There are many benefits to brewing your own beer and I’m going to take it one step at a time. When you are ready to get off this wild ride, take stage coach left and no one will think any less of you for it. But I bet once this journey begins, you will want to ride it until the wheels fall off.

First, brewing your own beer is a way of putting a mark on your own home bar. You can even get online and design yourself a label and then place it on your bottles, glasses and beer taps even. When company comes over, you can have them all try it. It might just become their favorite beer meaning you might just get company more often if that seems like something you would like to have.

Then, you can start marketing your beer to the local bars. Give them a taste and see if they like it. There are different ways to make this happen. You can get in touch with a local bar owner and tell them you would like to have a tasting at their bar. You offer some of your beer for free and then when people say they like the taste, the bar owner will most likely want to stock it. Make a thing of it. It’s supposed to be a fun time. So, have fun!

The next logical level is to enter into some beer events. Start locally, but again have fun. Go across the country if you want. The more exposure you get, the more buyers you get. Don’t be surprised when someone approaches you to see if you want a sponsor. Sponsorship can take you to levels you have never imagined. Nationwide distribution. Export. International attention.

By this time of course, you have expanded your enterprise to include so much more than a bucket and a kegerator. You have built your brewery into a high powered system that produces enough beer to satisfy all your orders. You’ve moved your operation to a local location that houses your brewery and invites the neighbors to wander in and have a beer. You’ve had to apply for your beer license so that you can start selling your beer and you’ve had to build a bar so that your neighbors have a comfortable place to sit. You’ve got a sign on the front of your place with your name on it and you’ve been highlighted in the paper as the local beer expert.

With a few different flavors now in your inventory, you can have a seat. Take a breath. You’re finished the first phase of Operation Your Brew. The rest of the ride goes anywhere you want it to go.

Your home bar needs more of you than anything else. But, you need a place to start and then you can start pouring your own personality into it. Let’s begin with the basics, discuss different ideas and then move on to how you can bring a bit of you to your own home bar.

The Bar

Of course, any conversation about a home bar would have to begin with the bar itself. Different types of bars normally begin with a wood décor. But, you can go with stone, marble, or leather as just a few ideas to start.

Of course, your stone or marble bar doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be framed with 2×4s and plywood. Then, cover with stone or marble veneer. Leather can be pasted on and then stylishly fastened with brass snaps. But, the wood look is the best.

Of course, you would still frame with 2×4s and plywood. But then, you want to add the nice looking finish of cedar or pine. Why use the ancient not-so-flattering wood paneling when you can have a great looking bar with the quality natural wood look of grooved paneling? No, I am not a salesperson.

You can panel the top as well. But then, add some style with trim. It’s easy and affordable just adding some trim to touch up the edges of your bar. Once the bar is ready, simply add a kegerator with a beer tap and some beer tap handles. Of course, you know what to do. Go with your favorite beer.

Décor

Starting with shelves to hold a collection of beer glasses is the first place I would go once the bar is in place. You can start collecting sets of beer mugs and glasses that represent different beer choices and different pub locations. People get real excited when they see their beer of choice on your walls or if you have a mug of an exotic bar half way around the world. Those are the types of things that start adding your personality to the bar.

Putting beer signs and mirrors on your walls is the next place for you to go. I once met a friend bartender of mine at his bar because we had plans. I arrived right on time because the beer distributor had just shown up to stock more beer in the bar. That’s the perfect time to get great stuff. I was offered a rare beer mirror that the distributor was told to send around with their drivers on deliveries and offer them as a promotion to different bars they serviced. The driver didn’t care who he was giving mirrors to and I ended up with one.

You may not have that kind of luck. But, everyone can look online for unique beer signs and mirrors that they can purchase to decorate their bar. You can start with a few just to get yourself going and then keep your ears and eyes open for opportunities.

Bar Accessories

Your bar is almost finished. But, it’s not quite ready for company yet. You have to add those types of things no one else has. It’s not as tricky as you might think. But, it does take some “good eye” action and be ready for the moment.

A Jagermeister machine is in just about every bar. But, I have rarely seen one in a home bar. Having a Jagermeister machine steps you up into the professional realm where your friends and family will really be impressed.

But, the hottest trend sweeping the nation right now is beer pong. Having a beer pong table with some great beer pong accessories will make for hours of fun when you have company over to your house. There will always be some people who won’t want to hang out in the bar. They’ll want to sit at the dining room table and talk. Well, let them. Have fun playing beer pong for hours while they talk politics on their stuffy bums.

Home bars aren’t necessarily hard to put together. A little planning and you can have an affordable home bar with very little effort. Then, start adding some of your personality to it so that it’s undeniably yours. Friends who didn’t think of it first will be very envious.

I am a beer lover and long-time homebrewer. There is no other hobby that is as satisfying as this one. I have entered many, many homebrewing competitions and have won lots of blue ribbons for my beers, including at my local County Fair (which is a huge one). In fact I had so many ribbons that I finally threw them all away and stopped entering competitions. Now I just brew what I like and drink it while browsing the internet or watching television with my wife. Yep, life is good for homebrewers.

Listen, anyone can make beer on their stove – and I mean really, really good beer. You don’t have to take it to the level that I did. If you enjoy beer one-tenth as much as I do, then I highly recommend that you at least make one batch in your lifetime, just so you can say you did it. Having brewed a batch a beer changes a person, for the better, and forever. You will then be one of my brethren.

You are going to need some simple pieces of equipment: A large pot to brew in, a big food-grade plastic bucket with a lid to ferment in, a small plastic “airlock” and rubber stopper that goes into a hole in the bucket lid, bottles and caps, and a basic bottlecap crimping tool. It also helps to have something to stir with; a big wooden spoon will do nicely.

There are only four ingredients in beer: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Malt refers to malted barley – for your first batch you will simply use packaged “malt extract.” Hops are best purchased in pellet form; they look like rabbit food. A package of dry brewers yeast costs about one dollar. Water can come from any source, but at least two gallons of it needs to be sanitized. Those 2.5 gallon water vessels from the market work nicely.

Homebrew is typically made in 5 gallon batches. This will fill two cases worth of bottles. Take my advice and go for the large, 22 oz. Bottles, as this is less bottling work. You will need 6 total gallons of starting water with about 2.5 gallons chilled in a sealed container. The plastic bucket should be a 6 gallon size. Over half a gallon of water will evaporate while you are brewing.

Here is what you do:

1. Boil 3.5 gallons of water with 6 pounds of malt extract for one hour, adding an ounce of hops at the beginning of the boil, some more hops after 45 minutes, and some more hops when you turn off the heat. Cool the pot in the sink by running water around it. Sanitize your bucket fermenter with a shot of bleach mixed into it full of water. Let that sit for a few minutes with the airlock and rubber stopper then pour out over the inside part of the bucket lid and rinse everything that the bleach solution touched with
hot water.

2. Put the chilled 2.5 gallons of water in the bucket first, then pour the brew from the pot on top of it. Do not stir. Add the yeast and seal the lid tight on the bucket and put the airlock in the stopper and the stopper in the lid-hole. Put water in the air lock. After a day or two the airlock will start bubbling.

3. After a couple weeks its time to bottle the beer. Boil 3/4 cup of sugar with 2 cups of water and add it to your bucket of beer. You can sanitize a measuring cup with hot water, or just put it through the dishwasher with heated drying on. Scoop out the beer with the measuring cup and fill the bottles leaving 1″ of space in them. Crimp the caps on and store the bottles in a cool dark area for two weeks. Clean everything.

4. After two weeks put some bottles in the fridge and enjoy.

Most of brewing is cleaning and sanitation. Everything that comes into contact with your unfermented beer, and even on bottling day after it has fermented, must be sanitized. A small shotglass of household bleach mixed with 5-6 gallons of water makes an effective sanitizing solution, given 5-10 minutes of contact time.

Don’t forget to tell me when the beer is ready to drink. If I live in a nearby state, I just may come over and taste it with you.

About the Author
Andrew Kasch is a beer lover and long-time award-winning homebrewer. Many of his recipes can be found on his website http://www.makeyourownbeer.info

Article source:
Make your Own Beer, Right on Your Stove

Before you go and run out to buy yourself a homebrew kit, you will need to consider your needs. So how much beer do you want to brew? How technical do you want to get? What flavored beer do you want? Etc… Then once you decide on all the important things, you will need a home beer brewing guide to teach you the essentials because quiet simply, the instructions that come with homebrew kits are useless at best. Then once you are well informed, it’s time to buy your kit, clean your equipment, brew your beer, and then drink it (in simple terms).

There is a variant if you would want to determine the color of your beer, and the style of your brew – other than the classic canned beer taste. You can opt to have a different set of ingredients. These are still all-extract kits though as they give you preformulated ingredients.

All extract brewing is a fairly simple process because the boiling off certain ingredients to get certain flavors has already been done for you on a mass scale. As you gain experience, it is advisable to start with partial mash brewing for more refined flavors and textures of home brewed beer. As a partial mash brewer, you are involved in boiling ingredients, choosing specialty flavorings, and crafting your beer from start to finish… and this is a lot harder than simply adding the ingredients to a pot and stirring.

The kit comes with a guide which tells you what an ingredient’s effect is to your brew. You can even choose right from the start if you want to have your extract hopped or unhopped. The hops are what determine the bitterness of your brew. You can then add the hops later in intervals to give your mix the difference from your neighbor’s – who also has an all-extract kit – beer. To give you a better ambiance while pouring youself a drink, some kits even have a keg system instead of the usual bottles.

It doesn’t matter how far you want to take your home beer brewing hobby, but it is important to start with homebrew kits to get the hang off things as you learn. Take it one step at a time and before you know it, you will be brewing world class, award winning beer from the convenience of your home or garage, or wherever you choose to stage your home brewery.

Homebrew kits will help you get started and become an expert at brewing beer at home. Luke Porter is an expert brewer who is delighted to share the secrets of brewing kits available on the market today.

Making homemade wine can a great hobby and a lot of fun to boot. There is nothing like the feeling of opening your own wine and knowing that what you created surpasses many of the high priced winery wines. However, while making wine may be fun, there is a bit of a learning curve.

Before beginning your wine making endeavor, there are some important things that you need to have a real understanding of. There are plenty of experts, websites and books where you can learn the basics and nuances of wine making. There are a lot of places where you can pick up all the equipment needed at reasonable prices both online and at a brick and mortar.

The easiest way to start making homemade wine is to purchase a wine kit. Beginners will find it much simpler to using a wine kit to start with and then move on and up from there.

Ingredients for wine making are something that are a little more delicate in nature than the equipment. It is important to get quality ingredients if you wish to make a higher quality wine, but you can also make wine from juice concentrate!

The time it takes to make wine varies, but you should expect anywhere from eight to ten weeks to complete the entire process. It is important that you are not tempted to drink your wine early because wine gets better with time so be patient!

Websites and books are great resources for finding yummy wine recipes from dandelion wine to merlot. You can turn your special homemade wine into a personalized gift for someone, tailoring the taste to that of the receiver. A wine lover will appreciate a gift of wine designed especially for them!

An essential part of the experience of making homemade wine is the packaging. The bottle on down to the cork and even the wine label will give your wine that special va-va-voom. In fact, wine labels are the best way to personalize your wine.

Wine labels help to give an overall impression and feel for your homemade wine. They can be used for expressing the type of wine you made, putting a message to personalize the wine for a gift or for putting your logo on it! It is all about having fun so just do it!

“Beer” is the casual term used to describe a cold refreshing alcoholic beverage made of malt and hops. However, for those with more than a passing interest in the drink, a single word is far from sufficient to describe it.

When it comes to types of beer, there are many, many options to choose from. The amount of differing characteristics that can be found is surprising, with most people having a favorite type even if they are not aware of it. You’d be surprised at how a pilsner can differ from a porter, or how a stout stands out from a cider.

The method of brewing tends to be somewhat similar for most commercially produced beers. However, the names given to different styles of beer generally reflect individual characteristics of the product, such as where it originated. Different types of beer have unique qualities like appearance, taste, origin and aroma.

Below are some of the most popular types of beer available…

Lager: Some of the world’s most popular beer brands are lagers. Incorporated within this type of beer are American styles such as double pilsner, all-malt and ‘light’ beers. Popular international choices include Czech, European, Japanese and German lagers.

Ale: American amber, brown ale, porter, strong, sour and wild ales are also common American beers. Other variations are ales brewed with local techniques from Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Scotland and France.

Cider: While not an official beer, cider is still enjoyed by many beer drinkers. Favorites include standard cider, New England cider and many specialty ciders.

Hybrids: This term refers to experimental brewing methods and ingredients. Sub-categories include smoked, spiced, fruit and vegetable beer.

You’re missing out if you haven’t tried at least the types of beer listed above. Remember that variety is the spice of the life; you’re severely limiting yourself by always being loyal to one brand. There is a world of options available to you, so try something new next time you’re in a beer drinking mood.

If you are one of the many people out there who are a tried and true beer lover, then you are definitely going to want to know how to make beer at home. It is actually not that difficult of a process, and it is not expensive either.

So, how do you make beer at home? We will cover the main steps below. It really is that simple that you can learn the basic process involved in just 5 minutes.

Making beer at home requires you to only really follow a few steps. The first is to get yourself a beer kit, which is a kit that includes all of the different tools and materials that you are going to need to make the beer.

Then you need the four main ingredients, which are: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Water is the most abundant ingredient in any style of beer. Malted barley is barley grain that has carefully been soaked in water until it sprouts and is then dried and used to make beer. Hops balance out the sweetness by adding a degree of bitterness and also add a distinctive aroma to the finished brew. As for the yeast, this is the catalyst which is needed to make the other ingredients come together.

You then need to combine all of the ingredients using your beer kit. The exact way to do this is dependent on the type of beer kit you get, but every beer kit will come with instructions that will be easy enough to follow.

You can even add your own decided flavors to the beer if you like, however you just want to make sure beforehand that you know what you are doing so that you do not use too much or too little and end up ruining the beer.

Don’t worry about making mistakes as starting over is no big deal. In fact, practice and experimentation is the best way to learn. After a few batches, you are going to be quite good at making your own beer, and you will be surprised at the freshness and tastiness of it, especially compared to the beer that you are used to drinking.

Making your own alcoholic drinks can be fun and challenging at the same time, and will not take up a lot of time or space. Most of the ’scientific’ part of the process can be conducted on a standard home stove by following a set of simple instructions. With just a couple of hours work, you could have 4-5 gallons of home brew to look forward to.

Are you interested in home brewing? Maybe you have already followed up that interest and have already brewed some alcoholic beverages at your own home. Either way, you may want to consider joining a home brew club. Whether your beverage of choice is beer, wine or grain alcohol, and regardless of where in the country you reside, there is going to be a home brew club to match your interest.

Many times people follow directions for so long they tend to ignore the possibility there are other ways of doing things. As people become more experienced in home brewing, they may try different methods or different ingredients and often willingly share these findings with other members of their home brew club. The sharing of information and tips is just half of the home brew club equation though, the other half being the sharing amongst members of each others finished products.

By joining a home brew club, you can get many new ideas and can ask questions of your own, finding out if a technique will work before you try it. Others in the home brew club may have already tried and failed and can offer advice on how to do things correctly.

Many members of a home brew club are more than willing to share their knowledge and experience, despite the intense competition of brewing the best. Whether beer, wine or straight alcohol, sharing tips with new brewers are what some of the more experienced brewers do best.

Many times a home brew club will have local competitions where members can enter their brews to be judged. You will be going up against some pretty experienced people should you enter but do not let that put you off. This is one type of competition in which taking part is truly more important than winning. You are guaranteed to have great time!

Most people who brew their own beer do so in small quantities. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this to start with, once you hit upon a magical recipe you will obviously want to brew it on a larger scale so as to share your success with as many people as possible.

Most people only plan on making a large home brew if they are having a lot of people over or if they are planning to store most of the brew away so that they can use it in the future, and both of these reasons are acceptable. Should these circumstances not apply to you then you are probably better off sticking with smaller, more frequent, brews as you may end up with an unacceptable amount of wastage.

The first thing that you are going to want to think about when you are planning on making a large home brew is the fact that it is going to take a lot more time and effort. So if you do not have a lot extra of all of these, then perhaps you should just reconsider.

Also, before making a start on making a large home brew, think carefully about whether you really have the space available to do it properly. After all, you can quite easily make a small home brew right in a tiny kitchen, however when it comes to a larger one you may have difficulty if you do not have enough room for everything.

Assess the amount of space that you have available on the countertops, in the sink and in the fridge. Spend a few minutes maximizing the space available for your large home brew as moving things out of the way whilst you are in the process of brewing could cause you to lose your concentration and make a mistake.

If you do not have sufficient space in your kitchen, then there are basically two options that you have; either you make a series of smaller brews one after the other, or you give a fellow beer lover a percentage of the finished product in return for them giving you the use of their kitchen.

In terms of the actual brewing process, it is exactly the same to make a large brew as it is to make a small one. Just make sure that you increase the quantities of the ingredients in equal measures.

Lolita 5-6:30 pm and 9:30 pm to close Tuesday through Thursday; 5-6 pm and 10:30 p. to close Saturday. 4-6:30 pm. Sunday Lolita is one of Michael Symon’s (of the food network) first restraints. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is only $2 and there are several dishes for only $5. I went with my sister and we ordered the mac and cheese and The Lolita Burger. I have to say it is the best mac and cheese I have ever had.

Lincoln Park Pub – This is a Tremont staple. Very down to earth. Tacos $1.25; Mexican beers, $2.25; margaritas, $3.25 Taco Tuesdays, 3 p.m.-midnight. The Tacos are made on homemade taco shells. If you like very hot food try the morning after tacos.

Momocho From 5-6:30 p.m. daily they have half off taquitos and margaritas plus a great deal on Tecate. Momocho is one of the hippest restraints in Ohio City. The place can get busy so come early.

Blind Pig – Pizza and wings for $5; 23-ounce beers $2.50, 4-9p.m. daily. The pizzas are pretty big for $5, big enough for two people at least. The beer special includes imports. They have the nicest set of TVs downtown.

Light Bistro – 4:30-7 p.m. daily, Cocktails starting at $3. Food plates are $5. This is one of the Best Restaurants in Ohio. They specialize in local and seasonal food. This restaurant has earned an excellent reputation.

Sunset Lounge 4 – 7 p.m. daily, discounted drinks, half-off sushi and other appetizers. The sushi here is very good. The atmosphere is also good.

The Flying Fig – Happy Hour: Tuesday – Friday between 5PM and 7:30PM Season Food Specials for happy hour. The Fig provides wine-oriented cuisine utilizing the finest ingredients available, sourced locally whenever possible. Beers start at $2