Well, I have now acquired several hops starts that will live, and I have a bunch of seeds that should hopefully germinate. So, I figure I should have some hops by the end of this grow season. Obviously I could use them for brewing my own beer, but I don't know right now if it is going to be worth it.  I am interested in it though, if not for drinking, at least for the fun of making it. Has anyone ever brewed their own beer, or do it on a regular basis? I would be interested in hearing of anyone's experiences with making their own beer, or other alcoholic drinks -- perhaps something like Wine, Absinthe, or others?

well i'm bored so i'll describe the process
we start by boiling the wort for ligher ales i omit that and use like a ligher malt extract  (that's good beer btw) make sure you boil it no higher than 106 or you extract more tannins from the wort.
i remove the wort (it comes in a mesh bag) then i add the malt extract portionwise. as it's dissolved i start adding the hops incrementally this process takes maybe two hours.
then cool it as it reache3s a certain temp i start adding sugars maltose dextrose and the like to increase alcohol content.
it's transfered to a bucket which has been sterilized and once it reached around 100 C the yeast energizer goes in along with the yeast.
(the candida yeast goes in my ex.'s panties but that's another matter.
this is sealed with fermentation lock and co2 evolution rate observerd .

Cool, thank you for the links. While the one PDF covers hops pretty well, it didn't seem to say when they are supposed to be harvested -- is their a specific time in which one is supposed to get the cones off the hops, similarly how one must obtain the bud from marijuana to get the preferred compounds? It probably plays a big roll in how strong, what flavor, etc the beer made from the hops is, as well as how they are cured or used after harvest.

Not to shabby, nice work!
Yep hops shouldn't be to hard to get if you look for it. You may be interested in growing your own.

The things you said that looked like rabbit pellets were likely compressed hops, from what I have been reading.

Isn't it just made from honey, water, and yeast? Or is it more complicated then that?

I was about to start brewing but was put off by the yeasty taste inherent with homebrews. I looked into a 1 micron filter made for the purpose of removing the yeast and leaving a crystal clear brew with no yeast aftertaste;

Has anyone had experience cold filtering their brew?
You would also need a keg system with CO2.

Ohh no! I am no expert by any means, but I do know that homebrew is known for its yeasty aftertaste and thats why many do not like it. There are processes called Lagering whereas you wait for the yeast to drop out of suspension or add finings to clear and clarify the brew (for example activated carbon) their actions may be broadly categorized as either electrostatic, adsorbent, ionic, or enzymatic. But even after adding finings and lagering the best you will get will look like this;

There are people that say that proper temperature during fermentation and using quality liquid yeast will remove the cloudyness and yeast taste, but the picture on the right above used liquid yeast and you can see it still needs filtering and is going to be the best you will do without at least putting it through a 1 micron filter.

"Normally used filtration ratings are divided into rough, fine and sterile. Rough filtration leaves some cloudiness in the beer, but it is noticeably clearer than unfiltered beer. Fine filtration yields a beer which is nearly transparent and not cloudy, although observation of the scattering of light through the beer will reveal the presence of some small particles. Finally, as its name implies, sterile filtration is fine enough that almost all microorganisms in the beer are removed during the filtration process. Beer which has been filtered is usually held in "bright tanks" at the brewery before bottling or additional treatment."
Cold Filtering
"Though all filtering is done cold, the term "cold filtering" is used for a filtering process in which the beer is chilled so the protein molecules clump together and so are easier to filter out.[9] Breweries tend to differentiate cold filtered beers from those that have been heat pasteurised."

Australian Carlton Cold first cold filtered beer on the market in Aus;

Mexican Cerveza )crystal clear and transparent;


Generally in Microbreweries (they produce product just as good if not better than commercial beer), they use lenticular filters this removes the CO2 from the fermentation so you need to carbonate it again. There are other more complicated methods for much larger commercial sized operations but for the microbrewery and smaller a lenticular filter maybe first with a small inline activated carbon filter to catch the big particles before they clog and damage the filter would be used. This is a typical single filter system;


The type you see in a microbrewery (commercial production requires several steps), would look like this;

Pure Process Filtration, Inc. offers a full line of filter presses and lenticular filter housings.  Filter presses provide the lowest cost of filtration per unit of fluid processed.  Presses are available from laboratory to full scale production flow rates.  Manufactured in 316 stainless steel or plastic.  Filter presses are designed to accommodate for cake accumulation and multiple step filtration in a single pass.

Stacked disc filter have a long history in Food and Beverage applications. They arose out of the need to package sheet-based depth filter technology in more user-friendly, modular closed systems, especially for small batch production or medium flow rate applications. Due to the relative high dirt holding capacity and filtration performance of filter sheet-based products, they provided an optimal and cost-effective solution for handling food and beverage fluids.
The filtration effect of these sheet-based products is based on a combination of surface, depth, and adsorptive filtration.

Microorganism reduction and yeast removal in wine
Microorganism reduction in beer with moderate
To high microbial load
Final filtration of juice and juice concentrate prior to bottling
Microorganism reduction in sugar syrups
Microorganism reduction in enzyme solutions

Polishing filtration of wine
Microorganism reduction in beer with low microbial load
Fine filtration of beer and yeast removal
Fine filtration of beer following DE prefiltration
Polishing filtration of beer
Prefiltration of juice prior to final membrane filtration
Haze removal in apple juice before bottling
Polishing filtration of sugar syrups
Polishing filtration of enzyme solutions
Polishing filtration of thick liquor gelatine
Secondary sedimentation prevention in tea

Clarification of wine
Particle removal in fruit juice
Particle removal in tea-based beverages
Prefiltration of juice concentrate
Polishing filtration of olive oil
Clarification of enzyme solutions
Clarification of thin liquor gelatine   

Depending on the filter used, as you can get lenticular filters that have small enough pores they will filter bacteria and certain viruses from the beer(and viruses are small even compared to bacteria!), decolorize ect. So you could be confident in producing a crystal clear yeast free brew. If you decided to buy your super microbrewery from china you would come away with a very professional little setup for cheap, one place was selling a range of lenticular filter housing starting from $50 going up to the massive microbrewery ones at $1000 US. This unit does not stand higher than your knee;
target;
[img]http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/photofiles/list/2790/3713light_beer.jpg[/url]

Of course you could, if I were going to go to the trouble I would be making a nice little fermenting tank that goes with it. As I personally would choose a stainless fermenting tank over a plastic one anyday!
These are actual fermenting tanks that are being used by brewers;

They are just modified pots!
Also as stated the downside is filtering will also remove the CO2 that naturally built up so you then have to force carbonate, a good method is to modify an old bar fridge so you can get the brew cold enough to absorb all the CO2 and be nice and cold to serve. The pic below is a diagram of an old bar fridge with two small holes drilled through it and the lines passed through those holes then sealed with silicon.

And it is now getting to be a pretty full on endevour!

You can easily culture your own liquid yeast, so you only need to buy the good stuff once. Here is a simple technique to multiply your expensive quality yeast.
Liquid Yeast Culturing
http://www.countrybrewer.com.au/webcontent26.htm

While starting to become full on, it would be well worth it considering you would have your own ice cold draught beer on tap. That compared favorably to commercial brews, I have just convinced myself to start!

Yes the hops is very important. It is the soul of the brew and what gives the beer its bitter flavor. I am a novice brewer and I usually make a brown ale like new castle and a cervesa light like corona or tecate for my friends that dont like anything but coors or bud. This thread caught my attention at the mention of you actually having hops plants. A very important plant that is the glue to the worlds attitude and outlook. Try having a world with no beer in it. The last time I was at the brew house a man told me that a very large hop house in germany had burnt down and the world was running very low on it. I was given another thing like hops to throw in my brew becasue he didnt have any. The hops come in a bag and look like rabbit food pellets.

I wont go into how to make beer because it is so easy. just follow the directions from where ever you buy your malt and barley, but I will talk about the satisfaction you feel while your making it and the pride after its been bottled, capped and one of your buddy's cracks one open and says this aint so bad.   no shit! It is a cool hobby that can be casually talked about with any one unlike other indeavors that have to remain dark personal secrets. it is a way to take pride in a ancient art and a release for keeping so many other things secret. If I am making sense.The last time I brewed beer was when hurricane ike hit the coast. We didnt have any power for a month and we were running low on hooch. I had it bottled and capped about a week and a half after the storm had gone. Sure by that time some stores had power on and my neighboors and myself had store bought beer, but hey every one liked it and it got drank up.

The best advice I can give you for brewing beer is...... get a CO2 bottle and a keg. The kinda keg you need is one of the ones that coke syrup comes in and has a lid. It saves a step by forcing carbonation via CO2 and is ready to drink faster. Bottling and capping the beer is the most labor intensive part and what makes me usually not want to do it again after I have bottled say a 50 24 oz bottles. Hope its okay to have a pic of my face. I have nothing to hide as I sit and do gods work.

Drone, I am pleased to see another chemist who make alcohol. I thought all chemists did but then I found out not all make alcohol.

I make vodka. But it is just distilled EtOH and distilled water. It does contain trace amounts of flavourings and impurities that are part of vodka but not enough. Not true vodka but very clean, no headache from drinking too much, just makes you tired.

I hope that is not you in the picture, to be safe for you.

I prefer to make strong alcohol from sucrose and yeast in water. It takes two days to finish ferment of sugar water and then it only takes a few hours to end up with 80%+ EtOH in H2O in multi-litre capacity.

I have begun experimenting with purified corn sugars as a source of alcohol because of its low cost compared to sucrose from old methods of old plants.

Quote

I prefer to make strong alcohol from sucrose and yeast in water. It takes two days to finish ferment of sugar water and then it only takes a few hours to end up with 80%+ EtOH in H2O in multi-litre capacity.

How is it you distill it?

I use fractional distillation with forced steam through a chamber I made of food safe plastic that contains activated charcoal. When it is done, I have nearly pure drink. I have made it from mostly stainless steel with some coppper to eliminate sulphur compounds. I change the copper coil once per year.


This was hard for me to type because of language (I had to ask for help)  but I would like to tell more, if you want.