October 19, 2002

Brew Your Own

Today, Jeff and I got to talking about brewing our own beer. We figured it’d be a good idea since it would be cheap for quality brews. I took to the net and started to do a little bit of research.

I first dug up a bunch of sites to buy brewing supplies. It turns out you need quite a bit of stuff to brew up your own beer. All the supplies total up to around a hundred bucks, which includes enough hops, barley, malt extract plus everything else to make 5 gallons of beer. Hmm. That’s pretty pricey. Well, I did some math and figured that at $1 for a bottle of decent beer at the stores, brewing your own would pay for all the supplies in 9 cases of beer which turns out to be around 20 gallons. Not too bad, it would pay for itself in about a month if we brewed one batch every week, while we bottled the previous week’s brew. And not to mention we’d actually get to drink decent quality stuff for once.

Brewing beer doesn’t seem like it would really be all that hard. For me, the hardest part would be sanitizing everything. Jeff found a really rad how-to over at Brew Your Own. Maybe we’ll try it sometime.

Also, for all of you who’ve wondered what “high gavity” means when they throw it on bottles such as Camo and Old English, I’ve got the explaination for you. Straight from Ted Goldammer,

High-gravity fermentations involve worts of up to 18∫P and even higher (35). Following fermentation and maturation, the beer is diluted with cool carbonated water to a prescribed original gravity or to a prescribed alcohol concentration.

The site says there is some advantages such as being able to control alcohol content. Which they certainly must do on the Camo 40, since it’s at a nice and high 8.5%. But the disadvantage is different flavor characteristics. Which is also very true. Anyone who’s ever put down a Camo or Old English can attest to this.

Now, the reason I mention what high gavity means is because Kyle and Bob called the Old English people the other day and they said it was just a marketing term. This is clearly false, and so I just have to say that the people working the phones at OE must not know what they are talking about. Well, Jeff and I took matters into our own hands and solved the mystery.

1. ohhh! my boyfriend brews his own and wine. he lives (lived?) on a barley farm, which makes it all the more convienent to homebrew. i’ve had some of his wine, which had a friggin’ 85% (or something, i can’t remember) alchohol content and got me good and drunk off of 1/4 a bottle as opposed to my usual juice cup of wine. (a normal bottle of bud gets me drunk, two gets me more drunk, three gets me drrrrrrrrrrrrunk, five gets me puking and i think six would kill me).

   god, i’m such a cheap drunk. heh! i’m cheap. (i’ll shut up now).

   Posted by: kim on October 19, 2002 11:09 PM

2. Make wine. Not only is it much easier than beer brewing, but it’ll have LOTS more alcohol!

   Posted by: Chris on October 20, 2002 11:39 PM

3. I’m just gonna laugh when you are brewing whatever the hell you are gonna make, and we all get toasted, and bust into it before it’s done and we all drink 20 gallons of wheat water. We probably won’t though, I was just thinking about how we all clean out your food, and thought…what I just said. It’s funny if you think about it because more than likely we won’t, but it could happen.

   Posted by: Jack on October 21, 2002 01:51 AM

4. Right on Kim, that’s rad that your boyfriend makes wine and beers and whatnot. I guess living on a barley farm would help with that :)
   Heh you’re cheap eh? I wish I was cheap…

   Yeah Chris, making wine would be rad, but we don’t have the patience to let it ferment. Beer only takes 2 weeks and that’s even a long time for us. And plus, we’re going to try and brew some beer with high alcohol content, like around 8-10% (of course it’ll probably taste horrid).

   Jack man, we’re friggin’ hiding this action so that when we get all torn up, we don’t bust into it. And plus, it’d taste horrible, cause it would hardly have any carbonation.

   But, we are going to start a batch tonight, I’ll take pictures and post how it goes.

   Posted by: Andy on October 21, 2002 03:19 PM

5. Patience????

   Ok, take a bunch of rasins, add “champaign yeast” (get it at a homebrew shop), add grape juice so it’s liquid, whip it in a blender and sit it on the counter for a week, when it stops fizzing, filter it through cheesecloth (or a t-shirt) and drink it. Don’t call it wine though, call it mead. You’ll like it, 15-20% C2H5OH.

   Posted by: Chris on October 21, 2002 05:46 PM

Sorry, commenting on this post is now clossed.