Anyone here do any kind of homebrew/ wine making

If so, I’m in.

Haha sure thing but I'll probably lose. I experimented with some turbo yeast last batch and essentially made 10 gallons of prius fuel

Im kind of a bumpkin with a pretty unsophisticated "palette". Im perfectly capable of sitting in the woods with my dog and a jug of high test hawaiian punch

Okay, so you’re not working with a kit. Off to a good start...

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Okay, so you’re not working with a kit.

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This is mainly why i started the thread. Give me some tips! What type of containers and yeast are you using?

Well i use cane sugar and some dehydrated banana and plum personally. I have a small section of my field that i keep sugar cane. I do use some good ol dixie crystal in the cook too though

How close are you to screven county. Id be more than happy to give you some hooch

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How close are you to screven county

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You ever hear of Tyler McCabe? Played catcher down there in high school from 1997-2001

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Ive not gotten into beer making yet

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If you can make wine, you can make beer, and the best part is you can make better quality. A decent homebrew is as good or better than most of what you can find in the store (start with a tried/true recipe before making your "watermelon, cilantro duck fart sour sout" or whatever insane combo you want to try ).

I've got a 15 gallon batch setup I've been using for a while now, brewing anything from Pale Ales and IPAs, to cream ales/wheat ales, and heavy stouts... really everything in between that isn't sour. I like a sour beer occasionally, but biggest issue is that you really need a dedicated setup for them if you don't want to ruin everything else that you brew. Sanitization in homebrew setups can be challenging and lacto/brett are notoriously "clingy".

Good luck with the wine and let me know if you decide to get into beer and have questions. GREAT forum for homebrew info: LINK /

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Well i use cane sugar

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I have a small section of my field that i keep sugar cane

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You are making rum.

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and some dehydrated banana and plum

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Sounds ok, but you might want to think about adding those flavors afterwards. During fermentation, you lose so much of that flavor, then during distillation you lose even more.

Wine:

Pour juice in bucket.
Sprinkle yeast in bucket.
Add additional sugar if recipe calls for it.
Stir. Cap with airlock.
Stirring or agitation several times a day the first couple days.
Then wait. This is the hardest part for people.
Bottle. Add stabilizers (kills remaining yeast) if sweet.
Wait longer.
Done.


Beer:
Bring exactly 4 gallons of water to exactly 162 degrees.
Sprinkle in crushed barley until temperature get down to between 150-153 degrees. Any hotter, and the enzymes created will make your beer too sweet. Any lower, your mash turns into dough. Hopefully you got your water volume and grain bill exactly right, so when you put in the last of your grains, it's 151.5 degrees. If it gets down to 150 and you still have grains to add, better crank the heat.. but not too much... add the rest of your grain, stir very well, constantly monitoring temp, keeping it between 150-153.

Then wait about 20 minutes for the enzymes to do their work, go ahead and heat up a second kettle of water to 180.

Place a third cooking vessel underneath the grain cooker. Slowly open the spigot so the liquid begins to slowly trickle out. You want to add the 180* hot water to the grains at the same rate you are draining it, the slower the better, until your kettle is full to whatever mark the recipe calls for. Say, 6.5 Gallons.

Now, you may want to test your pre-wort at this point with a hydrometer. The problem is that is won't be accurate at 170 degrees, so you have to do math to convert it. Additionally, tiny bubbles will stick to the hydrometer throwing off your reading. Give it a good spin, and take three different readings. If it is not dense enough, stir in a pound of dry malt extract. If it is too dense, that's actually a good thing. Your final product will have an extra kick. Or be syrypy if your mash temp was over 155.

Now begin heating the drained wort. Only after the kettle begins a rolling boil, put in exactly the amount of hops the recipe requires, with the exact strain (or AA content) listed. Boil it for exactly the number of minutes the recipe calls for. Too long, too bitter. Not long enough, will taste like Barley flavored koolaid.

As your boil is finishing, add the finishing hops following directions exactly.

Now is time to strain into a fermentation bucket. It must be very clean and sanitized, beer is much more prone to infection than other fermentables like wine.

Then there's all the steps for fermentation, secondary fermentation, dry hopping, bottle vs kegging, aging practices, carbonation strategies and dangers, etc.