On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:28:29 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Helms
> wrote:

<snip>
>I've made five gallon batches of beer a bunch of times. It's not
>complicated, but don't spend too much time on homebrewing websites
>looking for advice. They'll have you running around in circles,
>chasing your own tail and not knowing what to do or which way is up.

Now that is a wise bit of information! And generally true.
When I was looking around for some cider/perry recipes... well, it
just confused the hell out of me, because there was *no* consistency
in the recipes and methods used (that goes one-hundred-fold for root
beer!!).

>They'll tell you to buy all sorts of weird crap that you don't really
>need, do things you don't really need to do and worry about things you
>don't really need to worry about. Homebrewing websites will boggle
>your mind as often as they give helpful advice. I started out with
>extracts, which are just a can of liquid malt and a can of flavored
>"base" that you pour into a stainless steel pot with a gallon of
>distilled water and heat it up to just under the boiling point. Pour
>it into your nice sterile fermenter, add the other four room
>temperature gallons, add your yeast, seal that bad boy up and wait for
>your airlock to bubble, which it should within 12 hours or so. Some
>people will tell you to boil it for an hour.

Boil it for an hour??? What on earth for???

> Don't, because there are
>delicate aromatic oils from the hops in there that you'll lose because
>they can't handle boiling.

Exactly.

Actually, I don't even heat the extract a great deal - I soak the can
in boiling water for a few minutes, add some fairly hot water to the
fermenter (maybe 3 litres or so) - pour the extract in and stir. I use
more hot water to rinse the remnants of extract out of the can... once
the malts are also dissolved in that, then I just add cold water to
take it up to 24 litres - the overall temp then usually sites around
24 °C, which is about optimal for most yeasts.

> The only advice everybody always gives
>that's consistently right is make sure everything that comes in
>contact with your wort after you heat it up is completely sterilized,
>otherwise you'll end up with beer that tastes like you added malt
>vinegar to it.

That's not necessarily the case. I've never sterilised a single brew -
just paid careful attention to what I'm doing. That is all.
Any washing/rinsing is handled by an old nylon scourer and rain water.
No doubt one day I'll get a bad brew... but I've had one on the go
non-stop for the past 18 months and so far so good

> Don't try to punch up the alcohol content by adding
>sugar, either because that also creates weird, off flavors.

Agree. Actually, I'm not all that concerned about the alcohol content.

>either kits or partial extracts because all grain requires all sorts
>of extra stuff. There are a lot of logistical issues involved in
>heating five gallons of water and ten pounds of malted barley to a
>precise temperature and keeping it there for an hour, then draining
>off the water, sparging (pouring water over) the mass of sticky barley
>to get all the residual sugar, boiling the five gallons of sweet water
>for an hour, then getting it down to a temperature low enough to pitch
>before unwanted, wild yeasties find their way into it. There's no way
>to really explain it, other than to say that the more you do it the
>more you understand it and the easier it gets.

Yep. I really think an extract is the way to go for a beginner, for
all the reasons you've outlined above. There's many things to learn in
the whole process - if for your first time its possible to skip all
the grain processing part (the most time consuming part) - I say go
for it and focus on everything else.