Anyone here brew their own beers (or make their own wine)?

[Tab]

I'd be interested in hearing success (or even trial and error) stories.

I'm particularly interested in trying to brew something like a belgian cherry beer, which can taste more like a yummy champagne than a beer (like quele que chose, or whatever it is)

[NMDemDist2]

1. hey tab if you need some pressurized 5 gallon steel barrels PM me

i have a couple i'll be selling in a couple weeks

[Warpy]

2. Dunno about the cherry beer

but I made kickass homebrew when I was married to an alky and trying to keep the costs down. I got 5 gallon pails of barley malt and hops at cost where I worked and all I had to pay retail for were the yeast, the bottle caps and the dextrose to charge the bottles.

The alcohol content was prodigius and one bottle would knock an ordinary mortal on his can, a clear indication that commercial beer isn't giving you what you're paying for.

My equipment: 5 gallon pails from a local Dunkies, two Lexan carboys from bottled water at home, 2 fermentation locks, plastic bags (to put over the pails during the initial fermentation to keep the CO2 in and the 02 out), a hydrometer, tubing, bottles, bottle caps, and a bottle capper.

Home brewing isn't complicated in the least, the most effort is just waiting for the various steps of fermentation to occur so that you end up with a bottle of beer that tastes like beer and fizzes in the glass. Once you get into the habit of having two batches in different states of fermentation going, it becomes really easy to keep ahead of. Once you've made your first batch, you can go into the finer points of controlling flavor by different types of brewing yeast, different combinations of sugars, and different additives.

Good luck!

[Lefty48197]

3. Sanitation is the most important thing.

Your bottles, your fermenting vessel, and any tubes you use etc. must be perfectly clean. My college chemistry training helped me to understand how to do it. Use soap to clean away the dirt, clear water to rinse, rinse, RINSE everything thoroughly. Then I always used distilled water to rinse away any minerals/chemicals left over from my tap water.
Starting your brewing experience with a Belgian cherry beer is kind of like learning to drive in a Porsche. Learn to balance the malts and hops and then start expanding into the exotics.