even get to the stage of adding flavors, experimenting with strengths and other variations that can produce incredible results. All beers taste the same? No. No, they don’t.

Tags: different kinds, Beer in Belgium, dark ales, Home Breewing Tips, Hospitality Recreation, Pale lager, Draught beer, home brewers, end result, Types of beer

A False Economy?

There are some people who feel that their main push towards home brewing was the high prices charged for commercial beers in stores and bars. This is understandable, too. After all, the companies who produce the world’s most popular beers are making a huge profit because it doesn’t cost them anything like as much to produce a bottle of their product than it does for us to buy one. As an economic move, brewing your own beer can be a sensible step.

However, there are many people who will look at the amount of equipment they need in order to make a batch of beer and go off the idea immediately. It is a big outlay to start off with, and for the same price you could easily go into a store and buy several crates of beer. The question you need to ask yourself is: Am I committed enough to this to make it work – to the point where I will make enough beer to break even on the deal?

That may take some time, and when ingredients are taken into account you will not break even in the early months unless you are drinking so much of the home brewed beer that you would be in no fit state to operate the equipment. You will need to really be committed, and do this long term, to make it an economical move. Of course, you may not be doing this for economy. If you are just doing it for the enjoyment and the craft, then you are likely to stick with it for longer.

Tags: commercial beers, home brewed beer, home brewing, economical move, Types of beer