Brewer or Vintner

[MacroGuru]

Alright,

Have any of you tried either?

I love wine, have always wanted to make my own..

However, I am the same with Beer...

So sitting in Buffalo (East Amherst), I am wanting to do something like this while here, and if I move in the future, take it with me.

I have the perfect basement for this.

Votes? Ideas? Suggestions?

[WSUCougar]

In my experience, home brewing beer is a much more successful endeavor than making your own wine. Frankly, I've never had a good home-made wine.

[JPhillips]

Home brewing can also be a fun group activity. There was a group of guys at one of the theatres I worked at that would get together and brew and play board games. Depending on what we made we'd get back together in a few weeks and drink the last creation.

[scooter]

My wife has done both. She has stuck with the brewing though. A decent brewer can make good beer with just about any ingredients, but to make good wine, you have to have excellent grapes (read: expensive, not from a kit). A lot of it depends on your definition of good beer or wine too. We dumped all the wine she made (both from kits and from fresh grapes), but she has never dumped a batch of beer.

Winemaking is a long-term process. The actual steps you take to make wine are really easy (especially with a kit), but you are going to be waiting six months to a year or more to see if the finished product is what you wanted.

Homebrewing is fairly easy. You can also drink the finished product in just a couple weeks (virtually instant feedback). If you have a homebrew shop close by, drop in and ask them some questions. They may be brewing that weekend and invite you over to watch the process. If not, they probably sell basic homebrewing kits and can give you advice about getting started. Also ask them if there are any local homebrewing clubs (or winemaking clubs). These are great places to meet people who know what they are doing. They are usually pretty social (they make beer after all) and will probably invite you over to "help" them brew.

I keep suggesting watching someone else brew. It's not that it is overly complicated, but the first time you do anything, it's usually helpful to have seen someone else do it first. One other thing to consider: the price of ingredients for beermaking has gone up quite a bit in the last year. Between the price of grain skyrocketing and a globally bad harvest of hops, homebrewing isn't quite as cost-effective as it once was.

[MacroGuru]

My wife has done both. She has stuck with the brewing though. A decent brewer can make good beer with just about any ingredients, but to make good wine, you have to have excellent grapes (read: expensive, not from a kit). A lot of it depends on your definition of good beer or wine too. We dumped all the wine she made (both from kits and from fresh grapes), but she has never dumped a batch of beer.

Winemaking is a long-term process. The actual steps you take to make wine are really easy (especially with a kit), but you are going to be waiting six months to a year or more to see if the finished product is what you wanted.

Homebrewing is fairly easy. You can also drink the finished product in just a couple weeks (virtually instant feedback). If you have a homebrew shop close by, drop in and ask them some questions. They may be brewing that weekend and invite you over to watch the process. If not, they probably sell basic homebrewing kits and can give you advice about getting started. Also ask them if there are any local homebrewing clubs (or winemaking clubs). These are great places to meet people who know what they are doing. They are usually pretty social (they make beer after all) and will probably invite you over to "help" them brew.

I keep suggesting watching someone else brew. It's not that it is overly complicated, but the first time you do anything, it's usually helpful to have seen someone else do it first. One other thing to consider: the price of ingredients for beermaking has gone up quite a bit in the last year. Between the price of grain skyrocketing and a globally bad harvest of hops, homebrewing isn't quite as cost-effective as it once was.

Great advice, with some of the top wineries in the region right by us, I wonder how much their grapes (If they sell them) are, or even if I could succeed.

I will check out local brewing places and such here.

[chesapeake]

I've enjoyed brewing, but I've never tried to make wine. Even my early batches were drinkable, so it must be pretty easy on the grand scale.

[flounder]

I always wanted to make my own liquor, but was turned off by the whole potential blindness thing. Plus those damn revenuers.

[Cringer]

I say you grow weed, it's a cash crop.

[terpkristin]

I brew my own beer. I find my brews turn out better when there's more than 1 person doing it. There are some tasks in the process that go much smoother with 2 people (or even 3), so I like to do it with friends. Lately, I've been helping my best friend's husband brew beer. He's got a lot of interesting recipes, and they own a house (I live in an apartment), so it's much easier to let him "run the show" as it were and me throw in my part as "helper."

/tk

[Ryche]

My wife and I are probably buying our first brewing equipment this weekend. As said before, find a good homebrewing store and they'll set you up and provide some good advice.

[terpkristin]

Interesting hour on NPR's Science Friday:
http://www.sciencefriday.com<wbr>/program/archives/200805162 (http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200805162)
The Science of Making Great Beer.

The episode is available for download on iTunes (search for Science Friday podcast), available to stream from the above website, or if you want to listen to it and are too lazy to do those things, let me know and I can send it along. It was an interesting hour listening to experts (brewers from a couple of small Wisconsin-local breweries, a guy from Miller, and somebody who does a homebrewing college-level cirriculum in Chicago) talk about beer and how it's made. It's worth a listen if you're interested in homebrewing.

/tk

[Flasch186]

I brew my own beer. I find my brews turn out better when there's more than 1 person doing it. There are some tasks in the process that go much smoother with 2 people (or even 3), so I like to do it with friends. Lately, I've been helping my best friend's husband brew beer. He's got a lot of interesting recipes, and they own a house (I live in an apartment), so it's much easier to let him "run the show" as it were and me throw in my part as "helper."

/tk

and I'd imagine it's tough to hurt yourself.

Mac, Ill have to ship you some MrBrewmans Premium Southern Sweet Tea. You can spike it with some Absolut Citron, Jack, along with many others for what's called an "Icepick". Plus generally no matter how much you screw up a batch of MrBrewmans it'll still taste pretty darn good.....and no blindness. :)

[cartman]

Thread necromancy

For Christmas 2013, I received a one gallon brew kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop. It was for an IPA, and I'm not really all that fond of hoppy beers. I went ahead and brewed a batch, and it was a disaster. It was messy doing the brew, and I ran into all sorts of issues transfering from kettle to fermenter, then fermenter to bottles. The final result was a foamy, off tasting mess.

But, I had caught the bug. Next thing I did was make an apple wine, that I freeze distilled to make applejack. Dead simple to make. Pour 5 gallons of unadulterated apple cider into a fermenter, then add sugar and yeast. Seal it up, and wait. The 5 gallons, after several cycles of freeze distillation, turned into one gallon of applejack.

I've gone back to attempting beer brewing. I have the right equipment this time. Instead of trying to regulate mash temp on a stove, I got a 10 gallon Igloo cooler to mash in. Much easier. I also now have siphons for moving between vessels. I just moved the brew (a Firestone Walker DBA clone) to the secondary fermentation, and it measured out to 6.8% alcohol, and tasted pretty damn good. I put it into bottles next weekend, and this batch should be ready by Easter. Knock on wood this turns out better than last year's disaster.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

I'm obviously in the business, so I feel pretty confident about this. Definitely go with brewing beer. It's much cheaper to do and the turnaround times from start to finished product are much shorter generally speaking. Wine is not an easy product to produce and it can go south on you in a hurry if you don't know what you're doing.

Just as another fun aside, infusing alcohol is a lot of fun and provides a great conversation piece as well. You can get some glass containers, put in some vodka (or other favorite alcohol), and add fruit to make some fantastic and unique alcohols that taste great.

Distilling is also a relatively short process if you want to create your own moonshine, but be prepared to pay a few hundred dollars at a minimum in equipment.

[flere-imsaho]

Another option is to brew mead. My wife & I had friends who did it back in Chicago, and we did some batches as well. Turnaround is longer than beer (6-9 months, depending on the recipe), but nowhere near as expensive as good wine, and there's plenty of variety from various flavors to various levels of dryness (based on the yeast).

[Sublime 2]

I got into home-brewing in 2012, and other than a few dips in interest, have been pretty addicted since. I started with the simple Mr. Beer kits, then progressed to partial mashes, and for about a year now all-grain - though I only do the Brew-in-a-Bag (BIAB) method.

Shortly after starting, I realized I hated bottling. So I looked up some kegerators, found them to be too expensive, and built my own Keezer!

5473

My addiction didn't stop there. Sick of missing mash temps, I just purchased an electric BIAB system and with it, a conical fermenter (only a plastic one). I've only had one brew day on the eBIAB system, and I love it already. Still need to work out some kinks (efficiency was only 62%), but it was a much more enjoyable process.

5474

My next purchase will be everything I need to add my second tap to the Keezer. I've got the keg already, will just need to get the hoses/connections/co2 distributor.

[Toddzilla]

If you like cleaning, you'll love homebrewing

[cartman]

I've gone back to attempting beer brewing. I have the right equipment this time. Instead of trying to regulate mash temp on a stove, I got a 10 gallon Igloo cooler to mash in. Much easier. I also now have siphons for moving between vessels. I just moved the brew (a Firestone Walker DBA clone) to the secondary fermentation, and it measured out to 6.8% alcohol, and tasted pretty damn good. I put it into bottles next weekend, and this batch should be ready by Easter. Knock on wood this turns out better than last year's disaster.

OH MY GOODNESS

Just tried a bottle, and even after only being in bottles a little over two weeks, it is incredible. Just the right amount of carbonation, great flavor, no off aftertaste. It is just going to get better the longer it bottle conditions. I'm very pleased with how this turned out.

[claphamsa]

homebrewing is a great thing!

[Ryche]

If you like cleaning, you'll love homebrewing

This. Home brewed a few times, the brewing part is fun but the cleaning was much less fun. That and I can buy much better beer than I brewed. But I know several excellent home brewers who love it

[Sublime 2]

Best brew so far, second on my Electric BIAB system.

5686

[Umbrella]

I just brewed my first batch yesterday. I think I made a couple of small mistakes. I poured all the sediment from the boil into the fermenter, and I think the temperature of the wort was a little on the high side before I pitched the yeast (~80F). However, it was exciting to see the air lock starting to bubble before I went to work today.