How to home brew lager?

Question

thanks to the (credit crunch) and being a p**s head any tips on how to start brewing your own beer and where to start

Answer 1

To home brew lager, follow the instructions listed here.

1. get bucket.

2. Wee in bucket.

3. Pour wee in glass

4. drink lager.

Answer 2

Brewing your own beer is as easy or difficult as you want it to be and is great fun. Since I assume you are in the UK, I suggest that you contact the Craft Brewing Association http://www.craftbrewing.org.uk/ and find a local group of brewers to meet up with, talk to and drink with. Also find your nearest home brew shop. Both of these resources will be able to advise you.

Generally, lager is a bit more difficult to brew than ale since you need refrigeration but an old fridge can be a cheap way of achieving this. Books by Graham Wheeler and/or John Alexander may give a more useful British perspective than the (very good) Papazian book.

Also, Jim's Beer kit http://jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/index.php is an excellent forum for Q&A relating to brewing.

Answer 3

To quote Punch's advice for people about to marry,  "Don't". At least not at first.

Start with Papazian's book The New Complete Guide to Home Brewing. Go through the first 42 pp, at least. Go to http://byo.com. Click on "Reader Resources". Order an equipment kit and the supplies needed to make an all-extract ale, not a lager.

If your ale turns out well, try a few more and work your way up to extract plus specialty grains. Then, and only then, can you consider making lagers.

Answer 4

Get a kit. This will consist of the following...

Malty syrupy stuff. (made out of hops and malt barley)

yeast.

A big fermenting bin or barrelly thing.

you mix up the mixture with water, add sugar, yeast, and put it into your sterilsed fermenting bin. then you wait till it is beer. you can control the strength by type of yeast and sugar content (the yeast turns the sugar into alcohol), and measure strength using a gadget called a hydrometer.

whether it is lager or beer just depends on the type of starting ingredients.

Answer 5

Beer requires much more equipment than wine.  Wine you just need some yeast, fruit,  a big bottle to let it ferment in,  then smaller bottles to put it in when its done.

Answer 6

Hi there.  As a long-time homebrewer, I am always to encouraging folks to try their hands at making their own beer.  It really is a rewarding hobby.  Sometimes, it can even be fun, but it's a lot of work for the reward.  A couple of thoughts about your question.

First, you specifically note that you want to brew "lager" in your question.  If it's lager you want, I'm not so sure that this is going to be a cost-effective hobby for you to pursue.  To brew good lagers in your home, you really need a pretty costly up-front investment.  Lagers need to be refrigerated during fermentation, and you really need to have solid control over the temps.  This means you need to have a refrigerator, or deep-freezer, with a temperature controller.  It's easy to get the old fridge or freezer, but normally the controller will set you back about $80 or so.  

On top of the temp control, it's not easy to brew good lagers with malt extract.  I'm simplifying here, but there are really two ways to brew beer at home. 1. With malt extract.  2. With all-grain.  Malt extract is a lot easier, but a little more costly.  Basically you pay someone to do your mash for you - mash = converting malts into sugars.  The process of creating liquid or dry extracts takes a lot of control out of your hands and puts it into extract manufacturers.  This normally means that your beer will be darker than you would like, and will contain a malt bill that may or may not get you the beer you want.  It is near impossible to brew American lagers (Bud, Miller, Coors, or all of their light derivations) with extract.  All grain, on the other hand, will get you where you need to go, but has a much more costly up-front investment.  You will need to create a mash tun and spend considerably more time learning and mastering the brewing process.  This isn't, of course, impossible, but it's not easy to brew good lagers at home.  If it's a Miller Light you're looking for, I would recommend buying it at the store.  After all of the investments, you probably wouldn't end up making your money back for a while.  Conservatively, if you find some good buys and are a handy person, you are probably looking at $200 minimum in start up costs.  It probably would be more like $300-$400 to brew good lagers.

If, however, you don't mind ales, you can start homebrewing with a minimal up front investment.  Buy a $60 homebrew kit (stay away from the Mr. Beer arrangements you see in your local department store) from a local homebrew shop.  At about $30 or so a batch, you can brew a decent ale at home.  This will produce about 5 gallons - or 2 1/2 cases.  This is still more than buying Busch light, but you will have much better beer.  

If you want to learn more about processes or equipment requirements, I highly recommend:

www.howtobrew.com

This will give you all the information you need to start!  Good luck!

Answer 7

You can go online and by a beer brewing kit. Ive done it, it works and taste good.  

Answer 8

Homebrewing beer does take a fair amount of equipment to start.  I'd recommend starting with ales rather than lagers, as lager yeast requires colder temperatures during fermentation in order to function properly.  Ales can ferment at about room temperature; lagers need to ferment at about 45-55 degrees F, depending on the strain of yeast used.  You can find ingredient kits for lighter ales that will taste similar to lagers - I'd recommend trying a cream ale, Belgian wit or Belgian dubbel or trippel.  Those are all lighter-flavored beers that generally don't have a lot of hops in them (I'm assuming that you want to produce something vaguely like Bud, Miller or Coors - my apologies if I'm wrong).

The best thing you can do right now if you want to get started in homebrewing is start asking questions in a homebrewing forum.  I've found the forum at Northern Brewer very helpful when I've needed information, and they're generally pretty supportive of people with lots of questions and no experience.  I'll include their link below.  People also generally get a homebrewing book, usually either The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian or How To Brew by John Palmer.  Either one will provide you with a good introduction to the fundamentals of brewing, as well as some recipes.

Brewing beer does take a lot more time then people generally realize.  It usually takes me about 15 days to do a primary fermentation, and then a couple weeks longer than that to carbonate the beer.  I think it's totally worth it, but then I like a wide variety of beers and I enjoy the process.  If you're just in it for cheap booze, then you may want to reconsider.  Technically you can make swill for a fairly small investment; I just don't personally enjoy drinking swill.