For our first beer making experience together, Mr. Fox scurried around the kitchen dropping things and swearing because I was asking “too many questions” and he wasn’t ready for me and my note-taking yet. There’s nothing quite like annoying the husband when he’s trying to concentrate. I was informed there would be “no music.” This is serious business. He was setting up beakers and plastic buckets and tubing and sterilizing everything and re-hydrating yeast while giving me the difficult task of keeping the 85 pound puppy out of the kitchen on pain of serious punishment lest he contaminate the all-important brew zone.
Trying to contain Moose, the 9-month-old GSD puppy
Contamination is actually the most likely culprit for a bad batch of beer so it helps if you are slightly OCD like Mr. Fox and wash your hands continually in rinse-less sanitizer as though our neighbors were cooking up the Ebola virus next door. Despite these safety measures, it’s a surprisingly easy process. There are different ways to brew beer. We opted to buy several kits that come with all the ingredients you need and can be easily ordered online at Midwest Brewing Company, or any other online distributor.
Brew kit with our home-grown hops
The initial investment in the equipment was around $150. After brewing two 5-gallon batches, which yields roughly five cases, it pays for itself. Each beer kit is between $25 and $30. When you compare that to the price of micro-brews and better beer like Sam Adams, the cost savings is considerable. A six pack of a good micro-brew can cost upwards of $13. One of the reasons most Americans drink light lager is because that’s what is affordable. A six pack of Miller Light is around $7. Not many people will shell out twice that for a different brand. Not only is home-brew better than most anything in the grocery cooler, it’s cheaper and you’ll have lots to talk about at your next party when everyone wants to know what delicious beer they’re drinking.
After the decontamination process, it’s time for the giant 10 gallon stainless steel pot filled with the proper amount of water. We are fortunate enough to live in the Chicago area that has the best water in the world so we just fill up from the tap. After the water, the next best thing about Chicago is leaving it, but let’s get back to pleasanter things like brewing. It’s time to get out the big pot.
I did this for about 5 years, a lot of fun and I learned a lot by joining beer clubs and solving mistakes that some thought was the end of a batch. The toughest part about making beer was cleaning the bottles and keeping everything sterile. You can make some very potent beers with the amount of sugar you use and there is a lot of information about this on the internet. I didn’t care for the flavored beers but the ales were great.
My Ninkasi is the brewer in our household.
She envies your hop growing.
But we have to be ‘sniffy’ where you use ‘priming sugar’ in your natural brew.
A friendly suggestion is save a little bit of the wort and use that as a primer. You still get a good head and lacing and a ‘superior flavour.
This then avoids the chaptilization and adulteration of your natural brew which now becomes an ‘all natural brew’.
Great article, good luck.
Dionysus and Ninkasi.
Great stuff! I’ve been brewing for the past 5 or 6 years and besides the beer I enjoy the camaraderie of brewers from homers to master brewers sharing and reveling in all the possibilites!
i’ve been thinking about breaking out my old brewing gear
this article has reignited some passion
one thing that helped me immensely to chill the wort was getting some copper tubing hooked up to the sink faucet running cold water– it wasn’t expensive, if i remember (since i was on a college budget at the time) and worked really quickly
i would use a combo of the alexander’s malt combined with fresh grain (a hybrid which gave the final product some depth of flavor but with the added security of having enough sugar to properly ferment as using only grain can be dicey for newbies like me)
i remember hops as being an ingredient not to skimp on but the most important (for flavor) was to get the top of the line liquid yeast
i would prime the yeast my mixing with the dregs of a chimay monk ale
also– make sure you have a cool enough area to let the bottles chill especially if you are going after anything more “lagerly” than ale
(in other words, dont brew a batch in the middle of a texas summer without a place to store it)
another thing i remember, make sure all the people in the home where the brewing is to happen are on board as any unsuspecting persons could be taken aback by the aromas of brewing
excellent article
Excellent article on home brewing!
I’m 2-year, 15 batch “veteran”, and the world of yeast husbandry has enhanced my life. The quality of a good home brew rivals the best of the microbrews, and beginners can have great results just by following simple directions.I now have a strong appreciation for what crap passes for “beer” in the USA. Mass-marketed beer, in a word, sucks.
Like an aromatic fresh-baked loaf of bakery bread, a simple fresh beer delivers nuances of flavor and that extra bonus of primitive biochemistry: ethly alcohol.
The homebrew industry has great logistical support. There are plenty of online forums to learn from, and fantastic suppliers for kits and brewing hardware.I wish I had started earlier…all that money I wasted on bad beer!
Ten years ago my wife bought me a starter kit for Christmas and I have been brewing my own beer ever since. Although I don’t agree with the saving money part, home brewing can be very satisfying and rewarding. Plus it is a huge check off on your man card.
Also, although the “Joy of Brewing” is essential in any home brewers library, I prefer “Homebrewing for Dummies” by Marty Nachel. It is a great source of information and for me it was a lot more straightforward and understandable as a novice brewer.
And remember: Sanitation is the key, wash and sanitize everything! Nothing will spoil a batch (and all of that hard work) faster than some stray bacteria living in a piece of gunk left over from a previous brew. My brother-in-law found this out the hard way and hasn’t home brewed since.
My brother’s latest batch was contaminated, BadTurtle. It was very sour and not pleasant at all. But it has not deterred him at all.
Any readers who are curious about home brewing should go ahead and try it. Its very simple. In fact, the hardest part is waiting for the beer to condition in the bottle. This typically takes a month, though some beers take longer. Patience is a virtue, after all.
burp, ahhh!
Home brewed beer taste better than the beers coming from micro breweries & in the long term it’s economical as the article states. Hubby goes to a place where he buys the ingredients & recipes for many beers from around the world. Obviously it’s not the exact recipes w/the exact proportion of ingredients, but it sure comes very close to those specific European ales, porters, & stouts.
I still do occasionally like to drink a chilled Bud or Michelob on a hot summer day.
I want to hear about how the ale pail helps make pale ale….
I have been homebrewing for many years. I’ll second the recommendation for Charlie Papazian’s books.
This is a process that our grandparents and great-grandparents knew well –though they may not have understood it in as detailed a manner as we do today.
It is also a very nice way to introduce children to the art and creation of alcoholic beverages. Today’s market has made the public in to strict consumers of these things. It is seen as a drug to abuse instead of a creative beverage that can only be properly enjoyed in moderation.
Oddly enough, this mania toward self sufficiency was very much a hippie thing in the 1960s and 1970s. It is interesting that such culture survives, not among the OWS movement, but among many of the Tea-Party adherents.
I think the reason the self-sufficient craze is back is out of necessity. In the 60′s it was more about creating socialist utopias where like-minded people could escape “the man”. Today’s survivalists are preparing for very lean times as a result of the socialist policies this country has adopted over many years. Those in charge are running our economy into the ground and we have to seriously think about how we will survive if the worst happens and there is no food supply or other necessities because of man-made disasters (or natural disasters)that the government is not equipped to handle. Admittedly, my family isn’t prepared yet, but we’re working on it. We don’t see it getting much better any time soon and in fact, we see signs of major decline coming in the future and want to do what we can to plan ahead for the worst.
May you keep that sense of mystery for the looming future, . . . I kind of think that, the coming reality will need some buffering, . . .
I agree with you so much, Gork. My 6-year-old loves sitting in on the brewing process. Just like the residents of Fox Farm, he (and his dad, too) can sit and watch a bubbling airlock for a good long stretch. He loves the fact that it’s millions of tiny little yeast farts that are adding up to make all that action.
I’m not exactly Mr. Handy, so he doesn’t get to see me practice too many of the practical arts like carpentry and such. But I hope that home-brewing does help him gain an appreciation for craftwork, for do-it-yourself-ism.
Also, as you say, it’s a way to introduce the idea of thoughtful enjoyment of alcohol, without swinging the pendulum to either “beware the demon rum” or “let’s all get trashed on Friday night”.
Ohhh, wait until you discover home winemaking! The principles and the equipment are pretty much the same, and the results can be just as fantastic.
My daughter and I also branched out to making home-made cheese, too, as there is a brew/winemaking supply store in our neighborhood which has branched out into supporting that as well. The store’s business has been booming, over the last three years, and there are people in it, every day, no matter what the time is. There are a lot of people getting into various aspects of D-I-Y food and drink, for reasons of taste, economy and … well, the fun of it.
If I could only get a source for unpasturized goat milk, I’d have a go at making goat cheese, too.
Making wine is way easier than making homemade beer and NO sulfites in homemade wine!
My husband and I have been brewing for 20 years now – we’ve had one batch that we didn’t even bother to bottle because we could see that we’d suffered a wild yeast infestation, and one batch that we didn’t know was contaminated until we started to drink it and wrinkled our noses. All in all, considering we brewed for ten of those twenty years with toddlers underfoot, we consider that we’ve done pretty well…
My favorite homebrewing story: when we lived in Houston, we used to have to keep our fermenters in a giant plastic tub of water, draping the secondary fermenters (glass carboys) with wet cloths, to take advantage of evaporative cooling and keep the fermentation temperature down. So one day we were getting ready to rack a batch from primary to secondary fermenter, with our three-year-old coloring at the kitchen table, our one-year-old toddling around, and our eight-year-old… I don’t know, off doing something. I was at the sink sterilizing stuff; my husband took off the lid to our primary fermenter (a 6-gallon bucket) and turned to the sink to put the lid in for cleaning, leaving the bucket open to the elements for the short time it would take for him to hoist the bucket onto the counter. In that moment, the toddler toddled up, spat one of his big brother’s super-balls into the beer, and laughed. Panic in the streets! My husband grabbed the child, I (with my wrinkly and pretty dang clean hands from all the sterilizing I’d been doing) gingerly scooped the ball out. We shrugged at one another helplessly and went ahead. The batch turned out fine.
The funny (?) part was when my husband was telling the story to his co-workers, who were, to a man, horrified that our toddler had had a SUPER-BALL in his mouth – could have choked while we were making BEER. Our concern had been all for the sterilization; it honestly didn’t occur to us for a moment that our CHILD had been in mortal DANGER until the hubby was relating it all later. Sheesh!
Methinks Moose was containing you big time :p
One of my best beers I called “Diaper Pale Ale”
…kept the moochers away! Boy, was that a great beer!
Never brewed myself but have enjoyed friends’ batches. Good stuff.
Sadly, it can’t be long until our masters regulate this industry to the point of choking it out of existence. If we can’t be trusted with the utilitarian light bulb, how can we be trusted with something that brings us joy?
From the description of your brewing session, it sounds like you forgot Papazian’s most important advice: Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a [Home]brew.
(The “home” part is optional for your first batch.)
Oh, we had plenty of fun… and especially now that we’re drinking it the fun has increased! This batch of Brown Ale came out soooo good! It’s very mild with excellent head and lacing and no bitterness. It is tasty! We also had hard cider come up ready at the same time and a vanilla porter. We are stocked up and very happy with the results. The hard cider is excellent! Right now, we have a gluten-free pumpkin ale ready for bottling for our gluten-intolerant neighbor. She loves beer but all the gluten-free options aren’t that great so we thought we would experiment and make her a seasonal option. We’re very excited to see how that turns out. And it will make an excellent Christmas gift!
I’ve done some of my own brewing – beer and wine – and had good results; but it just wasn’t compatible with cats.
These days I am fortunate to have an amazing store only a couple miles from my house: the Four Firkins Beer Store. You want it, they got it, as long as it isn’t Budweiser.
As a bonus, it’s only a block from my favorite computer store. Life is good.
… and I luv beer, too. The first one I heard of who made beer in our family was my grandmother back during Volstead Act days. Her story which has survived, was making her first batch of beer and being told by all and sundry what to put in it. She put it all in, including several different fruits. It was bottled and continuing to ferment until one day the caps started blowing off. Gram rushed to the cellar to see what was going on only to be met by a volley of more caps achieving lift-off. She ran upstairs and grabbed several dishtowels, ran back downstairs and threw the towels over the bottles. Just then there was a knock at the door and she ran back up to answer it.
Gram opened the door and there stood the minister. Being of the Methodist persuasion, there was no alcohol allowed whatsoever. She couldn’t slam the door in his face and say she was busy so she graciously invited him in. Long story short: She was thankful he had just stopped in to ask her something about the Ladies’ Aid because she quickly ran out of lame excuses as to what all the small explosions going on in her cellar were.
Hubby and I have taken our whirl at making beer and never had any so lively as my grandmother’s, but man oh man, talk about alcoholic! Now my son-in-law has taken up beer-making and makes some pretty fine beer. I’m getting him a “Tilted Kilt” kit for Christmas as he hasn’t made that as yet.
My sister in law gave me a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas back in 2002. My wife is still ticked off at her for creating a monster.
Behind sanitation, temperature control is the key. Drape a t-shirt over your fermenter and keep it wet so that the evaporation keeps the beer cool. Fermenting beer generates heat and this can cause off flavors (too fruity, too phenolic) if you are not careful. Also, a half a campden tablet is enough to remove the chlorine out of 10 gallons of water. Chlorine is the biggest culprit in producing band-aid tasting beer. A package of campden tablets can be bought for about 2.50 and they are worth every penny.
Check out your local home brewing club. A list can be found at the American Homebrewing Association web site:
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/directories/find-a-club
Finally, Have Fun!
Hmmm, I’m something of a gold bug surviavalists and worry about bank holidays with shut down ATM’s for a number of weeks. I also live in a small apartment and don’t have the space for home brewing. I am willing to trade .45 acp reloads and nasty old Wolf 7.62 X 39 for beer though. I’ve also started saving nickels.
Welcome to the wonderful world of homebrewing! Brewing beer can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it. Ales are best starting out because most beginning brewers don’t have a lagering fridge, and besides it takes so dang long to make lagers!
Papazian’s book is good, but somewhat dated. For a more thorough and modern treatise I recommend “How To Brew” by John Palmer. Some of his book is on-line at his website.
I used to get “looks”, as in “you drink that nasty homebrew?”, when I mentioned I was a homebrewer, but not so much these days. As homebrewers we enjoy the advantage of not having the accounting department looking over our shoulder saying; “That hop is too expensive. Why don’t you use cheaper grain. You know corn and rice cost less than malt”. So even a newbie homebrewer can turn out beer that is superior to American Light Lager. And just for grins I will leave you with the BJCP description of said American Light Lager:
Category 1A. Lite American Lager
Aroma: Little to none.
Appearance: Very pale straw to pale yellow color.
Flavor: Low levels of grainy or corn-like sweetness. Hop flavor ranges from none to low levels. Hop bitterness at low level.
Mouthfeel: Very light body from use of a high percentage of adjuncts such as rice or corn. May seem watery.
Charlie
I like John Cleese’s comment about typical American beer:
Near-frozen gnat’s urine.
Prefer dark ale myself.
Pete
I think the comment in a python type sketch – started eric idle I think dressed as an alstralian.
“American beer is like sex in a canoe” Idle’s char
other person “why”
“Because it is close to water”
Saddly to true, while funny, and a bit crude.
The sad thing is I go to other sites that talk about home brewing and conservatives are shouting for regulation. Apparently people still believe the 1920′s myth that moonshine makes you blind.
I don’t know if the confusion is on your part or on those of the commenters (are you sure that you don’t mean “Puritan progressives”? no conservative that I know calls for regulation of homebrewing) but there is a difference — a considerable difference — between “moonshine” (illegally distilled whiskey) and homebrewed beer.
I volunteered Mr. Fox to fix it with all his spare time (between rebuilding our 140-year-old farmhouse and a full time job.)
My ex-girlfriend did this to me several times. I dumped her.
Stop it.
Ha! Thanks for the concern but we’re ok. Maybe its the difference between married and dating or maybe its because he would have volunteered his services if I didn’t do it first. I know him well enough to do these things without causing a fight.
On the contrary, not only the article was informative and delightful but it sounds like Mr. Fox gets off on Mrs. Fox’s funny little quips. I did.
I did have his permission to write what I did. I’m not a jerk, I swear! He does think I’m funny…most of the time. lol
You folks tried sourdo baking yet? Good stuff that.
Too many years ago, I had brewed some of the darkest, heaviest beer I ever made. Then I used it to make bread.
That was *really* good bread.
To M Fox and all the dog owners, just be warened that hops are very bad for dogs. Leathal from what I’ve read.
With that PSA out of the way, I’m envious of your hops plants. I also look at brewing (and vinting) as a survival skill.. a decent way to get clean drinking water. And besides beer and wine, left out is another one I like – Mead aka honey wine.
I would love your mead recipe. I’ve been wanting to try that. And yes, thank you for mentioning the hops/dogs issue…very true. They can be deadly.
Yeah, definitely—get in touch with your roots! With cutting your own fire-wood, brewing is some very early Americana, . . .
I keg my beer in five gallon Corny kegs (old Pepsi/Coke kegs). It’s always nice to bring a keg of home brew to a gathering. The other advantage is not cleaning bottles, bottles and more bottles. Enjoy! Prost!
I was with you until you mentioned Sam Adams was a good beer. Meh. I made some mead once too. Also meh, but maybe the recipe was just not very good.
I said “better beer like Sam Adams.” I think we can agree that Sam Adams is better than Miller Light. There are still many micro-brews far better than Sam Adams, but to give people an example they will understand it’s important to compare a beer they’ve probably had.
Thanks for the reply. I agree, Adams more of a beer than watered-down regular Miller, i.e., Miller Light.
Brewing is a lot of fun and kegging makes life a lot easier. Living in Florida makes it harder 9 months out of the year. I bought an old fridge just so I could brew and keep my kegs cold!
This is the time of year to collect champagne bottles. They are recappable, dark, and it’s quicker than filling a zillion tiny 12 ouncers. Besides – it’s always a party!
Here’s my theory about mead. Most of the places that used to drink mead, Scandinavia and northern Europe, now drink beer. I know that most modern recipes for mead contain spices and flavors we today associate with the sweetness of honey, but back in the Beowulf days, those spices were not available in northern Europe. What I think they did was make a tea with hops and other herbs, and sweetened it with honey. Some of it got fermented by accident and created what was essentially a honey based beer. Honey was hard to come by in northern Europe. They did not keep bees. The Romans did but barbarians in Europe thought they used magic to do it. Northern Europeans relied on hunting and gathering wild honey. So, only warriors were allowed to drink mead, as related in the ancient stories.
When barley agriculture developed in Europe, it was discovered that you could boil down a bunch of sprouted barley (malt), and get a kind of sweet syrup, sort of like honey. Using this one can make a mead that tastes better than mead and is better for you—it has protein which mead does not—call it beer. Plus, agriculture provided ample supplies of barley so that the common people could now enjoy beer while before only aristocratic warriors could have mead before.
That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.
Retired History Teacher
I don’t know if my comment was posted, so I tried again.
What’s “lost” about this art? It’s been legal again since 1978, which is when I started. It’s a popular hobby out here among the un-hip, and has been for a lifetime now. I know scores of people who brew, and they’re not even young.
There’s something ‘Cosmopolitan’ about rediscovering lost arts that the cultural elite flies over every day. You want to avoid that born-yesterday snob thing.
Harsh. I guess my thinking was it’s lost on the popular culture…which was the point. When you tell people you made beer they look at you like you just said you built a nuclear reactor….that’s all I’m trying to say. Maybe you should have a beer…just sayin’
As someone who’s been homebrewing for over thirty years, off and on, I welcome you to the ranks of ale-wives.
And out of my vast experience, a few comments:
1) You left out a very important step: pitching the yeast! The wort must be cool first. Chilling the wort immediately is good, but not required. The yeast can be “started” in advance of pitching. Save a pint-and-half bottle, which some good imports can be had in. Before adding any adjuncts or boiling the wort, put the yeast in the bottle, then fill with wort, cap the bottle under a fermlock, and set aside. In twelve hours or so, the yeast will be active and multiplying. When added to the wort, it will take off running, so to speak.
2) Cascade hops are useful (I’ve brewed with them many times) but there are literally dozens of other varieties with distinctive aromas and bittering qualities. One size does not fit all.
3) The same is true with yeast: lager and ale yeasts are very different, and there are sub-varieties of both.
4) Bottling: save your empties, but don’t bother with screw-top bottles – they don’t cap properly. Also, when saving bottles, not all disposable long-necks are created equal. Some have a lot more glass in them than others. Those are stronger, more durable, and more desirable. Imports that were bottled overseas are often bottled in heavier glass. (I still have several cases of actual returnable bottles. You’d have to pry them out of my cold dead hands.)
5) Krausening (i.e. natural conditioning in the bottle): the best thing to do is mix up a quart or so of sugar syrup (8 oz of corn sugar for a five gallon batch), put it into a clean carboy or stockpot, then siphon the finished beer from the fermenter into the carboy. This will leave behind any sediment and evenly mix the bottling sugar with the beer. Then bottle right away. Do not fill bottles and then add sugar to each bottle – that way lies flat beer and/or exploding bottles.
6) Cleaning bottles: run some water into every bottle as soon as you pour it. This keeps any remaining sediment or sugar from drying onto the bottom. For cleaning, get some fine steel jewelry chain. Drop a foot of chain into the bottle and swirl it at the bottom – it scours any deposits away.
7) Drying bottles: racks from derelict dishwashers are primo.
Chicago water is just fine (never brewed with anything else). Elsewhere, get the mineral content from your water service (they should have a sheet).
Also, you can get your gear and supplies from stores that cater to the homebrewer. There are several in the Chicago area – Brew-n-Grow has five stores alone.
As others have mentioned, wine is far easier to make. Click over to The Winemaking Home Page (http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp) for recipes and tips. You’ve already got everything you need to make a batch. I bottled a batch of “Grape Juice Wine” yesterday (8 cans of concentrate, 4 lbs of sugar, red wine yeast). It’s a cheap and easy “starter wine” with the added benefit of being a decent table wine. If you’ve got a ready supply of fruit then you need to buy more carboys.
If your beer doesn’t need aging, and your kits don’t, then consider using 9 2-liter soda bottles instead of the 50 glass bottles. It saves a lot of time but… caution… you will have some oxygen migration through the plastic so you should limit the storage time to no more than 6 months. Darn! I just have to drink this beer before it goes bad.
Homebrewing is truly a joy, both to create and consume! With my rag-tag group of friends, we have formed our own Backyard Brewing Society. We are convinced that when society really does come to a grinding halt, our place in a new “tribe” will be lofty and important. Why? Because we can make beer.
I had not considered this! I like the way you think.
Cheap Wort Chiller: Menard’s (they’re in Chicago); go to plumbing dept, look for 1) Plastic tubing for either end of the coil. Length = distance from your sink to the boiling pot on the stove x2 plus a few feet. (eg: 8 feet to stove = 16 plus a few feet of tube) Diameter of tubing = close fit to the 2) prepackaged 10′ soft copper coil (1/2″ is good). 3) Adapter fitting to go from your plastic tubing to a garden hose. 4) 3x tubing clamps to hold the plastic to the soft coil and hose adapter with a tight seal. 5) garden hose to sink adapter.
Assembly: cut plastic tubing in (about) half so it can reach to the stove and back to drain down your sink. 1 clamp slipped on one end of one plastic tubing, fit hose adapter into tubing, clamp down (don’t screw it so tight it cuts the plastic!). Hose-to-sink adapter goes into hose fitting, there are multiple configurations depending on your sink threading. Note:you’ll have to unscrew the tip of your sink fitting to use this setup, relax, have a homebrew. The coil: The flat soft copper coil is darn near ready to use as is, all you need to do is gently stretch the coil like a slinky so it looks like the $$$ cooling coils, and bend one end of the copper so it rises up next to the other end, this way, your plastic tubing stays out of the boiling wort. Put the two remaining hose clamps on appropriate ends of the plastic tubes, put the plastic tubes on the copper tubing and clamp down, do NOT screw down and crush the copper or cut the plastic. You’re done!
To use, I put a *drained* coil into the last few minutes of the boil to sterilize it, along with the aroma hops or just before. When you want to cool the wort, hook up to the sink, run cold water until the wort comes down to yeast-safe temp, and you’re golden. Note: the draining end of the plastic tubing will have really hot water coming out of it at the start, be careful! Weigh the draining end down with something so a newly filled tube of hot water doesn’t get pulled by gravity out of your sink to make a hot mess on the floor.
I’ve been brewing over 20 years. Branch out in to mead and cider, thank me later! There are toasted oak cubes to get fancy with those. Two glass carbouys to rack into, and carbouy handles to carry them, is a cheap and nice addition, plus, you can start a second batch right away, sometimes using the already activated 2 inches of yeast to really jumpstart fermentation. Gotta be sterile! A racking cane is so worth it. Bottle on your dishwasher door, so cleanup is simple. Keeping cold wort sterile so you can kreusen with it is more difficult than just using bottling glucose/dextrose(corn sugar). Look, maltose is just broken down into glucose anyways, and bottling corn sugar is pure dextrose/glucose, so go ahead and use it (no fructose, it’s nice to sweeten and cook with if you’re trying to get fructose out of your life!). A little oatmeal in the boil for mouth feel is wonderful. I use roast barley (400L) as a caffeine free coffee substitute sometimes. It’s delicious and a fraction of coffee cost! I even made a tea out of a variety of roasted barleys and other grains to get an idea what they taste like pure (beer nerd alert).
Next step: Home CO2 system! $150 gets you everything you need, and you can even carbonate 2L plastic bottles with a cheap adapter = home soda with your own formulas!
Secret: Get your friends homebrewing by teaching them. They’ll start giving you free beer to see if their sensei approves.
Teaching yourself to brew is an adventure, it’s what I did, but the way to advance quickly is to join (or form) a local homebrew club. You can find local clubs on the American Homebrewers Association website at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/ . See “Directories”, “Find a homebrew club”.
On-line brew forums are also a good way to learn, but watching or assisting in a brew session is better. You also get ideas for better equipment without the trial and error problem. I’m on version 4 of my all-grain brew rig, and it’s the most efficient (82%) and least expensive of all of them.
Charlie