Yes and no, IMO. I think cooking is a good parallel to brewing that most people can relate to: You can haphazardly toss ingredients together with out knowing how they taste or what ingredients are complimentary or what flavors clash, apply a random amount of heat for a indiscriminate time and sometimes you'll make something great...sometimes not so much but at least it's still food. (The plus side w/ beer is that you can almost always find someone to drink your beer as long as it contains alcohol. Course if you have a dog, you're covered w/ your cooking) Everyone comes into brewing with different goals. At two extremes, some people just want to make alcohol while some want to brew 'world class beer'. Two different approaches that require two different levels of skill, equipment and approaches. Both are equally valid if the brewer is satisfied with the beer in the glass at the end of the process.
Right, my point was more to show how brewing could evolve over time without the need for very detailed knowledge of the process. You might not make the
best beer, but if you do those simple things (adding a few missing details) you will make beer. So anyone wanting to just have fun and follow a recipe online and make OK beer. Once you get the basics, it seems you can add/remove/tweak and not really bother getting too detailed as long as your additions/tweaks are small and within the basic structure. But if you wanted to really get into it and control every level and predict and calculate and formulate, then that's certainly an option too!
But anyway, I think I'm taking the plunge. Drummergirl has a Bachelorette party to go to next weekend so she'll be gone 3-4 days. I'm going to make a shopping list this week and decide on a recipe, then I'm going to get the equipment and ingredients this weekend. I'll double check that I have everything I need throughout the week and get prepared, make another stop at the store if I need to, and should have my first brew day the following weekend!
I'll try to find a quick fermenting and bottle aging beer, so maybe it will be ready for my friend's bachelor party.
So any suggestions on equipment or Brew Day tips/rituals/sacrifices to the Gods would be welcome.
Here's my basic idea right now:
All extract brew, so no need for a Mash Tun/Lauter Tun
I'll get an 8 or 10 gallon brew pot though, so I will be ready for when I do want to do all-grain.
Wort Chiller copper coil if they have them. I'll be prepared to stop by Lowes to get the stuff to make my own if they don't
Still deciding on glass carboy vs. plastic bucket fermenter. Will get a plastic bucket with spigot for bottling though.
5 gallon batches, so about 20 1-liter grolsch type flip top bottles.
And all the small (but important) things like sanitizer, probably another bucket just to use to sanitize things, air lock, etc. I'll lean on the store clerk some to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. I'm sure they'll try to sell me anything they can.
Am I overlooking anything important? Anything worth changing? Recipe suggestions?