I'm Homebrewing!

I've been thinking about making my own beer for some time now, and finally got a chance to do it!

So I bought this 'complete' kit.





Kinda funny, the kit had bottle caps, a bottle capper, and no bottles. the guy did not mention that.


I wanted to brew a Corona-like beer, but the guy said I'd need a wort chiller(didn't even know what it was) and a spare fridge.

So I went for a beer that would not need those. It is called Snowed Under. I did not realise at the time, but it has honey and spices. I've never been much of a

sweetness kind of guy, so we'll see.



Step one:

Clean everything. Joy.


Put theese in hot water. They are syrup-like.



Get water up to temp. It's a good thing I have this giant pot (16 quarts) or I would have had a problem right off the bat.

Suppose I would have been using several pots. The guy did not mention this either. That's a little bothersome because I bet the average person, eager about a new project, would not figure that out till they had shit opened up and all over the place and in several pots.



Remove from heat and add grains in cheesecloth sock. Steep for 20 minutes. Theese are all step by step instructions that came with the beer ingredients, since different beers require different processes.


Add malt and honey and first hops packaged.


Boil for 45 minutes, then add final spice and hops packets.


After 60 minute boil, the wort (pronounced wert or wurt) should be cooled as fast as possible. I did not get pics of this because I was busy with the ice and water bath in the sink and stirrung. I'm going to make a wort chiller before my next batch of beer.

Here's the fermentation chamber with the air-lock on top. After cooling the wort to 75f, it must be aerated, which is as simple as siphoning the wort into the fermentation chamber. I now know I should have used the glass carboy for fermenting, but it wont matter.

A specific gravity reading is done with the included hydrometer. My brew is now at 1.56 OG - original gravity, which will later be compared to final gravity.
Then yeast packet is added(or 'pitched').

Put the air-lock on and leave it alone for 10 days at normal house room temp. It soon started bubbling a LOT ant thos bubble smell kinda alcoholy and good!


Be Back with the rest soon.

please keep this up to date



home/micro brews are great stuff

Love home brewing, it may eventually lead to home distillation .

I see you have a plastic primary fermenter, and a glass secondary. If you get into it I would move away from the plastic and get a 2nd glass carboy, that's how us brew snobs roll.

Also, the best book on the subject is by John Palmer, "How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Right The First Time"

It was written by an engineer and has everything to get you brewing, along with the more advanced stuff as to what's happening in the powder keg.

Unnk said:

please keep this up to date



home/micro brews are great stuff

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Will do unnk. Hope this stuff is good.

merkzilla said:

Love home brewing, it may eventually lead to home distillation .

I see you have a plastic primary fermenter, and a glass secondary. If you get into it I would move away from the plastic and get a 2nd glass carboy, that's how us brew snobs roll.

Also, the best book on the subject is by John Palmer, "How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Right The First Time"

It was written by an engineer and has everything to get you brewing, along with the more advanced stuff as to what's happening in the powder keg.

Click to expand...

I agree. The instructions were unclear and I was not familiar with the terms of brewing yet. Even after familiarizing myself with the book 'The Joy of Homebrewing' and spending a couple

days on HomeBrewChat.com, I still think the instructions were not worded right. Instead of fermentation chamber, they should have said 'put it in the glass carboy to use as your

fermenting chamber, because people use both plastic and glass for this purpose but glass is better'. Then there could have been no confusion.

Very interesting! Already is way better than that stupid Moonshiners show.

So this is pretty much all already done for you (to an extent with the pre mixed spices, hops, ect.)? And a beer that someone else "made"? I'm really not hateing, just asking questions.... Be ready for a lot from me.

I love home brewing!!!! now one thing you should know about fermenting, DO IT IN THE BUCKET UNTIL THE FOAM CALMS DOWN!!! lol sorry for the caps but I made the mistake of doing it right into the carboy and had a serious mess the next morning. The bucket has the extra space for the foam to not spill over everything and when you rack it into the carboy after a few days a lot of the dead yeast will stay behind. Although if you can find pool hosing that will fit onto the top of the carboy that you can put into a small bucket with water (effectively an air lock) the foam will just collect in that.
Using a pre made kit for your first few brews is a great idea, it will allow you to see how everything should go when you finally want to do it on your own from scratch. The problem with doing it all 100% from scratch is the amount of extra equipment you would need. The tubs of malt save you hours and hours of boiling down malted hops to get that concentration of sugars the yeast need to convert into good alcohol. If you have any questions about brewing let me know, I am still pretty new to it (only been doing 2 batches a month for 6 months) but I have learned a lot CHEERS!

Could you mix ISO or BHO into the mix and make cannabis beer?

LMAO!!! Hops are the closest relative of marijuana so I guess you could substitute buds for the hops..... but a few oz of hops is only dollars where we know the price of a few oz of buds.
This fall I think I will try it just for shits and giggles

VLRD.Kush said:

Very interesting! Already is way better than that stupid Moonshiners show.

So this is pretty much all already done for you (to an extent with the pre mixed spices, hops, ect.)? And a beer that someone else "made"? I'm really not hateing, just asking questions.... Be ready for a lot from me.

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Yes, I chose an ingredient kit that someone else made because I've never done this or read anything about it. I knew nothing. Not using an ingredient kit would be like someone who knew nothing about cooking deciding to make an elaborate meal from raw ingredients with no knowlege. You could probably eat it but it wouldn't be very good.

RobotBoy said:

Could you mix ISO or BHO into the mix and make cannabis beer?

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I don't know about extract, but I had thought about weed of some sort.

Dr.Drunken said:

I love home brewing!!!! now one thing you should know about fermenting, DO IT IN THE BUCKET UNTIL THE FOAM CALMS DOWN!!! lol sorry for the caps but I made the mistake of doing it right into the carboy and had a serious mess the next morning. The bucket has the extra space for the foam to not spill over everything and when you rack it into the carboy after a few days a lot of the dead yeast will stay behind. Although if you can find pool hosing that will fit onto the top of the carboy that you can put into a small bucket with water (effectively an air lock) the foam will just collect in that.
Using a pre made kit for your first few brews is a great idea, it will allow you to see how everything should go when you finally want to do it on your own from scratch. The problem with doing it all 100% from scratch is the amount of extra equipment you would need. The tubs of malt save you hours and hours of boiling down malted hops to get that concentration of sugars the yeast need to convert into good alcohol. If you have any questions about brewing let me know, I am still pretty new to it (only been doing 2 batches a month for 6 months) but I have learned a lot CHEERS!

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Thanks for the infor Doc! Good to know I did not mess it up, although I figured it was ok because since it must be racked it would spend time in both containers either way.

I feel like I have seen weed beer. I have definitely seen pot energy drinks.

CaptainCAVEMAN said:

I agree. The instructions were unclear and I was not familiar with the terms of brewing yet. Even after familiarizing myself with the book 'The Joy of Homebrewing' and spending a couple

days on HomeBrewChat.com, I still think the instructions were not worded right. Instead of fermentation chamber, they should have said 'put it in the glass carboy to use as your

fermenting chamber, because people use both plastic and glass for this purpose but glass is better'. Then there could have been no confusion.

Click to expand...

No, you're doing it right if all you have is plastic and glass. For primary, you start with plastic and for the secondary/clearing you go glass. A lot of the stuff is written by people who have been doing it for decades and are a bit out of touch.

Dr.Drunken said:

I love home brewing!!!! now one thing you should know about fermenting, DO IT IN THE BUCKET UNTIL THE FOAM CALMS DOWN!!! lol sorry for the caps but I made the mistake of doing it right into the carboy and had a serious mess the next morning. The bucket has the extra space for the foam to not spill over everything and when you rack it into the carboy after a few days a lot of the dead yeast will stay behind. Although if you can find pool hosing that will fit onto the top of the carboy that you can put into a small bucket with water (effectively an air lock) the foam will just collect in that.
Using a pre made kit for your first few brews is a great idea, it will allow you to see how everything should go when you finally want to do it on your own from scratch. The problem with doing it all 100% from scratch is the amount of extra equipment you would need. The tubs of malt save you hours and hours of boiling down malted hops to get that concentration of sugars the yeast need to convert into good alcohol. If you have any questions about brewing let me know, I am still pretty new to it (only been doing 2 batches a month for 6 months) but I have learned a lot CHEERS!

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Foaming is usually a problem from using honey/molasses. For what ever reason they tend to foam hard. Like you said though, this is only a problem for the first day. If you keep watch over it for the first 3-4 hours or so you can catch it before it craps all over your airlock.

After obsessive reading on brewing forums, I couldn't resist trying my hand at some mead. This is a 1 gallon batch of Jarod's Ancient Orange Mead.





I also started a 5 gallon batch of Cherry Berry mead.






Theese were odd choices for someone who generally doesn't like sweet stuff, but I figure this will give me a base supply of alcohol so I'll at least have something to drink and it was pretty cheap to get going relatively speaking. Anyone who drinks sure as hell doesn't want to run out!

I'll let you know how they turn out. I gotta check the recipes again but I think the berry one's done in 6 weeks and the orange at LEAST 2 months but I think the recipe said 8 months.

dude nice call on the mead

me likey what you got going here

cherry berry mead looks intense

Hey I homebrew too. Its way fun. I have enough Primarys now I can usually do a brew a weekend. Just keeping enough bottles around is a pain. Currently doing a hard cider, blackberry honey wheat and a double IPA.

bushwickbill said:

Hey I homebrew too. Its way fun. I have enough Primarys now I can usually do a brew a weekend. Just keeping enough bottles around is a pain. Currently doing a hard cider, blackberry honey wheat and a double IPA.

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Damn that's a lot of beer man! Your house must be a fun place.

Hey unnk what is that pic in your sig?