Nothing will send a yellow-bellied marmot diving for the burrow faster than sticker-shock at the gourmet beer store. When you're entertaining in the den, you want your buds and lady-hogs to have the best, but you don't want to have to moonlight at the petting zoo to pay for it.
Brewing your own beer is a creative way to entertain in style without dipping into your hibernation cache. Setting up your home brewery doesn't have to be expensive if you use some ingenuity. We put our interns on the job and here are the steps that we here at
UG recommend to start brewing awesome ales on the cheap.
Note: This method is "all-grain" and avoids the inferior and more expensive malt extract.
Intro:
All-grain brewing basically creates a giant teabag that you will run water through to get the sugars out of the malted barley. Once you collect the liquid from the mash tun (the teabag), you add hops (bitter plant buds) and stuff, and you boil it. Then you cool it, add yeast, wait, bottle, wait, and drink. Pretty easy, no?
1) Get a Good Kettle
You can get a cheap kettle if you look around. Try to get a 7 gallon or larger kettle since we will make a five gallon batch. We found this one online for about $30 and it has a capacity of 8.5 gallons for a complete boil.
2) Build a Mash Tun
You can buy these, but it is cheaper to make it yourself. We started with a 5-gallon igloo cooler that we bought for $20. Then we had to experiment with some plumbing to attach a good valve that wouldn't leak. You need a 3/8" ball valve and some other plumbing stuff to attach the 3/8" hoses and the false bottom. We had to try some different 0-rings, rubber washers, and washers to get it tight. Check this website http://members.shaw.ca/Fly_Guy/mlt.htm for the parts list.
Step 3: Make a False Bottom
No, this isn't an endorsement of Brazilian plastic surgery. You need to make something so that the liquid can flow through the mash (the wet grains) without the tubes getting clogged. You can make a cheap one with that stainless steal mesh that goes around a washer hose. Clamp the ends and hook it up!
Step 4: Buy the Basics
Now that the hard parts are done, go ahead and order a starter kit for the basic tubes, buckets, instruments, caps, and tools that you will need ($69 at http://www.morebeer.com/).
Step 5: Order Ingredients
Ingredient kits will range from $15-$40 depending on the style of brew and the vendor. Make sure to buy yeast or you'll end up with barley juice...and ants....lots of ants. The kits come with directions or you can follow a recipe from another source.
Step 6: Find bottles!
Step 7: Brew!
Step 8: Act Like a Total Assh*le
as you serve up your gourmet brew and act all sophisticated and handy. You'll get more tail then a Canadian beaver trapper. That's the Urban Groundhog Way!
As the pictures show, the wort-chiller is a coil of copper tubing with an inlet and an outlet. The whole unit is immersed in the hot wort, this sanitizes the tubing. The cold, incoming water swirls around the top of the pot (where the hottest liquid is) first. The chilled wort at the top falls to the bottom as the hottest wort rises. The heat of the pot is transferred to the water which finally goes down the drain. Five gallons of wort can be chilled in about twenty minutes instead of three or more hours in an ice bath. Other benefits of cooling the wort quickly are better clarity and safer sanitization from unwanted yeast and bacteria.
