I am quite new to brewing. I am on my 4th kit. I am now looking to break
past the kits and start looking at other recipes to experiment with. I found
with wine that many recipes that I have found in books and online are not
tried recipes and tend to turn out not as good as expected. Is this the case
with beer recipes also or are there some good books and online sites to find
good recipes?

Roy Boy wrote:
[color=blue]
> I am quite new to brewing. I am on my 4th kit. I am now looking to
> break past the kits and start looking at other recipes to experiment
> with. I found with wine that many recipes that I have found in books
> and online are not tried recipes and tend to turn out not as good as
> expected. Is this the case with beer recipes also or are there some
> good books and online sites to find good recipes?[/color]

There are hundreds of books and dozens of homebrewing sites.

[url]http://www.ebrew.com/beer_books/complete_joy_home_brewing.htm[/url]

Like anything, it all depends on what you want.
Start with books by old hands at the homebrew trade,
get the basics down, branch out.

Google around for homebrew supply websites, examine their book
offerings, look for reviews of said books on google.

If you have a good homebrew gear store near you, wander in
look at what they have, ask questions. Ask for tried and true
books.

Google around for articles on the varieties of hops and hopping
systems. There are some good articles around. Hops has probably
more than anything to do with what beer you get than about
anything else, except light, amber, dark.

Then check yeasts. Ale yeast is different then lager beer
yeast, et al. There are lots of yeasts to chose from.
The secrets of starting a yeast culture.

Malt, extracts, start from scratch grain?
I used to use malt, cheap, hard to screw up.
Avoid the cheap canned extracts.

This will give you a good head start to understanding
the basics. There is actually a LOT to be found
to start from with google.





--
"There is a word in Newspeak," said Syme.**"I*don't
know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like
a duck.**It is*one*of*those*interesting*words*that
have two contradictory meanings.**Applied*to*an
opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree
with, it is praise."
****-George*Orwell*"Nineteen*Eighty-Four"


Cheerful Charlie

It sounds like you started making wine before beer. If so I might be
able to save you a wee bit of agony. With wine a couple campden
tablets were sufficient for sanitization. With beer you want to think
more like hospital sanitization. If something is going to touch your
beer, have it sanitized first. I managed to toss my first couple
batches because I figured what was good for wine would be good for
beer. Not even close. Good luck.

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:43:03 -0700, "Roy Boy" <roy@comcast.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>I am quite new to brewing. I am on my 4th kit. I am now looking to break
>past the kits and start looking at other recipes to experiment with. I found
>with wine that many recipes that I have found in books and online are not
>tried recipes and tend to turn out not as good as expected. Is this the case
>with beer recipes also or are there some good books and online sites to find
>good recipes?
>[/color]

"Richard L Walker" <rlwalker@granis.net> wrote in message
news:hok4q1hp9ahhcig8c3d1tcdh7u7gbshqu6@4ax.com...[color=blue]
> It sounds like you started making wine before beer. If so I might be
> able to save you a wee bit of agony. With wine a couple campden
> tablets were sufficient for sanitization. With beer you want to think
> more like hospital sanitization. If something is going to touch your
> beer, have it sanitized first. I managed to toss my first couple
> batches because I figured what was good for wine would be good for
> beer. Not even close. Good luck.
>[/color]
I have only had one problem, a kit said that I could add more sugar to the
primary and it caused too much foam clogging the trap and the lid blew off.
I have gotten a larger primary.

Roy Boy wrote:[color=blue]
> primary and it caused too much foam clogging the trap and the lid blew
> off. I have gotten a larger primary.[/color]

Use a blow-off tube for the krausening period; and run it into a bowl; that
way the stuff doesn't blow off the trap and 'stuff' doesn't run all over
the floor. If you fill the bowl with water though, it sometimes does get
sucked back into the carboy from my experience.


--
subjugate the rhyme and rock with the rhythm
only got one line to balk all the schizm