A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.
Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.
Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
Tried to make a Pina colada mead following city steading brewing's recipe, accidentally bought coconut milk instead of coconut water and found out only when everything was sanitized and pineapple juice already in the fermenter, and thought "what the hell, what the worst that could happen? If it goes rancid I'll just dump it out", we'll, I woke up to a lovely Pina colada smell and my kitchen absolutely covered with goop and air lock in the other side of the kitchen. Learn from my dumbassery.
I heard somebody say that you're not a real homebrewer until you mop the ceiling. So, congratulations!
I just started brewing two months ago, so I am glad the brew gods decided to accept me so early!
Bonus points if you find the closet where you've put your bottles to ferment all sticky with shards of glass stuck in the door.
Damn. That has always been a fear of mine and sometimes I wonder whether I should be wearing a full suit of armor when transporting bottles from carbonation fermentation to the fridge for consumption. Never happened yet, but never know. Recently got into kegging to reduce this risk.
To be fair, it only happened to me once in the 7 years I've been brewing, and may have been due to a combination of factors: lack of experience, extreme carbonation, probably an infected bottle, maybe a weakened bottle. Even the other, intact bottles from that batch were massive gushers. It was also the first time I added fruit to a brew, so fruit particles contributed to the whole fiasco. The taste was fantastic tho.
I'd say, if you check that your fermentation is truly done before bottling, your priming is sensible and your bottles are squeaky clean and thoroughly disinfected, there shouldn't be any risks.
I remember having to haul everything out of the pantry and scrub the walls after a 2L plastic wine fermenting bottle exploded. Our version of an airlock was just gravity and a loose cap... which someone tightened.
Ah - that's happened to me before. Making banana wine, crushed and boiled my fruit selection, didn't filter it very well before fermenting, blocked the airtrap in my demijon, first I knew about it was an almighty bang and then I had to repaint the kitchen.
Joy of homebrewing, am afraid. Sometimes you do stupid things and they turn out amazing, and sometimes you do sensible things and just forget one tiny but essential step. I heartily recommend making snakebite-and-black homebrew, btw - lager kit, cider kit, couple of bottles of blackcurrant juice all in your fermenter; loses all its sweetness and most of its purple colour and the result is a very tasty brew.
Thankfully I don't have to repaint anything, and I wish I could try that but blackcurrant is not available where I love
Hmm painting accident.
One christmass my dad opened his beer at the table with presents. One of my books still smells like beer after about 8 years.
I now see why some people use their spare bathtub, if they have one, as a staging area during fermentation.