I just bought a home brew kit.

[Hairless Cat]

I have a good bit of wine making equiptment along with 5 carboys and a decent bottle capper and caps so Im hoping if I like brewing beer I will already have some of the more advanced equiptment - bad thing is there arent any homebrew stores anywhere around me here so I take a beating on having stuff shipped to me.

[Kettle]

Two stores in wilmington. I guess I'm lucky.

[Hairless Cat]

Im in Brunswick County - I didnt know there were any stores in Wilm- not since the old bottles and kegs place on kerr ave went out of business - where are they?

[Kettle]

I'm in brunswick too. Probably my favorite of the two stores is lumina winery on gordon. Dave, the owner, is a pretty cool guy. The other is on eastwood, and it can be a bitch to get out of the parking lot. Its called noni bacca. The guy in there is helpful too, but he just doesn't seem to want to do it as much.

[mmmbeans]

< doing my first all grain batch next week.

any tips brewski?

[mmmbeans]

I have a good bit of wine making equiptment along with 5 carboys and a decent bottle capper and caps so Im hoping if I like brewing beer I will already have some of the more advanced equiptment - bad thing is there arent any homebrew stores anywhere around me here so I take a beating on having stuff shipped to me.

from what i understand the equipment (at least as far as extract brewing is concerned) is nearly identical. a few extras is all.

[Brooklyn Bully]

Don't tell anyone how awesome what you makes tastes, because i doesn't.

[Mattiekrome]

I got one of these for xmas- Ive been making wine for about 30 years now but the only time I ever tried beer it was a giant fail because I believe of sanitation. anyone ever use a Mr Beer kit? it looks like its for beginners like me

Got one of these a few years ago. Not very complicated, pretty simple really. The beer that came out of it was so/so, kind of like you mixed a Killians Irish Red with a Bud Light. Lots of stuff settled in the bottom of the bottles during the fermentation period. Once done, I was going to reorder a different type to brew, but it would have actually cost more $ than just buying something I liked flat out from the package store.

[PantherBrew]

< doing my first all grain batch next week.

any tips brewski?

umm.. from my experiance, I always had to use about .5 gallon more than the recipe calls for when mashing. I feel like the grains soak up more than most recipes again for.

I could give more tips if I knew what kind of equipment you were using.

Make sure your mashton has a really good seal.

Make sure you have a hard metal spoon because stiring hot mash with the plastic spoons sucks. And dont try to use your hand, cause its hot as fug. I thought I was going to be tough and do it. Bad idea.

How are you going to cool your boil?

Yeah, its hard to give tips without being there or knowing what you are working with.

[PantherBrew]

No offense, but

I despise Mr. Beer kits.

[Kettle]

Sticking with the kit certainly isn't the way to go. My first couple batches were crap compared to what I'm getting now, and much like mattiekrome said, store bought was better. But now I go through extra steps of secondary fermentation and filtering. I also got a wort chiller to get the best cold break I can. Counting only the cost of ingredients I usually end up around a dollar a bottle for really good beer. I dare say I could easily get ten bucks a six pack. Maybe even three for a bottle based on what people who have tried them say. I'm using brewers best kits right now, but will eventually move on from kits to developing recipes.