Beer

I've decided to dip my toe into the very deep pool of homebrewing, although this thread covers a bit more like buying and storing good quality beer for home use.

I have a good taphouse very near where I live and they have a great selection of about 30-40 beers. Most are local, but some come from all over the world. For years I have been buying beer from them by the growler (64oz) to take home. If you buy in bulk, you can get glass growlers for about $6 ea online or less sometimes if you can find them locally. They work reasonably well, but the problem I had right away is I don't drink that much beer at any one time and it only lasts for a day or two. So I moved on to a pressurized growler (picture below) that I could pressurize with the CO2 tank I already had for making seltzer. This is a much more expensive setup, but the beer would last for a very long time while staying perfectly fresh and was just as good (if not better) than the tap house as I had more control over the pour. If anyone is interested in that setup, I can provide more information on request.

For many years I had a great German friend who would make wonderful homebrew and share it with me. I helped him with a few batches, so I was roughly familiar with the process. Unfortunately for me he moved back to Europe, but I had always wanted to do this myself. The reason I never did was generally speaking, homebrew involves making 5 gal batches and I didn't want to dedicate the space to make 5 gals of beer and it would take me forever to drink that much myself. But you can make beer in 1 gal batches, which is what I decided to do.

There's plenty of different ways to do this. If you have a homebrew supply near you, going to them directly is your best bet as they will have all the equipment, supplies, and knowledge you'll need to get started. In my case there is one, but it's a decent drive from me, so I got the basic supplies from a kit. Eventually I'll probably resupply from the store.

The kit I got did not include bottling supplies. I actually already had that from other things I have bottled, but in my case I won't be bottling anyway since I bought a 170oz mini-keg which I will carbonate and serve from the hardware I already had. Bottling is pretty easy and requires just a minimal investment. Many kits provide everything you need.

I'm not going to go too deeply into the whole process. You basically just follow the directions and there's plenty of materials on the youtubes about how to do it. You basically just steep your grains, add malt, boil while adding the aromatics, cool, pitch with yeast, ferment, and then carbonate/store. Right now I'm in the fermentation stage after having brewed yesterday. This takes about two weeks. If you bottle, carbonation takes another two weeks or so. With the mini-keg only about 3 days. This will yield about ten 12oz beers and at my normal rate of consumption, that's at least a 2 months supply. I'm sure I'll drink more initially.

The normal temperature for fermentation is 64-75F and it stays a bit warmer in my house during the summer. Fortunately I had an old mini-fridge with an add-on temperature controller I use for storing wine so I can keep the fermentation temperature at 68F which is perfect for the yeast I am using.

I know I've made this whole process a lot more complicated and expensive than it needs to be. Lots of people make great beer by fermenting in a 5 gal bucket and carbonating in plastic soda bottles.