Finally bit the bullet and bought a starter kit!

L

lostmind

Well...

I finally stopped by the only home brew shop in Vancouver that seems to sell something more than "kits".

I told the guy I was interested in brewing all grain in a bag and he literally thought I was off my rocker.

I get the impression he is a decent guy, but is really set in his ways. Long story short, without a bag to brew in I figured I might as well follow his recipe and get a basic extract recipe...

So, tomorrow I have some minor surgery and then friday I will be brewing my first batch of extract beer! Hopefully I'll find a source online for decent brew bags (because I want to keep it simple but want tasty) and in a couple weeks I'll try that out.
 
Whoa. How'd I get in this forum?!

If a mod would move this to home brewing forum, would be appreciated.

A mistake like this would make sense, if I was drinking. But I wasn't! lol
 
moved lost...good luck with your project...
 
You will love brewing mate, before long you will have 3 or 4 or 10 carboys! :lol: Let us know how you get along.
 
Most home brews rock. For you non yanks, the stereotype that US beer sucks is not a stereotype, but a fact, however, we do have microbreweries that produce some of the greatest beers available and many home brew kits are modelled after the microbrews. You can get all sorts of extracts and (my opinion only) do no not put blueberries or rasberries in the beer. That stuff is disgusting.

Also, any yanks who are from NE OH can tell you that cleveland has some of the best miicrobreweries in the country (so many popped up in NE OH in the 90s, and only the strong survived)
 
Well, the last time I had home brew was in university and I can tell you... it sucked!

But I'm hoping this will go better :)

I just got to find a bag for the whole brew in a bag thing. That looks like FUN.
 
I mail order all my kits. It's the only way to go unless you've got a major brew supply store nearby. Homebrew Heaven does a great job- they won't ship on a Friday (so your yeast sits in a hot USPS warehouse over the weekend), they package right before they ship, their kits are complete and best of all they taste great.

And the grain bags are included. :lol:
 
Give 'em a call and ask, they're good folks to talk with. I don't see why they would be prohibited from mailing over the border, and aside from a little extra postage it's no extra effort on their part.
 
Brewing my beer right now. Pale malt extract, bunch of grains steeped and "sparged", yeast is "proofing", wort is boiling with the 60 min hops added...

Interesting stuff!
 
Well, it's all brewed up, in the primary fermentor and is sitting in my basement bathroom relaxing at 15c. I hope that's not too cold for it...
 
Yep, that's a problem when your Province offers "u brew" services and has vineyards - getting supplies for do it yourself is more challenging. Different game on the other side of the mountains.
Have you tried a homebrew forum or kijiji?
I haven't made beer for a couple years, as unCanadian as it sounds, I really don't crave the flavour anymore, either homebrew or brandname- I do make wine from grapes. I bought a six pack of generic beer last summer and still have 2 in my beer fridge.
As for your wort, just keep watching the airlock to make sure it is working, the bigger challenge is getting the right formula for carbonation at bottling time.
 
Yah the worst is currently going nuts! Airlock is literally burping away rapid fire.

I have found homebrewtalk.com. I've never used kijiji, although I did spend some time going through craigslist before I bought my supplies. Is kijiji useful? I'll have to check into it.

I'm personally more of a red wine guy than a beer guy also - I'm on a malbec and red zinfandel kick right now. I'm much more afraid to make my own wine though, I've only ever had 1 good homebrew wine and it's made by an 85 yr old Italian man (my uncle's father)...
 
Kijiji has a strong following, I have never looked up wine/beer making equipment but I did look up dehydrators for my peppers, never saw anything. I do check it on occasion for birds, I raise various finches and sometimes people give them away but you have to be fast because someone can post something at 10 and its gone by 11.

Don't you love the smell of fermenting malt as the aroma fills your home? So, how long are you planning to leave the beer sitting before bottling? 1 month?

I remember my first red zinfandel and your right it has a nice flavour, I am not really a fan of regular zinfandel as I find it too sweet for my palate and not tastey sweet but thick in sweetness, perhaps it was because I bought the cheapest shit in the store.

For my own wines it have made Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Barolo from grapes with the Syrah(Shiraz) being the most flavourable, followed by Merlot, the Cab was a little too light for my liking but it is good just light, for reds I usually make enough to fill a 54 litre carboy. I also made a white using a grape called Palomino but only made enough for a 23Litre carboy.Of course, I don't have an oak barrel to age the wine in so I just leave it in the carboys. Occasionally I will fill one 23 litre carboy then bottle the rest but I currently have cases and cases of wine stacked up. I just opened a Port I made in 1996, it was a kit wine.

I also make various other wines, my NanKing Cherry is spectacular and everyone that tries it agrees - it is very tasty with turkey almost as if the two were meant to be consumed together. It is a red, like Cherry, not purple like grape, has a sweet flavour and when consumed with turkey you can feel your palette tingling. I picked the cherries myself, Nanking is one of those hardy fruits that can survive an Albertan winter. I have a couple of trees as do my neighbours and they invite me every year to pick berries - I guess you know their reward? I have made various rhubarb wines and what a hit at a party when I pull that out for tasting. My Blueberry turned out too light body and if I make it again I think the only way to improve it would be to make it very sweet - echoing a Port.

Here is one that will make you think twice: the mother-in-law is French Canadian(82 years old) from old Sherbrooke QC and she made some carrot wine, I still have a bottled and don't believe I have the balls to try it, I would eat a 7 pod before busting open that floor cleaner.

Good luck on the beer.
 
kijiji is no more, it's ebayclassifieds now. It sucks.
 
Burning Colon said:
Kijiji has a strong following, I have never looked up wine/beer making equipment but I did look up dehydrators for my peppers, never saw anything. I do check it on occasion for birds, I raise various finches and sometimes people give them away but you have to be fast because someone can post something at 10 and its gone by 11.

Don't you love the smell of fermenting malt as the aroma fills your home? So, how long are you planning to leave the beer sitting before bottling? 1 month?

I remember my first red zinfandel and your right it has a nice flavour, I am not really a fan of regular zinfandel as I find it too sweet for my palate and not tastey sweet but thick in sweetness, perhaps it was because I bought the cheapest shit in the store.

For my own wines it have made Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Barolo from grapes with the Syrah(Shiraz) being the most flavourable, followed by Merlot, the Cab was a little too light for my liking but it is good just light, for reds I usually make enough to fill a 54 litre carboy. I also made a white using a grape called Palomino but only made enough for a 23Litre carboy.Of course, I don't have an oak barrel to age the wine in so I just leave it in the carboys. Occasionally I will fill one 23 litre carboy then bottle the rest but I currently have cases and cases of wine stacked up. I just opened a Port I made in 1996, it was a kit wine.

I also make various other wines, my NanKing Cherry is spectacular and everyone that tries it agrees - it is very tasty with turkey almost as if the two were meant to be consumed together. It is a red, like Cherry, not purple like grape, has a sweet flavour and when consumed with turkey you can feel your palette tingling. I picked the cherries myself, Nanking is one of those hardy fruits that can survive an Albertan winter. I have a couple of trees as do my neighbours and they invite me every year to pick berries - I guess you know their reward? I have made various rhubarb wines and what a hit at a party when I pull that out for tasting. My Blueberry turned out too light body and if I make it again I think the only way to improve it would be to make it very sweet - echoing a Port.

Here is one that will make you think twice: the mother-in-law is French Canadian(82 years old) from old Sherbrooke QC and she made some carrot wine, I still have a bottled and don't believe I have the balls to try it, I would eat a 7 pod before busting open that floor cleaner.

Good luck on the beer.
Click to expand...

Personally, the smell of cooking beer was pretty good stuff. My wife didn't like the smell once I added the hops to the boil though. Fresh hops smell AMAZING though.

I love red zin because it can handle spicy food better - nothing truly spicy, but pizza with hot capicolo or pepperoni/salami, chorizo, etc. White zin is for girls. :)

If you've never had a malbec, I suggest you try it! Cheap and tasty.

I have some family who only make their own wine, but they do the whole u-brew thing. It's horrible. The only time it's ever tasted good was with all the mulling spices added to it at xmas time!

So, I am scared to make my own wine. If you have some pointers, I'd love to hear it.

Have you heard of elephant island from naramata near kelowna here in BC? They make some AMAZING fruit wines. The cherry wine is indeed god like with turkey dinner at thanksgiving. I find the cherry wine doesn't last long, it starts to go off pretty quickly though.
 
Kijiji is still active in Canada at least regionally.

You definitely can distinguish a kit wine's flavour and either like, tolerate it or find it foul.

The only advice I can give you at this time for making your own white is just do it, get cases of grapes, squish them up, add wine yeast and maybe some campden tablets, let it sit(red wine gets its colour from the skins and not the juice) for about a week.
Then, drain the the juice into a carboy, now it just like your starting beer wort, bung it and watch it ferment. Once fermenting has ceased, rack it again just to clean up any bottom residue and let it sit 4 months, rack it again, let it sit another 3 months, it should be ready to bottle/drink. I left out a lot of details like make sure you use wine grapes and not table grapes and yes you should be checking specific gravity and some other minor details all you can find in a wine making booklet.

I am familiar with all of BC and have been all over as you might know Albertas own a lot of inner BC as that is our cottage country; we usually vacation either every year or everyother year somewhere in BC during the summer. Its hard to find a beach of any sort in Alberta.

When I was working, BC was part of my territory and I sold product all over including all the wineries as label applicators and custom labels where just one of the product lines I sold. Both Alberta and Saskatchewan have a fruit winery, Fieldstone just outside Calgary and Cypress Hills in Sask. I am not sure what type of cherry Elephant Ilsand uses for their wine but I would guess it is not Nanking perhaps Bing or Washington. Nanking is a small fruit, quarter the size of a Bing but packed with dense concentrated flavour, small amount of juice but what you do get is nectar. I also add in chokecherry for added tanins, choke has little to no juice content but really adds body to the wine. The only thing you can do from stopping any wine from oxidizing is either drink it, or vaccuum the air out of the bottle after you recork it.
 
I love brewing

Do it once or twice a week, plus I work at a homebrew shop volunteering a couple days a week

The guy is right though, brewing with a big grain bag like that really destroys your efficiency, thats why they make mash tuns.
 
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