I started brewing my first batch of homemade beer yesterday. I should be able to see if it's fermenting when I get home today, and it should (hopefully) be ready to drink in about 3 weeks.

I'm thinking I'm going to keg the beer, instead of bottling it - assuming i didn't screw it up. I made a kegerator in the basement (for pony kegs), that should also be able to fit the keg i'll use for the home brew.

My first batch is an American Amber... hope it turns out!

Keep us posted, I would love to try that sometime.

how do you know what the alcoholic content is when done at home?

If the dog only staggers and doesn't throw up or die, then it is good to drink.

Once the wort is finished (basically the beer with all the flavoring in it) and chilled down to room temp, you use a hydrometer to get the specific gravity before the fermenting starts. that will give you an approximate alcohol content.

So far the experiment is not working....

It's been 5 days, and my brew hasn't started to ferment at all (I think I had a bad batch of yeast). I bought a new kind today, which I'm going to add when I get home. Hopefully I'll have a new update on Monday that everything is fermenting nicely... once it starts, then I know I'll have something resembling beer at the end.

Well, at least that would be an improvement over Budweiser!

I have beer!!!

While it never bubbled like I was told it would - my yeast did multiply, and 'gravity' reading was much lower (the beer starts out much heavier then water, about 1.4x - after fermentation it gets a lot ligher, now at 1.1x).

I put it in a big glass bottle to ferment for 1-2 more weeks to improve the flavor (you siphon out all the beer, leaving all the yeast junk out).

keep us posted....

Beer update!

My first attempt ended in miserable failure. I tried to 'keg' the beer in a small bottle called a 'party pig'. It has a expandable bag on the inside that keeps the keg at a constant pressure, and does not allow air (much like a normal keg without the CO2 tank). Well, when the keg became pressurized, that's when i realized that the screw securing the tapper was stripped. Not being secure meant all of my 5 gallons of beer spraying all over my basement.

So about a month ago I had attempt # 2. SUCCESS! I had my first homebrew last night. I bottled them in miller lite bottles, and capped them. I'd say the beer had a light body, smooth with a clean after taste, full flavor, and a bit of bitter hops. Very nice.

My next brew i'm going to follow roughly the same recipe, but change it a little to make it a little more sweet.