Favorite "Old School" Beer

sd said:
i have had a fresh heineken once in my life. and honestly, i missed the skunk taste. it is a weird beer.

is homebrewing better than what you can buy? is it worth the effort? how long does it take before you are brewing quality beer? these are my questions.
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Yes, yes, and first batch. These are my answers.

Seriously though, if you're considering doing it, find a buddy that knows what he's doing and you'll be brewing the good stuff in no time. My first batch was really better than 90% of the beers I've ever bought. It might be a challenge to out do the best microbrews on a consistent basis but it's always much better than any of the mass marketed swill.

Brews I've done;

A fall fest amber ale with cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove

Hefeweizen

A wheat beer with coriander

An ultra hoppy IPA

A black IPA

Maple Nut Brown ale, twice.

That's it so far. Next up will be an oatmeal stout or a chili beer maybe with tart cherry also. It's not really a way to save money on beer and there are 2 partial days of work involved on brew day and bottling day.

 
those all sound pretty incredible jj. might have to look into, especially since my beer options up here are limited.

 
JJ,
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I've done 3 batches, a pale ale, a honey ale, and a porter. honey ale was subpar (miscalculated my hops) but the other two were fantastic. It's a lot of fun.

 
sd said:
carlfense said:
JJHusker1 said:
Rolling Rock = skunky Heineken
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I only ask because I have never had the experience of Rolling Rock but I have had Heineken that I am pretty sure was left out in the elements for about 8 years.
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Both have a really skunky taste. I think Heineken spends .90 of every dollar on marketing . . . and the other .10 on brewing beer.
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i have had a fresh heineken once in my life. and honestly, i missed the skunk taste. it is a weird beer.

is homebrewing better than what you can buy? is it worth the effort? how long does it take before you are brewing quality beer? these are my questions.
Click to expand...
The reason Heineken is skunky is because of the green bottles. Beer gets that skunky taste when you don't use brown bottles to protect it from the light. If the distributors would store the stuff correctly that skunky taste probably wouldn't be there. So if you decide to homebrew, that's one of the lessons you'll need to learn.

Homebrewing is better than what you can buy if you put the work in. The preparation is important to making a good beer and temperature control is where it's at. People, including myself when I first started, were amazed and how sterile you have to be when making beer to avoid letting it get infected. Get John Palmer's book, "How to Brew" and use that thing like a bible! If you read that book and pay attention to what he says you'll make a good beer right off the bat. I made a great American Wheat beer for my first beer by paying attention to what he said. If you just buy the kit and read the directions you'll make a crappy to "meh" beer and that may deter you from the hobby. If you decide to do it PM me if you have any questions. I'll steer you down the right road and check out homebrewtalk.com if you want an excellent resource for home brewers. HUGE website............

 
not gonna lie, that sounds awesome. would love to try some quality home brews. i just do not think i would have the dedication for it right now.

 
tschu said:
JJ,
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:
I've done 3 batches, a pale ale, a honey ale, and a porter. honey ale was subpar (miscalculated my hops) but the other two were fantastic. It's a lot of fun.
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I've been using a program called BeerTools to calculate my recipes. I think there are other better, more expensive programs but Beertools has worked well for me.

Most of the time I brew with three friends but they haven't been too active the past two years. We've only really screwed up one batch. My friend was doing an ESB and we were drinking heavily on bottling day. Well my other buddy stirred the bottling sugar, wildly, in the conical fermenterwe didn't pay attention, and then bottled it. There was still some trub in there and it ended up in the bottles. It was an honest (drunk) mistake as we had prior been racking off to a bottling bucket and weren't used to bottling directly from the conical. Tasted ok but it was ugly and chunky so ended up dumping them.

 
EbylHusker said:
This thread should be titled, "Styles of piss you can tolerate drinking." It would be far more accurate.
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That's what I was thinking too! I'm glad someone started the discussion about home brewing to at least make it more interesting. But to me, "old school" beers begin with Guiness ( founded in 1759). Most of the other swill mentioned in this thread doesn't even deserve the title of "beer".

Sincerely,

Cranky beer snob.

 
Technically not a beer but I enjoyed Big Cat malt liquor.....almost exactly the same as beer taste. I believe twice the amount of alcohol compared to 6.0 beer. Division of Pabst Brewery, Big Cat was discontinued a long time ago.

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