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[crttaz]

OG's need cheap beer. You nig nogs need to quit drinking that cheap shit swill.

Michelob is doing a "Craft a Case" in selected states, buy 4 six packs and get a $15 rebate.

Receive a $15.00 rebate by mail on your purchase of any 4 qualifying 6-packs of MICHELOB family bottle.
Valid: AK,AZ,CA,CO,CT,DC,DE,FL,GA,IA,ID,IL,MA,MD,MI,MN,MS,MT,ND,NE,NH,NJ,NM,NV,NY,OH,OK,OR,RI,SC,SD,TN,VA,VT,WA,WI,and WY only.
Purchases must be made between 2/01/09 and 4/30/09. Must be received before 5/14/09.
Dated cash receipt(s)
UPC's
Limit $15.00 per address


QUALIFYING BRANDS INCLUDE:

MICHELOB AMBER BOCK
MICHELOB HONEY LAGER
MICHELOB PORTER
MICHELOB PALE ALE
MICHELOB DUNKEL WEISSE
SHOCK TOP
STONE MILL
MICHELOB LAGER
MICHELOB LIGHT
MICHELOB ULTRA
MICHELOB ULTRA AMBER
MICHELOB ULTRA LIME CACTUS
MICHELOB ULTRA TUSCAN ORANGE GRAPEFRUIT
MICHELOB ULTRA POMEGRANATE RAPSBERRY
MICHELOB IRISH RED
HOP HOUND AMBER WHEAT ALE

CRAFT-A-CASE OFFER
P. O. BOX 753671
EL PASO, TX 78575-3671

[tekno]

top 4 are good dunkel weisse was fucking nasty as fuck

[Doug]

I recently tried Woodchuck Amber and 802. Amber taste like apple juice and 802 taste like cider. My new "beer" of choice to sip on between shots.

[97Econobox]

Shock top is gud but Heineken are better.

[junkyard racer]

ah yes, beer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/junkyardracer/sets/72157608744416544/

[Doug]

Shock top is gud but Heineken are better.

Fuck some Heineken nigger lips. There's only 4 things black people here drink: Heineken, Patron, Grey Goose, and Hennesy.

[Doug]

ah yes, beer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/junkyardracer/sets/72157608744416544/

Frank you need to do a good RHMT write up. I have been reading a little on it, and most places just want to sell you their kits. How much will a cheap diy setup run?

[junkyard racer]

ah yes, beer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/junkyardracer/sets/72157608744416544/

Frank you need to do a good RHMT write up. I have been reading a little on it, and most places just want to sell you their kits. How much will a cheap diy setup run?

I could pwn this thread. Lets do it. I did this write up a long time ago, but ill copy/paste it over here since I put it on a nother forum.

Here is a little info for those of you who might consider enjoying some real beer.
Ok, onto the spuel....

Where to get your equipment/goods:
While in Okinawa , my supplies came from www.williamsbrewing.com. Now that I am in the states, there are many many places to get stuff from. Northern brewer, homebrewit.com...or if you are like me, you have a few home brew stores within an hour drive. (one only being 15min's down the road)  :green:

Where to do this. I am going to do this in my kitchen. Its going to smell my house up like hops and its gonna stink but guess what? I don't really give a shit. It will air out in a few days. You can also just a turkey fryer stand/burner and do it outside. Up to you...

to get started, you will need a 'home brewing set'. The english bitter is a really really good beer.
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/HOME_BREWER...EDIENTS_C73.cfm

a bottle brush
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/BEER_BOTTLE_BRUSH_P151C53.cfm

pick up a bag of this shit, maybe 2. 1 will last you a few batches. this is what will clean your bottles.
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/BREWER_S_ED...NSER_P11C58.cfm

and find a stainless steel pot. Williams brewing has pots, they are expensive....but its a nice pot. If you have the money, I say go for it. I got my pot from Wal-mart. Its a 22quart stainless pot, glass lid. Fairly heavy, I like it...it ran me $50- I plan to get a thermometer and drill a hole and put it in there.

Next up is bottles. Your brew supply store can hook you up. Pretty much any bottle that is not a twist off bottle will work. Coronas will not work with the bottleing thingy that williams gives you. Just a heads up on that. You can also keg, which is another subject. If your bottling just regular 12oz bottles, you will need about 55

This should be about everything you need to get started. Getting started is the expensive part. Once you have all of this shit, your good for a long time.

So lets get started.

First off, your area, along with yourself needs to be clean. I mean like sanatized clean. The slightest amount of bacteria will ruin a batch of beer. Non-sented bleach and water is the trick.

Here I have a brewers best "imperial pale ale" kit. Kit beers are simple. Everything is measured out, barney style directions...doesn't really get much easier than this. This will get you a good understanding of what goes into brewing your own beer. Also, you can add to the kit if you want...i.e. if you wanted some smoked porter, get a porter kit and toss in some woodchips while its fermenting.



I started off by putting my 2 cans of malt into a sink full of hot water. Malt is very thick and hard to pour...so this is why I did this. Also, you can see my clean pot. Its a stainless pot from wal-mart, and brewing beer is the only thing I use it for. It also has a glass lid.


I began to start my 'mash' to create my 'wort'. Mash is simply nothing more than getting your water ready to be turned into wort. Your wort is nothing more than unfermented beer...which is what you are currently making. You take your grains, put them into a cheese cloth bag, tie them up and toss them into your brewpot with about 2-3 gallons of tap water. Heat that to about 150degrees and let the temp stay there. (check your directions on this, also, williams kits don't come with grains so you would omit this step)

 

It almost looks like a tea


Pour a dogfish to help your process.


Once your mash is completed (according to your directions) bring it to a boil and turn off your burner. Then pour in your malt. (have the lids already taken off so you can do this quickly) Once you get it all stirred in, restart your burner. You turn it off so you don't scortch the wort. I also added my hops and stirred those in.
Keep this boiling for however long your directions say...avoiding boilovers.


Ok, so the wort is all done. Now what?


You need to cool it as fast as you can. This is to avoid bacteria from getting into your wort. There are several gadgets out there that will help you cool your beer fast but this also works. Get your sink, put your pot in there, and then start filling it with cold water. The water will run over to the other side and just keep on cycling the water. With the warm pot in there, the water will quickly become warm and not do what its suspossed to...so this is why I let the water run.


Here is some cool wort. Oh yeah...what temp do you want your wart to be when its cool...around 70degrees. My rule of thumb, if I can touch my pot and hold my hand on it at the bottom...its cool enough.


Done. Now what...time to get that shit into your fermenter. Put your wort into your fermenter and pour in your yeast. Dont pour everything thats in your pot. You will notice a bunch of shit at the bottom of your pot...its called "trub". Its real nasty shit. Then fill your fermenter up to 5gallons with room temp water. If you have a 6g kit...then fill your fermenter up to 6g. You don't wanna use cold water because then your yeast might say f-it and kill itself making all of this worthless. I won't really speak of yeasts. You either get a liquid yeast or a dry yeast. Both have directions on the package, make it according to those directions put it into your fermenter.
So here is my wort that now has yeast in it, fermenting and turning into a tasty IPA. Make sure that you don't let your beer ferment where it can get hit with direct light, and make sure its a cool place. Mine is in the closet under the stairs. Its dark, and it stays about 68-70 degrees in there. Perfect for fermenting wort How long do you ferment your beer for? You use whats called a hydrometer (which will come with your kit) and measure it. Once its to a specific gravity...its good to bottle...although, you can just keep on letting that shit ferment. The longer it sits in the fermenter, the clearer it will be. Some people use a secondary fermenter...but lets not get into that just yet. Heres another pic for you.


Stay tuned for part 2. Bottling and drinking  :beer:


 

[junkyard racer]

Bottling is part #2.

Bottles. Where do you get beer bottles? Not just any bottles, but only re-capable bottles will suffice. Generally, any of your craft brews which you can find at various liquer stores and supermarkets are re-capable bottles. Sam Adams is re-capable. Corona bottles will NOT work unless you have a commercial bottle caper.
If you dont wanna drink beer to get bottles, you can buy bottles. Williams brewing, northern brewer, your local home brew store should carry bottles, or you also have the option of kegging.

Your bottles gotta be clean. So how do we do that? You can buy bottle washer/cleaner and you will need to do just that. 
Take a rubbermaid container, put your bottles in there, mix your solution and let your bottles soak a few days to a week.
Once they soak, labels will just fall off and make life easy. You will have a little residue left over from the glue..from there, throw your bottles in your dishwasher and let them do there thing in there. They will come out nice and clean.

(no pictures of this)

So just like in brewing, you need to have a clean area to start. I wipe everything down with some clorox cleaner. Also in the picture you can see the corn sugar and my caps that I will be using, whcih were included with my kit. Then of course you see the big bottle of bleach.


Here is my brew. I transfered it into a new fermenting tank (a secondary) so that my beer clears itself up a little more.


The next thing we have to do is get the wort ready to bottle. How we do this is take your wort and transfer it into your priming bucket. On the bottom of my fermenting bucket there is a spicket so I can just hook up a hose and drain it into the priming tank. So I moved my wort into the priming tank and once it was in there, I added/gently stirred in my corn sugar which will carbonate my beer in the bottles and create some tasty beer. As you can see, I started with about 5g of beer, when its all said and done, im going to be botteling about 4g of beer due to loss in transfer and sludge at the bottom of the wort, which you dont want in your beer.


Ive got my bottles ready to go. If you use just regular 12oz bottles, you need about 55 for a 5g batch. I have a mixed of pint bottles, 12oz bottles and
I have a 1/2g growler.


Take another rubbermaid and fill it about half way with warm water and a CAP FULL of bleach. Toss a few bottles in there.
This is to sanatize your bottles before you put your beer in them.


Once your bottles sit in there a few min's pull them out, dump everything out, and rinse a little bit.


From here its time to bottle. There are several ways to bottle your beer, all ranging from siphoning to a tap and a hose. Fill all of your bottles so you have about 1/2" to the cap and then put your cap on there.

my pup likes to help me out


and then once your done filling your bottles, I put mine into a rubbermaid and then close the lid and put it in a dark cool closet. ANother reason I put my beer in a rubbermaid, your beer is now carbonating. If one of those caps arent on right, its gonna blow off and make a mess. The bottles in a rubbermaid will help contain the mess. Also, since you wanna store it in a dark area, a dark rubbermaid will help keep your brew in a dark area.


Now, give it about 2 weeks and crack one open and give it a taste. 

[junkyard racer]

Lets move onto where I am at now. All-grain brewing. I dont have a real write up of this, basically because there are so many different ways of doing this, Im still learning it, and I am getting ready to move, again...this time for good. My new house has a split 2 car garage, so half of my garage will be a full blown brewery.  All grain is for sure the way to go. It requires a little more equipment, and is a little more timing consuming but WELL worth the effort.


Wanna see my "Keezer"

Its not a kegerator, its not a fridge, its not a deep freezer. Well, ok. Its all of those.

Materials needed:
1 deep chest freezer. I bought mine for $100, found on craigslist
1 temp contoller. I picked mine up from northernbrewer.com it can be found here and cost me $53

Pretty simple. Grab your controller, set the desired temp (Mine is set at 34deg) put the temp probe into the freezer, plug the fucker into the controller, plug the controller into the wall. The freezer will only kick on long enough to keep the temp probe the temp you set it at. (in this case, the inside of my freezer)



temp probe in the freezer


simply plug it in


and load her up with your favorite beer


So you ask, why not just buy a fridge if you want to store your cold beer. Good point. I keg my beer as you can see. With this, I will eventually build a wood case around it on all sides except the bottom. I will un-do the lid and build a 8" frame around the top of the chest part, and attach the lid to that frame...which will allow me to put taps on the outside. Eventually, I should be able to put about 5 kegs in my freezer, and have 5 different taps. 5 taps of homebrewed beer. How kick ass?  :headbang:

[junkyard racer]

Lets talk about brewing equipment, so when I talk about how to brew, you know what Im talking about and why I use it. This is for all-grain brewing. The pot and the turkey fryer can be used of course in extract brewing, which I have also done when its nice outside.

A good thermometer is a must. I have a digital one that I got at walmart for like $8. Works great, and you can re-calibrate it.


I have a turkey fryer stand and burner, and a 40qt stainless steel pot. The stainless pot was $45 at walmart, and the turkey fryer was from a turkey frying kit I had...which you can get for about $50 or so. With all grain brewing, you need at least a 40qt pot (doesnt have to be stainless) and at least a 7g pot that NEEDS to be stainless or high grade alum. (if you get a turkey frying kit, you will get the burner and a pot that you could use) If anyone has priced a 7g pot, they are expensive. $100 is on the extreme cheap side, for a good one. I read that a lot of people are using kegs with the top cut off. They are nothing more than a huge stainless kettle. Perfect. I bought mine for like $25. I left the handles on it so I could carry it around with ease. Oh yeah, and its 15g.



Ive got 2 large plastic spoons. One is a spoon and one is a paddle. The spoon has marks burned into it, the bottom mark is 6g and the top mark is for 7g, when I put these into my keg (brew pot) in the center. This will be important and you will see why later.




I have a wort chiller that I made. You can also buy these from anywhere from about $60-$200+ depending on how long you get it, and of course you get a super bitchin counterflow chiller. These are used to cool your wort rapidly. The copper conducts the heat from your worth, while the cold hose water is flowing through the center, and it cools yoru wort. You toss the thing into your wort, hook a hose to one end, put one end out of your brew pot and let her rip. I cooled 6g of wort from about 210 to 70deg in about 25min. Bitchin time. I made this with parts from lowes for about $35.



Lastly, is my mash-lauter tun. This is a must, and there are many different ways to make this. I am going to use a method of sparging called batch sparging, which I have read is the simpelest and least costly way to extract your sugars from your grain. We will go into this later. I want to show you how I made it.
It is laid out in the how to brew book I mentioned is a must to any new homebrewer.
I picked up this cooler from craigslist for $10. It was brand new and I have the lid that isnt in the picture. I then went to lowes and got the necessary parts to make a spicket on the outside and a screen on the inside to strain with. The mesh screen is from a high pressure toilet line. I just hacked the ends off and pushed the screen off of the hose (yeah, it was a real bitch). I have about $60 into this entire thing. Super cheap, and its very efficient.





Here is John Palmers "how to brew book" that I recommend you get if you are gonna do this. Its like $20-



So as you can see, I do have a few dollars into my equipment, and I didnt list minor things like a scale that measures grams, because I need to upgrade and get one that will measure up to about 15 pounds all the way down to an ounce. There is also brewing computer software out there like the one I have, called beersmith. It will allow you to build a recipe and it will tell you if it will suck...allows you to log everything, its a sweet program. This isnt necessary but it is if your gonna get serious. There are plenty of recipes out there on the internet, if you get into the forums and start looking around.

Thats about it, I think. I will get into brewing a batch the next time.  :thumb:

[b20x]

This should be sticked if possible. Some day I will brew right after I become motivated  :yes: