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Have you ever "homebrewed" fermented beverages?
A few questions for those who have tried homebrewing (and general thread on homebrewing in general)
- Have you ever tried homebrewing?
- What were lessons learned?
- Did you regret the up-front investment?
- Do you bottle or keg?
- What are your favorite recipes?
- What is your setup like?
Feel free to answer only one question, all of them, or none of them and share an anecdote!
I have brewed mead before, and made probably 200 gallons total?
I will answer the easy ones first:
Not at all. I don't know that I have come out ahead by any stretch, but that isn't really the point. I have lots of bottles of various flavor combinations on hand for any kind of event.
I have done both, and actually bottled after kegging on a couple of occasions to have a bit of carbonation.
None of my recipes are necessarily repeatable because they are all basically just honey, whatever fruit I had in the freezer, and water (sometimes). I have found that blackberries make almost everything fantastic, and my favorite batch ever was a couple pounds of blackberries along with 25 pounds of random grapes from a friend's vine and then enough honey to get the batch to the relevant gravity (I would need to look up the actual numbers).
Five gallon food-grade buckets with airlocks and a big spoon. it is not elaborate.
Now for the hard one
Brewing at a home scale is fiddly work and the same recipe twice will not necessarily make the same end product. Yeast vary a lot, temperatures matter, whole fruit can vary wildly in sugar density, and a million other factors will make one batch heavenly and the next batch just okay.
It is a very forgiving hobby with almost no time investment in terms of actual work but lots of time waiting. It is a good reason to have friends over and hang out too. Sample some previous batches while making a fresh batch and bottling a batch, it is a good time for all.
I would highly recommend anyone that enjoys alcohol to give it a shot if they have a vaguely cool place to do it (like a basement).
I haven't brewed anything since we moved to a single story house, as nowhere in the building stays perpetually cool and is also safe from being tampered with by kids, but I intend to pick it back up as soon as life allows it.
That's expert territory as far as I'm concerned. Is that 200 gallons of mead?? And why specifically mead over other fermentable beverages, have you tried others and preferred mead? (can't say I've ever had mead.) Do you have any particularly amazing/awful experiences during all of that time (regardless of repeatability)?
Mead was primarily chosen because I had some bottles while traveling that I really enjoyed, but never found anything commercially that really hit the mark.
The only awful experience was a test batch to try peanut butter powder. It remains the only batch that was ever dumped in full.
As for 200 gallons, this was over a decade. Using five gallon batches, it ends up just being like four batches a year.
Sounds like a worthwhile investment if you've found value in doing this over a full decade!
What kind of ABV is mead? And do you have any fellow mead lovers in your life you can share your hobby with?
Mead by definition is anything where 51% of the fermentable sugar comes from honey, so ABV can be all over.
If you look it up commercially you will find a lot of 4-6% stuff but mine is usually 16%ish.
Not home brewing in the common sense, but I've made ginger ale using the simplest recipe possible: water, sugar, yeast and ground ginger in a reused (but super clean) two-liter bottle. Although I think the idea of home brewing beer is pretty neat, I rarely drink alcohol these days so I wouldn't know what to do with that much beer. I also rarely drink soda, but the investment in two-liters of soda is really small. I'll probably try other brewed sodas in the future. Anyone want to suggest another flavor?
My dad used to make root beer at home. I liked it.
Good idea. Any chance you have the recipe he used?
I found several recipes online, most of them using "root beer extract", which is... root beer flavored syrup? But I did find a few others with a mix of herbs.
I also found that root beer was originally made with sassafras, but "In 1960, lab studies on rats found that a compound in sassafras root caused cancer in rats, leading to the ban of sassafras root extract by the FDA." So I'll be looking at the less-carcinogenic recipes.
Sorry, that was a long time ago. I was in elementary school.
I tried this too. It turned out horrible though. I think it turned out more like ginger beer. Nowadays I stick to fermenting bread.
Never had anything blow up on me (bottle failure) but I certainly had the ceiling coated a couple times with a particularly active secondary fermentation cycle when I'd open a bottle. lol
Another kombucha brewer here. It was my first and only home brewing beverage.
I did it for 5ish years and enjoyed it. It did get to a point to where I was too tired to deal with it so I was left with either a lot of kombucha or a lot of vinegar.
I didn't even consider kombucha, and I'm not sure I've even had it. What kind of yeast do you use? And what temperatures do you ferment at?
You use what's called a SCOBY or a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. It's a weird rubbery puck like object that grows on the top in layers and you ferment at room temperature.
I just googled this, that's the strangest thing! I was wondering how it has such low ABV...
Grab a raw kombucha and use the bits at the bottom, combine with previously brewed room temp black tea and sugar (can't remember the proportions but it should be online). The bits are the yeast and good stuff. You'll eventually get a reusable puck.
I'm doing my best to follow this advice, but I'm actually having trouble finding raw kombucha. I'll eventually get lucky.
Farmers markets are a good place to find unpasteurized kombucha!
You don't even need bits. There's bacteria and yeast suspended in the liquid even if the kombucha is strained. Most of the bits are cellulose byproduct from the bacteria and from what I understand there's not a ton of bacteria actually with those. So the obsession to maintain a scoby or to get a scoby starter is kind of silly as it's the liquid where most of the action is.
I haven't, had a roommate a few years ago who built out an entire fermentation chemistry lab in his closet. He experimented with all sorts of different things, pineapple, kiwis, combinations. Worst thing he ever succeeded in making was carbonated yogurt, he loved it (it was horrible) — don't try it.
He's still fermenting things, but now in his garage seven years later, so I assume it was worth the investment for him.
I've made mead a couple of times. It's really pretty easy, especially compared to wine or beer where you have a lot more risk of contaminants - since honey's antimicrobial, it's pretty safe. And it's an easy process, although I don't remember all the specifics (it's been years).
It was basically a pint of honey and a packet of yeast (I think it was champagne yeast?), in a big glass jug-- three or more gallons, I've forgotten-- with a bubbler in the top (a little plastic widget that has an up-and-down curve in it that you fill with pure alcohol, so it lets the gas from inside out but doesn't allow outside air back in). You can add different flavoring components-- I think I used vanilla bean and orange peel powder or zest.
Then it just sits in a nice dark corner for a few months, blooping until the blooping mostly stops. I've probably forgotten steps, but it was a really simple process, and I did enjoy the results.
That's fascinating. I recently bought a book on homebrewing, and apparently when a batch goes wrong contaminants are almost always to blame. I never knew that about honey, I'll have to consider giving it a shot! Also, I've never had mead, I assume its similar to...wine?
Yeah, I'd say so. It's really just honey wine. The alcohol content depends on the kind of yeast; I believe we used champagne yeast because it produces the highest ABV (still not huge, it's a wine, not a distilled product). You'll get the flavor of the honey as the main body, so pick one with a profile you like - I'm a fan of orange blossom as a good all-rounder, but we did not have a good result with chestnut, it came out weird and bitter.
Now I kind of want to reacquire the equipment and give it another go. Hmmm.
It's a sweet wine
Not necessarily, you can find dry meads relatively easily and you can make a dry mead as easily as you can make a dry wine.
I've home brewed on multiple occasions but ultimately, I gave up because what was out there was far superior to what I could do when it comes to beer. To answer a few of your questions
What were lessons learned? Temperature control was pretty important. I lived in a pretty hot humid area when I did this so fermentation temps were basically what I kept my place at during the day when I was at work and I'm not one to blast the AC even when I'm at home. As you expect the fermentation temp, even in the "coolest" parts of my home was fairly warm which likely affected the outcome. Another lesson was the importance of sanitation before doing anything. I come from a lab/microbiology background so I'm quite familiar with microbial contamination but without access to the same type of sterilization equipment, you'll have to be a bit more careful and work a bit harder. This isn't BSL 4 type shit but good aseptic technique helps.
Did you regret the up-front investment? Absolutely not. There are all in one kits online or if you have a home brewing shop near you, they can set you up. Is it more than buying a 4-pack or bomber of craft beer ? Sure but bombers or mini growlers get pricey so the difference isn't as much as you think.
Do you bottle or keg? Bottled. It's fairly simple and quite fun if I'm honest. Your local homebrew shop probably sells caps by the bag full for a few bucks so it's definitely worth doing. I even made my own beer label with a nonsensical description.
What is your setup like? Very simple set up of a glass carboy, an airlock, siphoning equipment, etc. I mentioned I did this a few times so I reused the equipment I had in an all in one kit.
As person who cares deeply about food and is quite curious about this all, I highly recommend home brewing at least once. Understanding the process of how stuff things are made really helped me develop a greater appreciation of when people do it right. Honestly, when it comes to food, I feel everyone should take this approach.
What temperatures were you fermenting at?
Thank you for sharing, I was worried bottling would be miserable.
Apologies for not reading more carefully and thinking this was about beer and not fermented beverages, though the process of extracting sugar to allow yeast to fart out alcohol remains the same. From my basic understanding of making something like mead, I think my comments are still helpful.
The kit I had was for an ale and I made it in the sweltering summer of Texas. I set my thermometer to 77 F in the summers which in the coolest, darkest part of my old place, may have meant I hit the target temp of low 70s? I honestly had no clue and the bottle to bottle difference was massive, though that could have been for a whole bunch of reasons. I can't imagine mead or kombucha would ever ferment at temps as low as what's required for something like a lager (mid 40s in some cases) but if so, it may be useful to use the seasons to your advantage if you don't have great temperature control.
If you have a large fermenting chamber, I could see it being an absolute chore but I got a 1 gallon carboy which gave me about 8.5 bottles so it found it quite enjoyable.
One thing I didn't mention was how much I enjoyed tasting each step of the process and each ingredient to really understand what it was contributing to the final product. This may not be as interesting for something like mead but tasting the mash, wort, even the hops was really fun. Even though I haven't homebrewed in years, it was really a great learning experience.
I live on a farm with acres and acres of 'cow apples'; turns out that apples from seed are yucky 99%+ of the time. We have some areas that are overgrown with apple trees, you find some good tasting varieties that were propagated from cuttings in the hedgerow, these seeded in and produced a lot of trees that make apples that horses love but humans think are yuck... Unless you press them and turn them to cider.
We borrowed a press from some friends and filled several sheetrock buckets with cider and fermented them. Whenever I wanted some, I just ladled it out. I probably drank too much alcohol that winter because when I stopped I felt kinda warm and antsy.
I started homebrewing about 15 years ago, mostly with the intention of creating something cheap that me and my friends at the D&D table could get completely wasted on. I would throw some Lalvin D47 and some sugar into a gallon jug of cider from Wal-mart, slap a balloon on the top with a hole poked in it, and let it sit for about 2 weeks before siphoning it off into a clean gallon jug. It tasted pretty terrible, but it was strong at around 13-15% and was an incredibly cost effective way to get drunk. After focusing on cider for a few years I eventually branched out into making Mead and Beer as well.
My favorite lesson learned was when brewing an Imperial Stout about 10 years ago. I was away at work the day after I put this batch into Primary fermentation, and got a call from my roommate in complete panic shouting "Your beer exploded!" I had never made this type of beer before, and had used a standard airlock and amount of headspace without knowing that the fermentation for this beer was much more active than I was accustomed to. The airlock completely clogged, pressure built up, and eventually it went Kaboom. The airlock was launched so hard skyward that it embedded itself halfway into the ceiling drywall, and my new batch of beer erupted like a volcano all over our kitchen floor. Lesson learned: Use a blowoff tube - it's better than an airlock.
Making (terrible) hard cider was super cheap and hardly an investment at all - definitely worth it. But when stepping up to Mead/Beer, there was a significant investment in materials that I'd say is only worth it if you're going to stick with the hobby.
I have done both. When bottling, I only use the flip-top bottles because I'm terrified of bottle capping machines (mostly thanks to that scene from Breaking Bad) They are more expensive but worth the ease of use.
My favorite was just a simple standard mead. What set it apart from the rest? I forgot about it and left it in a closet for about 10 years. Every other cider or mead I've made have been rough around the edges - mostly dry and tannic, but this one was so amazingly smooth and crisp. So my advice... the most important part of any recipe will be time. Either learn to be patient, or make beer instead (it's drinkable sooner)
I have a 10 gallon stock pot that I use for the "Brew in a Bag" all grain method, multiple 5 gallon plastic carboys for primary and secondary fermentation, and a collection of different colored flip top bottles.
A few questions for those who have tried homebrewing (and general thread on homebrewing in general)
Checking in as another home brewer. I started during Covid where the house we were renting at the time got a bumper crop of Concord grapes (maybe 30lbs) and when I went to the local brew store to learn more I found out that 1) Concord grapes make terrible wine, 2) 30lbs makes like 7 bottles of wine, and 3) they sold bulk grapes from really nice wineries. So while I walked in looking for an initial kit I walked out with an order for 100lbs of grapes, 2 buckets, 1 carboy, and a whole lot of excitement for what was to come. I've made wine every year since (I'm on year 4) and have increased from 100lbs a year to 400lbs.
Lessons learned
*For wine, you get one shot a year to get it right and will find out down the line how things went. You usually know after primary if any initial things went wrong (~1 month in) and if things have improved or worsened after ~6 months. But a big benefit is....
*Wine is easier to get right than beer. The way I had it explained to me is that Germans specialize in beer because, in typical German behavior, everything must be just so. The equipment must be sanitized perfectly. You must have the right ingredients, heat to the right heat, follow the recipe to the T. Whereas the French and Italians specialize in wine, and living up to their laissez faire stereotype, things are most relaxed. You can work more with feel. You don't necessarily need yeast or sulfites or anything really. In the right environment mash almost wants to become wine. This gave me a lot of confidence as I stumbled my way through in the beginning.
*Find folks in real life that brew or make wine. The internet is great, but even with it's infinite wisdom it can be hard to find answers to specific issues or questions. Some things are just "of course that is what happens, why would anyone need to know that." Which is just untrue if you're new. I found that my local brew shop is really great for giving suggestions or helping me when I start going down weird, experimentation paths. The other is friends and family. I ended up reconnecting with 2 of my cousins as one had gotten into wine making in his early thirties as well and the other has a small brewery. They we incredibly helpful and it gave me people to share my excitement with and smaple everything from great outcomes to horrid experiments. There is a great community around it.
*Equipment takes up a lot of room. We live in a small one bedroom house and I had to get creative about how and where I store my equipment. Much of it lives in the attic for most of the year, but honestly it's so cheap I'm considering just buying and selling each year. A new carboy is 35 dollars and I only use 3, but that is a lot of space to take up with glass. However for my barrels, those were $200 each and they are more rough and tumble. Like any hobby, even if you start small the amount of gear and grow exponentially.
*The wine community can be pretty pedantic. Not the local one, but the one online. I had a batch last year that I hadn't diluted enough and I ended up with a pretty sweet Zinfandel with a high brix after fermentation. The alcohol level was high enough that I couldn't repitch as nothing, even champagne yeast, would die. So I went online to see if anyone had ever had this situation and asked whether they suggested that I got for something more like a port or try to distill it into brandy. The number of folks who informed me that "I couldn't make a port because I was using Zinfandel grapes and I was in the port region of Portugal" was obnoxious. Yes, no shit. I just trying to make lemonade over here. I really like the reddit r/prisonhooch community for this as folks have a ton of advice and very little judgement. I made a seaweed wine and that community, along with my local community, was so supportive and fun with it.
*Make sure you enjoy whatever beverage you're making. I end up with around ~125 bottles a year now and to be honest I don't drink that much wine. After a while another bottle of "homebrew" as a gift falls flat, so just be ready to have a massive amount of booze you need to drink, gift, or store. I now have hundreds of bottles in my work storage.
Up-front investment
Not a day. It's a very fun hobby that builds community and can be great for engaging friends or even reasons to throw parties. Everyone wants to come on bottling day!
Bottle or keg?
I'm more in the wine game so for me it's bottle. I have actually made a keg of wine before but because I'm quite "testy" with my ferments it made it harder to see what was happening.
Favorite Recipes
I was actually pretty impressed by my seaweed wine, otherwise they're all pretty much the same. Fruit + yeast + time.
I've home brewed quite a bit, using both kits and whole grain. My setup grew over time from a 6 gallon bucket and a carboy with miscellaneous bits, to chiller coils, and kegging systems.
I don't drink much personally, so I brew less now than I used too. I will make batches, and bottle them in liter bottles for gift giving. I brew beer, hard cider, ginger ale, and root beer. I tend to make seasonal batches of things you don't find in the store, which makes them a more fun gift.
I think the big thing I would recommend is making sure you like the process. Brewing is a lot of fun when you can take your time, be methodical, maybe have a friend help and use it as a chance to hang out and socialize.
The more you enjoy the process, the better the beer. This is because good beer (or anything else) can be good or completely skunked based on the thoroughness of your sanitizing, temperature monitoring, etc. If you enjoy monitoring the fine details of a process, then you will tend to not rush and do a better job.
Additionally, bottling isn't hard, but it takes a lot of 12oz bottles for a 5 gallon batch. So I preferred larger bottles and mini kegs when I was getting started. That also made me plan tasting afternoons with my friends because I'm not going to open a liter bottle just for myself.
Also, get to know your yeast, because that is an unappreciated difference. Especially for things like ginger ale, a high quality champagne yeast will taste way better than other varieties.
Have a good night!
Just to clarify something, "skunked" beer, in the industry, has a pretty specific meaning: bitter acids from the hops breaking down from UV light exposure, the result being a skunky aroma from an extremely potent compound that goes by 3-MBT (search that term and the first link that comes up is my blog, heh). This is not from microbial (sanitation) sources. You may know this aroma from Corona or Heineken in their clear/green bottles (but not from draught or the can, as they block UV). Mitigate this partially by using brown bottles or fully by using modified hop acids that resist such breakdown (MGD, High Life, etc). I could go on, but I'll pull up here.
Yes, storage is a big part of the process, including location of the carboy, color of the bottles, etc. What I tried to convey was there is a range of outcomes based on a variety of factors. The more you enjoy the process, the more likely you will end up with good beer.
This is a fun topic as it's something I recently took an interest in.
I'm going to try summarizing answers and then if you want you can read my longer initial response I wrote for extra detail.
Have you ever tried homebrewing?
Yes, just started again recently but the goal is fermented soda instead of alcohol.
What were lessons learned?
Just try something and see how it goes. Keep it super simple initially. Don't over think it, there's so much conflicting advice on the Internet which usually means there's several right ways to do something. A lot of fermented foods and drinks aren't as delicate as people fear they are. At worst you accidentally kill it and just start over.
Did you regret the up-front investment?
Nah, haven't spent more than $20 on bottles, a big jar, and a hand siphon.
Do you bottle or keg?
Bottle
What are your favorite recipes?
None yet, but fingers crossed the ginger pineapple or ginger pear turns out!
What is your setup like?
A big jar on the counter, a flip top bottle and a screw top bottle, and a cheap siphon from Amazon. The siphon is absolutely worth it and even works well if you want to pump the liquid from one jar rather than as a constant stream. Very useful!
I don't like alcohol but, I really enjoy the artistry and science in brewing and fermenting. It's hard to shake the sense of magic even if you understand the science. You'll not convince me it's not properly alchemy to turn one beverage into another.
I tried kombucha last year which went alright. Started with some farmers market kombucha that I thought was ok. I added the last of a bottle to a fresh batch of sweet tea and over a couple weeks a scoby formed which was neat to see. However life got busy and I was a bit put off after trying to revive the kombucha starter after it had spent a few months in the fridge. What ever yeast and bacteria survived created an awful tasting beverage and I scrapped the project.
Recently I pulled out the big 1 gallon widemouth jar I bought for the kombucha to try making fizzy fermented ginger soda. This in my opinion is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than kombucha. I bleach sanitized my jars (which I've seen frowned open but look, at least there's no doubt in my mind I've got rouge bacteria in the bottles before I start). I've been doing an open air ferment (with folded cheese cloth rubber banded over the mouth of the jar) to minimize alcohol present. I'm not really a ginger person but I'll be honest, I really like the taste of the ginger soda. It's spicy and after fermenting it's got a more complex taste to it. I made my first bottle last week where I added about a cup of starter to an IKEA flip top bottle and added a blueberry pomegranate juice to fill the rest of the bottle. It was kind of a weak tasting juice but after 3 days on the counter and a day in the fridge it had a very nice level of fizz to it!
There's so much on the internet that all disagrees and can feel overwhelming to start so my philosophy has been to keep things simple and easy, and if it works then I won't mind continuing. For my starter initially I did about 4 or 5 cups of water to about 100 grams of fresh shredded ginger and 100 grams of sugar. I have a small scale so doing an even weight of each is the easiest to track. Then every few days I added another half cup of water until the jar was a little over half full with another 50 grams of sugar and 50 grams of ginger. Then I started tasting the starter ever few days to see when it stopped tasting sweet before adding a bit more sugar to feed the yeast. The jar stays in the corner of the kitchen and seems to carry on just fine despite not babying it like a lot of guides recommend. When I was ready to bottle I threw a last refresh of ginger and sugar (50 grams each) into the jar a day before. Then bottled the following afternoon and let it sit on the counter. I'm getting ready to try a second batch tomorrow with pear and pineapple juice and am hopeful at least one will be tasty.
It's very magical and surprisingly tolerant of just eye balling it. Some days I've just added a spoon of sugar if it had been 3-4 days since I'd last checked and I didn't have time to do a proper taste. Fermenting seems to largely be about letting nature do what it's good at so if you're curious just give something to looks fun a shot! Watch a few videos and then take the average of what you learn for your first attempt and then improvise from there.
This captures precisely what I find so fascinating about homebrewing. Transmuting grain into ale feels like pure alchemy to me.
Sorta? I was president and brewmaster of the university food and fermentation science club Back In The Day. We'd come up with a recipe each month and get together at the pilot brewery to make the wort and then bring it home in a carboy to pitch and ferment. It was up to us to turn it into alcohol and get it ready for consumption off campus, and I converted and old fridge into a 4-tap, 6-corny-keg kegerator (matte black with yellow racing stripes) that unfortunately died about a year later.
Long story short, I have not brewed at home, but I have fermented and kegged at home. No regrets. One lesson learned was to not use too much smoked malt in your smoked porter or else you'll get a band-aid porter (from the excess phenols in the malt).
I made kombucha. It's a very low-investment kind of hobby: a largeish wide mouthed jar with a cover, a couple of bottles with the wire swing cap to keep in the carbonation, black tea, and sugar. Bought a kombucha scoby from some hippies in Berkeley. I think I kept at it for about 1.5-2 years then got bored, but it made a decently refreshing beverage, nothing life changing though.
As teenagers me and my brother brewed some beer in our basement. As a teenager it was totally worth the time and money.
My first attempt at homebrewing was some strawberry wine. I used a 25 gallon brewing bucket for my initial ferment and then racked it all off into smaller demijohns. I spent maybe £100 total on all the equipment and ingredients, including a few big bags of frozen strawberries from Costco. I also got some freebies from a lady at work who used to homebrew in her younger days.
I can't remember how long it was before I first tasted it, but I remember being excited: this was it! I made alcohol! Real alcohol! It didn't taste terrible either, the nose and flavour was lovely (to me at least, but I'm very much not a sommelier) but because it was such a young wine the finish was like drinking rocket fuel, haha. My mum didn't seem to mind though and she ended up guzzling a lot of the stuff I bottled and corked before it got a chance to really age to any significant degree. Fruit or country wines aren't really one that you can tuck away for 10 years and enjoy as a fine vintage anyway.
My lesson learned would be: take the ABV measuring seriously. I wasn't very good about using the hydrometer before/ after fermentation so had no hope of calculating the final gravity, I just knew it was boozy.
I agree with u/lupusthethird that once you start attempting mead it gets rather pricey - especially using good quality honey. It's a fun hobby if you have some space in a dark cupboard and you're patient and keep all your equipment clean. The Homebrew forum has some really good recipes and advice for beginners.
Yes I do! I made a topic on this last year: https://tildes.net/~food/1b2n/brewing_your_own_rice_wine_makgeolli_doburoku_chojiu_etc
Since then I've brewed several small batches of makgeolli, since it is incredibly easy and quick to make; the average brew time is around 7-15 days. It's fun using different techniques or ratios of sweet rice with other starches, recently I added some millet as well and it turned out great.
Also, it's not fermenting, but I made some Japanese umeshu (plum wine) last year out of ripe yellow plums, rock sugar, and corn vodka (very cheap here in Canada). Two batches, one aged for three months and one for six months. Both turned out wonderful, served on the rocks and great for sipping. https://nouka-recipe.com/umesyu/
Thanks, very interesting discussion you've linked