On Apr 5, 10:20 am, "Lactose" <Lactos...@gmail.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi all, I had a few questions about my upcoming first attempt at home
> brewing. I've read a bit on this list; everyone seems to have so much
> knowledge.
>
> A bit of background--although I've never had the chance to try this
> yet, my wife did try it once about a decade ago. Unfortunately, her
> attempt ended badly (I haven't got much more information than it was
> "really, really bad"). This has soured her on the entire idea of
> homebrewing. I would still like to give it a try (it sounds both fun
> and rewarding), but would like to have a nice easy-to-make batch or
> two at minimal cost to convince her that it a) is possible/can produce
> something that tastes reasonable, b) is not "too" expensive, and c)
> won't drop a huge amount of cleanup work in her lap.
>
> We get relatively cheap beer that works out to about $5.50/gallon.
> It's not the best in the world, but it's drinkable. I'd like to try.
> to aim for this or ideally cheaper, especially for the first couple of
> forays into it. If it tastes good (hopefully better than what we
> buy), it's easier to justify spending more.
>
> As for flavor, we'd like just about anything (light, dark, etc.).
> Where we grew up, the beer we liked had around 6.50-7% alcohol in it,
> so I'd rather avoid the recipes that come out with amounts in the 3ish
> range.
>
> As for local homebrewing options--we are now living in Western New
> York, perhaps someone knows some good ones. If not, maybe someon has
> some online suggestions.
>
> I think I have most of the most basic hardware necessary, I'm
> especially looking for recipe/supply suggestions with an eye on ease
> and price.[/color]

For your first go, I'd stick with a nice simple extract recipe. If
you have a local homebrew store (abbreviated in this group as LHBS)
just go in, explain your situation and they'll probably have a bunch
of recipes they can put together for you depending on your taste.

A really simple recipe for an American Ale would be somthing like:

7 lbs of pale malt extract
2 oz Cascade hops
Wyeast 1056 or WLP001 yeast (if you want to save some money on yeast,
ask your LHBS about dry yeast)
2/3 cup of corn sugar (for priming the bottles)

Bring your pot to boil (about 3/4 full) and turn off the heat. Pour
in the extract and stir until it's completely dissolved. Make sure
none is hiding on the bottom of the pot. Bring it back up to a boil.
(Keep an eye on it, it's going to want to boil over at this point).
Once it's boiling (just a nice slow boil) throw in 1 oz of the hops
and mark the time. 30 minutes later throw in another 1/2 oz. of the
hops. 25 minutes after that (55 minutes since the first hops) put in
the last 1/2 oz of hops. Five minutes after that, turn off the heat.

Put the whole pot in in a sink full of ice water to cool. Put the
lid on the pot to keep anything from getting in your wort. When the
temperature of your wort is below 75 degrees, pour the whole pot into
your sanitized fermenting bucket (your LHBS can tell you how to
sanitize). Top up the bucket to five gallons using clean water (some
people will boil the water the night before to make sure it's
sterile). Agitate this really well with a spoon to mix it and to get
a lot of air into the beer (the yeast need Oxygen when they first
start working). Take a small sample for your hydrometer if you choose
and record the reading (this will let you calculate how much alcohol
is in your beer after fermenting). Then simply add your yeast, put
the lid on, put a little water in your airlock and put this in a nice
cool dark corner of your house.

In about 3 weeks fermentation should be complete. (you can verify
this by taking hydrometer readings on consecutive days. If the
readings stay the same the fermentation's done. If they continue to
go down, the yeast is still active.) The recipe I gave you should
have a final gravity of approximately (1.013). At this point
carefully transfer this to your bottling bucket using a siphon (we
don't want any oxygen in our beer at this point), stir in the priming
sugar, and bottle into your sanitized bottles. Let this sit for
another week or two, and voila! - your first homebrew.

Once you get the basics under your belt you can start to complicate
things by adding specialty grains (which will give your beer more
character) and different hop additions as well. Then, if the
homebrew disease really takes over, you'll be building mash tuns, wort
chillers, and a three-tiered brewing sculpture by this time next year!

I glossed over a ton of stuff so read this article:
[url]http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/index.html[/url]

I can't help you with supplies in Western NY, but [url]www.morebeer.com[/url] is
a pretty good online vendor if you don't have an LHBS. If you do
have an LHBS, by all means patronize them.

Good luck,

Steve