Hosted by David MacGregor (Amy will likely flee the house) and tentatively scheduled on January 16 or 17 at 1 pm (brewing) and February 13 or 20 (bottling). It's time to get that summer ale started, since home-brew needs to age several months. I am not an expert but I have made some good ale over the past few years and have always found homebrew to be better tasting than commercial beers (that's why people like microbrews so much). If you are curious about beer brewing or hard cider (I may try that, too, and wine making is similarly easy) this is your chance to see how it's done and make a 4 to 5 gallons of your own home-brew!

The first day will be about boiling the ingredients and getting the wort ("wert", unfermented beer) into a 6 gallon carboy to ferment. I have an extra carboy for one other brewer and will be happy to babysit the carboys. The second day will be 3-5 weeks later and will be for bottling the home-brew. Each day should take about 3 hours.

For brewing, you will need ingredients for the ale you want to brew, a 12 to 16 quart boiling pot, preferably stainless steel with a heavy bottom, ice to cool the wort, and Sanitizer (I use the powder sold at beer supply stores).

For bottling, you will need 50 to 55 dozen 12-ounce glass bottles, metal caps (may or may not come with kit), a lot more Sanitizer, and a few more small items. Salvaged commercial bottles are great, but twist-off bottles do not seal well. Sam Adams and similar are perfect, but Heineken bottles don't have enough lip for the capper to grab. Go with brown bottles when possible.

I brew ale (as opposed to lagers) from kits, which are packaged in a wide variety of styles (malty, hoppy, dark, light and even "clones" of popular brands). Some good sources of ingredient kits and brewing equipment are Hammersmith Homebrew Supplies , and The Homebrew Emporium . An interesting site I just found is Homebrew Heaven . I buy my supplies from Listermann Brewing Company in Cincinnati because I prefer liquid malt to powdered and can get free shipping if I buy 2 kits at a time (not only because that's where I started brewing).

I can be reached at 518-275-5534 and dmac dot mensa at gmail dot com. Please let me know if you are interested and which dates work better for you. Happy brewing!