I want to start brewing beer to continue my alcoholism without also becoming bankrupt. I have been looking around for the necessary equipment but I don't want to buy one of those lame marked up kits and other sources seem kinda vague like "just get a bucket and a hose" without being specific. So do any of you have experience brewing beer and what set up can a get away with just by going to Home Depot?
>>912080
>without also becoming bankrupt.
Fucking kek!
Homebrewing is more expensive in time and money than buying beer
>>912080
just make some pruno in a gallon ziplock bag.
>>912090
This is true, ingredients aren't cheap. They'll cost you the same per net gallon as the commercial beer itself. Low hop/malt kits are usually in the $40 range, and big beers or double ipas can cost upwards of 80-90 bucks for 5 gallons if you're using extract. Proper equipment is also a few hundred for a handful of airlock, glass or plastic carboys, starsan, a siphon, tubing, a stainless kettle, a hydrometer, bottling/kegging gear, etc.
>>912099
Well fuck. The only reason I was going to do it was to save money making bulk piss myself. The time and effort factor isn't an issue because like I said I am a degenerate alcoholic who is barely employed.
>>912099
Plus your time, prep/brewing/cleaning usually takes 4-6 hours, plus fermentation and bottling time. Brew because it's fun, not to save money. It's futile
>>912101
You would be hard pressed to even find "bulk piss" recipes. Nobody who had a passion for brewing had any desire to do so.
>>912103
Damn. Ok well what about distilling? Surely that's a cheap DIY way to get loaded right?
>>912107
Margins are even worse, there's another thread on this, check the catalog
>>912110
Yeah but that thread is full of kids who just discovered what being drunk is debating wives tales of how to prevent a hang over.
>>912122
long story short, distilling base ingredients are far cheaper, but due to the nature of distillation, it requires a far greater amount of mash, negating any savings.
A 1 gallon run will yield 3-6 cups of alcohol
A 5 gallon run will yield 1-2 gallons of alcohol
A 10 gallon run will yield 2-4 gallons of alcohol
>>912101
Ignore these people, you can make bulk piss if you want. But I'd go for "wine" over beer.
All you need is a large food grade bucket (you can buy 6 gal buckets at most hardware stores for a few dollars). Then get some flavor juice and sugar and bread yeast. Mix all that shit then cover it somehow to keeps bugs and crap out and let it ferment. If you want you can siphon it to another bucket or jug periodically.
Also check out skeeterpee for something slightly better and still dirt cheap.
>>912149
If you do skeeter pee (recipe is on the skeeterpee website) you can use teabags for tannin, tomato paste/raisins for yeast nutrients, and you don't need any of the sparkolloid or potassium bullshit, that's for killing the yeast and clearing it, but you can just let it ferment through and settle out.
>>912080
>bulk piss
i'm assuming you're australian
you can get these from hardware stores:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/WATER-STORAGE-DRUM-60L-BRAND-NEW-Bayswater-Rosebud-/190903638267?hash=item2c72be58fb
there's a 30L version as well
>get two of those
>get a tap for them, screw it in at the bottom
>clean them out with cold water and a capful of bleach and then rinse them completely with hot water
>drill a hole in the lid of one of the buckets then stick your airlock (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2-x-Brand-new-Plastic-Brewing-Air-Lock-airlock-brewing-home-brew-Beer-Wine-/111189046590?hash=item19e362353e:g:jYwAAOSwrklVY-Ow) into it
>fill airlock with water
>fill bucket with hot water
>pour in 4KG of white sugar
>stir it with something clean until it dissolves into the water
>let it settle
>pour some champagne yeast on top
>wait until the airlock stops bubbling 2 weeks later
>pour alcohol from tap into your 2nd bucket leaving all the dead yeast at the bottom of the first
that's the basics
once you've done that once you can work on experimenting with flavours because the alcohol you get from sugar and water is going to taste like a sweaty asshole mixed with wet dog
mix it with some cottees and she'll be ridgy didge cunt
>>912080
If you want to get drunk on the cheap. Don't focus on beer or any "the right way to do things" methods.
My first venture into any alcohol making was purely adhoc and my materials went like this:
- 4 empty 1.5 liter wine bottles
- 6 empty 750ml wine bottles
- balloons
- a couple of pots
- strainer
- funnel
- a bucket of fruit
The fruit was what we call golden apple, not much like a regular Apple. Very watery and sweet when ripe.
I just had the bucket until the golden apples were overripe for eating and decided not to waste it. I just crushed the golden apples, added a drop of water (compared to the quantity) and blended them. I then strained the blend and dumped it into the big bottles with a bit of yeast in each, tied the balloons on the mouths of the bottles and poked a pair of needle holes in each and left them in my storeroom while monitoring the balloons. The balloons stayed full, but discharging through the pin holes, gasses for about 3 weeks then started to settle. When they started to settle I kept a closer eye on them and when I felt like there wasn't enough positive pressure in them I poured the liquid into the smaller bottles, corked them and put them in the fridge for another 2 weeks.
The cloudiness settled so I poured a couple small glasses at a time just in case it was not suitable for consumption.
It tasted primarily golden apple'ish with a good chunk of fermentation and a little too much yeast still in there. I got a small buzz from the small glasses though.
Cost me about 6 hours of actual work and primarily waste material for 3 liters of drinkable fluid.
My process obviously could do with refinement but I had done it without any literature and any real care.
>>912122
This is 4chan just turn the thread around
>>912149
Ignore the retard telling you to use bread yeast who has never brewed a day in his life.
>>912099
80-90$ for an ipa kit?
Why would you buy a kit?
You could literally look up a recipe and make it for like 30-40$ (or less)
>>912302
Kits at my lhbs are just recipes thrown in a box so you don't have to. They have a huge binder of recipes as well that you can put together a less popular 'kit' yourself by picking out ingredients. I'm talking about making a double ipa, where there's 2x or more ingredients required. You're using much more malt/grains, and double the hops, which could be around 8-9oz + dry. Or, you could be using a really light beer as a base for a sour, and that only requires 2oz of hops, and is exponentially cheaper. Different beer=different ingredients and quantities.
>>912107
Distilling any alcoholic concoction will leave you with less alcohol in the end than you started with
If you really want the cheapest alcohol, forget about fruit and other unnecessary additives. Fully saturate a bunch of water with sugar (heat it up to make more dissolve) then put it in a big bucket or other container (with balloon airlock) with turboyeast from amazon. Look for the variety that can live in 8%+ alcohol environment. Leave it for a week and you will have 8% alcohol mixed with water. It will taste like absolute garbage but you can mix it with kool aid packets to make a sort of bum wine. There is no cheaper method to making alcohol, as these are the absolute bare minimum ingredients.
>>912318
Well, you could make it cheaper than that, starting with a saturated solution of sugar in water and only bringing it to 8% should leave plenty of sugar in the water.
There are turboyeasts that can make it up to 16-18%. More alcohol for the same amount of sugar... Otherwise totally correct!
>>912080
>I want to start brewing beer to continue my alcoholism without also becoming bankrupt
Who the fuck starts a conversation like that?
>>912324
damn, 18%? science has gone too far. But yeah, get my instructions and use the most turbotic yeast you can find.
>>912324
Ordinary champaign yeast can do 18% if you gradually feed it sugar+nutrients over a few weeks instead of feeding it everything at once.
Shit son, just make a plastic burner.
Get 2x 8 gallon drums with lids, one with a airlock.
Prepare 2 gallons of water, heat it to near boil, add 17-18lbs regular sugar, mix it out thoroughly, then add enough cold water to get to 7.5 gallons in the first 8 gallon drum.
Let it chill down to 70F, then use a Oechsle scale and messure the current values (probably 100-120 or some shit)
Add a packet of turbo yeast, mix like a madman, then put a ring on it (the lid that is) with the airlock, and some water in the airlock.
Make sure the asshole sits around 70F until the blopping stops (in the airlock), which can take anything from 2-3 days to 10-12days.
Once that whore is done plopping, put the whole fucker in a cold room, even as close to 32F to can, and wait for all the bullshit to settle in the bottom, so the content becomes pretty clear.
Once that is done, move that shit over into a clean drum (the second one you bought), and clean the first one.
Now then, get a 2.5gallon bucket, put it on some raisers in the newly washed drum, add 2 gallons of the sugary mess you just made, put a dip-warmer (heating element) into it at ~130-140F, put a lid + airlock on, and wait for close to 1 gallon of liquid has accumulated in the bottom of the drum.
Repeat 3 tims to use all the sugarbullshit you made in the first drum.
Congratulation, you should have about 3 gallons of 100 proof liquor, costing you probably $50 to set up, and then maby $15 every time you run a full 7-7.5gallon of wash after that.
If that isnt economic alcholism, then i just dont know anymore.
>>912282
I brew all the time, but OP is asking how to be dirt cheap. Odds are it's a lot easier and cheaper for him to run to a grocery store and buy shit than find a brewing store or order specialized yeast from amazon.
>>912367
Just to add, you can run the plastic burner for more than just 1 gallon, but it will become increasingly worse proof of the shit that comes out.
Go for 1.5gallons and get ~80proof spirits.
>>912370
oh and fuck me sideways, i forgot. Before you start burning the cunt, you can use the OE scale to check how much oeschels or whatever has been consumed by the yeast (turned into alcohol) and calculate the % of the sugarmess.
(firstvalue-secondvalue)/7.7=% alcohol before you steam it in the bucket, inside a drum.
>>912367
Is there any reason for this "proof" malarkey when you could simply say 50%?
>>912447
>expecting ye olde English measurements to make sense
>>912453
It used to make sense until they started to use ABV and multiply it by 2 just for so.
>>912447
No
>>912101
Brew rice wine. Rice and rice wine yeast are dirt cheap.
Pic related, I made this.
>>912090
I just made 5 gallons of beer for $24 of ingredients and a few bucks of propane that would have cost me $80 to buy from the store.
What are you getting this idea that it's more expensive to brew?
>>912637
big deal anyone can shoot their load in a shot glass
As someone who's going to get started brewing soon, would a raspberry Melomel be a good start into homebrewing? I'm probably gonna use the slurry afterwards to make skeeter pee.
>>912090
Not if you live in Norway. One or two more batches and I have all my equipment cost back in.
>>912826
I live in norway, and i wrote that longass instruction.
Like 150kr after buying buckets from europris, each 6-8 liter of 40%.
>>912637
did some reading about this. sounds pretty interesting. did you use chinese grocer "yeast balls," or just regular brewing yeast?
>>912922
Regular brewing yeast alone won't do the job. You'll need koji mold to break down the starch into sugar first.
Chinese yeast balls contain both koji spore and yeast. It's the easiest way to make rice wine. Just crumble that shit onto a pot of rice.
If you want to be fancy, you can add koji and yeast separately, and control the temperature of each stage to get better tasting wine. Koji and yeast have different ideal temperature. 30 ~ 35 deg C is best for koji, but bad for yeast. And when yeast is lacking, lactic bacteria picks it up and produce lactic acid from the sugar. Then your wine will be sour as shit.
>>912646
That's not a shot glass, anon.
I doubt the like of you could fill it that way.
>>912080
JUST
OP
>>914067
Don't the preservatives in the apple juice hinder yeast growth?
>>912318
Yay. The kilju-route is I deed the cheapest. As its easy and cheap to make you could cold-distill it. Easier than distilling by evaporations.
Put it in the freezer and wait until it is partly frozen. Separate the liquid which contains the alcohol from the ice that is mostly water. Repeat until desired strenght is aquired. There is quite a loss in the amount of alcohol but as is said, kilju isn't the most expensive of drinks...
>>914094
Of you get it fresh, unpasteurized, you should be in the clear. It's the bottled and longer term juice you need to worry about. Lots of bottled juices have potassium sorbate, and sulfates and other things in them, to kill things that could grow in them and destroy their shelf life and taste. Those also destroy our friendly fungus yeast.
This is my current setup for full grain brewing. I can produce craft beers for around $0.75 a pint. Which is about a dollar cheaper than you can get in store. Compared to bud light and Coors its probably about the same price except its a much better beer for the money. I have however invested a shit load of money in all the equipment, feremtors, kegs, fridges ect.
If you want to make beer as cheaply as possible all you need is one of those insulated water jugs (5gal) a 8-10 gallon stock pot, and a carboy for a fermentor. You can heat your mash water on the stove pour it into the water jug with your grains steep for an hour then transfer back to the pot for a 1hr boill with hops. Place the whole pot into a sink full of ice and water to cool to 70 degrees and transfer to your carboy to pitch yeast. Should cost you no more than $100 to get the materials. Pick up a small jug of sanitizer for sanitizing your carboy. This is assuming you don't care about knowing how much alcohol you are making and just want beer for mass consumption.
Bumping before thread dies
If you want good beer, itll be slightly less expensive than buying. if you want piss, buy apple juice in gallon containers, add sugar to it, throw in ale yeast, put an airlock on, wait 2 weeks, throw in fridge for a day, drink
Don't listen to the people who say it's more expensive. That's true on the front end, but it's fat cheaper long term.
It's also pretty tricky. Google some guides.
