Good Cooking since 1995
Brew your own Beer
Make your own hard cider or even wine!
more info:
Yes you can
do it, the fact is, if you know how to keep things clean and are an
organized person, it's even easier than you think! The simplest and by
far the easiest way to get started learning is with a Mr. Beer Kit, it's
almost fool proof. The pros and cons; Pros-you will learn how to make
beer or ale in an instant, it's all written down and they have a
youtube.com site that is really informative for a NOVICE! Go to
https://www.youtube.com/user/MrBeer and take a look. Cons-it's just OK
beer and make a small batch but you can be proud of your accomplishment
and if it gets you interested in brewing---it did you a service! FYI,
they have a few premium quality brewing ingredient kits where the
results are of better quality.
Get the process under your belt
and the world of brewing awaits you. There are brew stores worldwide,
hundreds of stores on the Internet and even Amazon sells all the
equipment you need to expand your hobby. It's amazing how you can get
taken in to the process and can spend hundreds of dollars on this hobby,
which is, that's if you want all the shiny stuff with bells and
whistles. To make good beer you don't need top of the line equipment. A
good boiling pot, fermenting buckets, syphoning equipment carboy and
hydrometer are some basic equipment needs along with bottles and a
capper.
Going beyond the "just for fun brewing", are all the
brewing competitions you can enter, the fancy labels you can design for
your bottles and the pride in making a really good brew to your liking.
Hundreds of recipes abound, many books have been written and even more
information is all over the Internet. There is no end to the
possibilities. Then, there is the lure of hard cider and wine making!
This market has gotten so popular that a major player in brewing, ABIn-Bev
and one of its subsidiaries, ZX Ventures, just purchased two major United States
brewing supply companies located in Minnesota, Northern Brewer and
Midwest Supplies. It is HOT, HOT, HOT and THE thing to do today!
My grandfather brewed his own in the 1930's in a 50 gallon crock. Back
then you could buy cans of malt in a country store, go home and mix it
with water and add some yeast that you got from a local brewery or
bakeshop and fashion a drinkable beer; adding sugar to the batch boosted
the ABV to boot! Providing you made your beer when the temperature was
right, for most beers being around 60-70'F, let it ferment long enough
and didn't put too much sugar in each bottle to carbonate it, you had a
drinkable beverage. When it was hand capped, and stored away for a few
months you realized it was way cheaper than buying beer from the brewery
or a bar.
Real brewing of famous German beers are regulated by
German purity laws and famous beers of the Czech Republic as well as
others from around the world, are brewed to certain specifications in
very clean and modern facilities, it's big business and has been for a
very long time!
Good Cooking makes its own beer, cider and wine
for friends and family, we don't sell any to the public. With the
knowledge we have gained and with the associations we've made it's time
for us to present you with some information available on the Internet.
Thru website links we hope you will visit, we hope that we can guide you
to valuable information about the subject. We do all the searching for
the info and you benefit from the knowledge they provide!
Here
are great sites for you to visit; the first is in Liverpool England.
It's new and its owner asked us to consider listing them here. After a
visit to the site, I'm happy to say that it's a great resource! So enjoy
brewing, have a Pivo (Czech for beer) and Prost! (German for cheers!)
goodcooking.com likes---
Brewconductor--- Dan presents information on brewing from yeast probagation to minerals in water. Looks at and explains extract and whole grain brewing and then the brewing process through bottling. Information on hop varieties is very detailed and very useful. And then, of course, his recipes---how about a 6 Hop IPA---get mashing!
Dan is a part-time bartender at Brewdog Liverpool in the UK, where he also goes to university. He's a passionate homebrewer and over the past few months has built a website to share all his homebrewing knowledge.
Ann Arbor Brewers Guild
Ale Street News On-Line
Beer at Home
Beer Info Source
Bier aus Deutschland
Brewing Workshop
Jacques Bertens Hobbybrouwen
New York City Beer Guide
The Hopyard
The Real Beer Page
Beer 100
Good Cooking's A to Z Beer and Home Brewing Links---There's lot's of sites to learn about brewing and even brewery links from around the world! Below is just an example of what you will find---