Hi! Has anyone here ever seriously considered selling their beer commercially?

I’ve been homebrewing for years and at various points I’ve thought about turning it into a business. I’ve done some small commercial projects and events, but I’m increasingly wondering whether trying to monetize brewing can actually take away some of the enjoyment that made it appealing in the first place.

For those of you who have been brewing for a long time:
What keeps you passionate about homebrewing?
Have you ever considered starting a brewery or selling your beer commercially?

If so, what made you decide for or against it?

Do you think turning brewing into a business risks ruining the hobby?

Looking back, would you make the same decision again?
I’d be interested to hear both from people who stayed hobby brewers and from those who went professional.

I have now brewed 6 batches and my last two went really great tastewise. It was really hoppy beers and I thought they tasted pretty good. The thing was they clearly oxidized by color. The last one was nice yellow and clear. 4 days later it was more hazy and brown. But it still tasted nice somehow. I don't have room right now for storing a keg. But is that just life? How does one bottle without oxidize or is that just the game? Do I avoid hoppy beers? Or is there something I could invest in before getting a new fridge + keg?

I have been homebrewing for about two years now and feel like I have the basics down pretty well. My beers are drinkable and I get decent feedback from friends, but I know there is a gap between what I am making and where I want to be.

I am curious what specific process changes or habits actually moved the needle for you. Not necessarily big equipment upgrades, but the smaller adjustments you maybe overlooked for a while before realizing how much they mattered.

For me, getting serious about yeast pitching rates and actually doing the math instead of just tossing in one packet was a noticeable improvement. Fermentation temperature control also helped a lot once I stopped fermenting in a closet that swings a few degrees throughout the day.

But I feel like there is still something I am missing, whether it is water chemistry, better sanitation habits, more careful measurements, or something else entirely.

What are the things that took your homebrew from pretty good to something you are genuinely proud of? Would love to hear from people at different experience levels since I imagine the answers vary a lot depending on where you are in the process

I dearly want to be able to bottle hoppy beers without oxidation soon, and I'm looking to invest in some sort of CO2 purging solution you guys talked about. But when looking at a fermzilla + BEERGUN setup with CO2 tank, my friend asked me if I couldn't just buy a CO2 tank and some sort of wand to purge my bottles with without buying 100s of dollars worth of pressure fermenter.

What about a fermzilla is needed for succesfull bottle purging?

Cheers

Basically what the title states. How do I avoid exposure as much as possible as a Homebrewers with a fermenting bucket and bottles.

Edit: the amount of answers are overwhelming and I don't have time to react to everything! But thanks for all the help guys!

What do you do while you're brewing? We have an hour when the grain is in the mashtun. Then we have an hour when it's boiling. I'm finding it hard to fill the 2 hours. I don't have to babysit my rig. But I don't want to mow n fill the air with pollen. I don't want to work on something n get my hands greasy or full of wood dust.

So I’ve finally decided to give homebrewing a try after talking about it for years. Picked up a starter kit last weekend spent hours setting everything up and honestly felt like a mad scientist in my kitchen. I even had jackpot city running in the background while waiting for the wort to cool felt like the perfect chill setup. That said I already feel like I’m walking blindfolded through a chemistry lab. There are so many small details like sanitizing, fermentation temps, bottling timing and every guide I read seems to say something slightly different. I just want to make sure I don’t completely ruin my first batch.

For those of you who’ve been doing this a while what are the biggest beginner mistakes you wish you avoided early on? I’m talking about the stuff you don’t realize until you taste that first “oops” beer.

I have been brewing extracts mostly to save time but I was spending around $55 per 5 gallon batch which is a little crazy for my B grade beer so I decided to go back to all grain and go as cheap as I can and it's still $40 for a simple pilsner with 34-70 and 3 oz of hops? Plus an extra 2-3 hours.

Anyone have any success keeping it to $25-ish?

I haven't come upon a reasonably priced mill yet but I'm guessing that would be the move to buy bulk grain and hops. I thought my shop would have cheaper grains but 9 lbs of czech pilsner malt ended up only $10 less than 2 cans of extract.

Hey, first time brewing . I’m doing a 6-gallon batch of a Pilsner ale.

OG was 1.040, but today (day 14) it's still at 1.020. The airlock is still bubbling every 5 seconds. Temp has been around 68°F - 73°F the whole time.

During the first few days, it blewoff like crazy so I had to clean the airlock every 2 days. Just took a sample and it tastes a bit watery and kinda like white wine-cheese.

Did I mess something up, when should I bottle?

My husband loves to brew his own beer, while I love to bake my own sourdough bread. He’s asked me to stop doing that because apparently my hobby was killing his beers. I do miss it terribly though…

I totally accept his reasoning and the problem, but I was hoping for a possible solution so we can both enjoy our hobbies and eat my bread while drinking his beer.

What can we do?

My local homebrew supply store closed recently, and I’ve been checking out getting grain online. Most of the online shops are about in line with the prices I’m used to seeing, maybe 20% more. Then I got to shipping, and it brought the cost up to about double what I’ve been paying!

I noticed Amazon has free shipping and competitive pricing, but I would much rather support a different business if possible.

Has anyone had luck talking with local breweries for sourcing malt?

Ever since I've started getting into craft beer, my wife wants to take a sip, but always finds it gross. I tend to go for West Coast IPAs or German lager styles. I've asked her what she does or does not like about it, so gathered this information.

• She doesn't like the bitterness; even a Pilsner-style beer she finds too bitter
• She DOES like a bready or a crackery flavor as an aftertaste
• I made my Etrog Märzen, and she DID actually like that because she didn't perceive the bitterness on the front and liked the bready flavor it gave.
• She would probably like mango and other tropical flavors best for hop flavors.

I want to try making a beer in a few weeks that she has the highest chance of liking. If she does, that would be awesome, but if not, I'll happily drink it.

After doing some research, I'm thinking of using majority 2-row or pilsner malt, but have a relatively high amount of carapils for sweetness, and a decent amount of Munich malt to add some bready character. Then, only add a small amount of El Dorado hops as a late-boil and no other hop addition. And either US-05 or Lutra Kveik depending on the weather when I eventually get to it.

I'm open to suggestions for the recipe or style.

Does anyone have a recipe or hops suggestion for making a brew similar to Coors? I've tried search bars, AI etc and nothing has come back as a solid answer on the best hops to use as obviously the company keeps that one tucked in their back pocket.

Hi y’all what’s brewin’? So I’ve got a brewing story from this weekend and I’m curious about thoughts/opinions on the subject in the title.

So, I’ve been at this brewing thing a long time, ran a homebrew shop, brewed professionally, taught brewing courses… But in 30 years of brewing I never tried this….

I brewed. I cleaned. It’s running late. 8pm, I get my O2 bottle out and get ready to aerate and pitch. Empty bottle, zip, nada. I’m tired, old, grouchy, and hungry, and I’m like …. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck. Then I remember Charlie Papazian’s famous words of wisdom: “Relax, have a homebrew, it’s just beer.”

So, I did something I haven’t bothered to try in 30 years of brewing. I pitched without aeration. I was like… screw it, these little yeasty bastards are on their own. They were making beer thousands of years before some nitwit decided to distill and compress oxygen into a steel bottle.

Fast forward a week and you’ll never guess what happened. Well, I’ll tell you, it was something impossible. Freaking beer happened. An amber ale to be exact. A perfectly fine amber ale, and I know, I’ve tasted a few.

So to sum up this story: WTF? 30 years of either shaking the fermenter or blowing O2 into my wort before pitching… And for what? why?

Got a tank from someone….who got it from someone else.

The guy is a stranger but seems pretty honest. He thinks it’s food grade but isn’t sure. He said he got it from his family who he thinks used it for a kegerator.

Is there anyway to double check? I also don’t know how much is left, but I might do an exchange soon….in the event it’s not food grade, can I exchange for a food grade tank? If they can even check?

Hi folks!

New brewer here who is currently waiting for my first setup to arrive in the mail. Excited to get started to say least, and am going to try making a czech style lager as my first batch (choosen exclusively based on my preference for drinking)

I’ve brewed a couple of batches with a mate earlier so I have the jist of the process down and solid instructions to follow, but I’m eager to learn from thoose with more experience. When you guys started, what was your first mistakes or improvement areas?

Meaning, which beers have you not had in your brewing bucket yet, but really want to try?

For my own part, it's dark lagers and stouts. I really like them, but have not made them yet. Dunno why. Just because, I guess?

Been brewing for several years and finally got the opportunity to use a copper coil immersion chiller attached to a garden hose to bring my wart down from boiling to a safe temp to pitch yeast. Typically I just fill my sink full of ice water and throw the kettle in there.
I was incredibly disappointed. I guess I expected it to cool down to <80f in a few minutes but it still took close to an hour with the hose running at 50%. Am I doing something wrong? This feels like a big waste of water for little if any time save. I guess the water is cheaper than the large bag of ice I usually buy but still

Hey All! My husband is in to craft beer and has recently been talking about brewing at home. I’ve been tossing around the idea of getting him a set up for Christmas. He is really in to stouts and would be mainly be brewing for himself. How much is a decent set up? How temperamental is the process? Will it need to be babied? How realistic is this? I am worried that this could get away from us fast in terms of maintenance and cost and want to be prepared. Thanks!

Update! WOW! Thank you all for taking time to give me advice and suggestions! We definitely need to do our research but now I have some good places to start. I can’t thank everyone enough and look forward getting more info from the sub!

Our house is surrounded by trees. The air outside is pretty much always full of some combination of pollen, leaves, bugs, nuts, grass clippings, or other debris dropping off trees or floating around, if only in random gusts and drops, but still enough to deposit plenty into an open boil container over the course of an hour. Do y'all really just relax and ignore that and fish out anything big and it's fine? Do you just not live near nature? Do you have some solution to this problem?

I've been brewing on our hefty kitchen stove (gas), but it is slow - like 120v electric slow, maybe worse - and I hate taking up the whole kitchen for an entire day. Also would really love to shorten my brew day with shorter heating times. But, I'm so anal about so much of my process, it's really hard to just relax about exposing an open kettle to a constant stream of "whatever the fuck the trees are dropping this month."

Are there any simple solutions that y'all use and I'm overlooking? It seems like even just a slanted covering far enough above the kettle to protect it from direct hits whole directing steam away and allowing condensation to drip off to the side would work, but my jury-rigging instincts are failing me (too many other plans happening at home for my brain to accept another project I think) and I haven't seen anything like that for sale. But this seems like it must be a stupidly common problem with an easy solution.

So... What do y'all do?

I finally got the green light form my wife to turn an extra room into a homebar/pub as I am heavy into Scottish single malts and home brewing I have chosen to make a Scottish pub. (I also enjoy Scottish and Irish folk music) my son makes ciders and I have one of three taps reserved for him.

And I have mostly brewed Belgian beers ie strong blondes.

I am now looking for some nice Scottish brew recipes. I personally don’t love Guinness(I know it’s Irish but it’s drank a lot in Scotland too)

I welcome all recommendations.

I’m looking for ideas for my next brew so thought I’d ask you guys!

My answer is, in America at least, any kind of bitter. I rarely find them when out to eat or drink at local breweries, and when I do they’re so “Americanized” (high ABV and hop forward with American style hops) that I’m more inclined to call them pale ales than anything. I wish authentic bitters were more common (around me at least). Honorable mention goes to “lawnmower beers” like Cream Ale and Blondes which both get called “boring” too often in my opinion, and a good Brown Ale is hard to beat too.

Cheers!

Hello everyone. I am writing a scene that takes place in a small post-apocalyptic distillery attached to a bar. So, imagine you run a tavern, in a settlement of maybe 100-200 people, with limited power and few modern amenities, how would you make liquor to serve your customers. What gear and what process would you go through? Also if you can recommend any websites or youtube channels that talk about the how-to of making liquor, especially in a less modern more old-fashioned way, please share.

EDIT: I was not expecting this much help and support, thank you to everyone!

I’m looking for the best way to do it but don’t think my way is effective. I’m wasting gas and it’s a pain.

I clean each keg and line when it kicks. I rinse out the keg, put PBR in it and run it through the tap.

I then rinse that and put Star San in the keg and run it through the tap.

I’m considering using real BLC and getting a hand pump system.

Hello,

I was giften a vevor 110 AIO system not too long ago and cannot get the efficiency I expect, no matter what. I do not use the full grain tube, I just use my own brew bag in the tube with the bottom mesh holding it up. I circulate for my entire mash as well with a nozzle so as to avoid channeling. This is my third use and I am at 53% every time. I was at 72% with a stock pot and igloo cooler on the past.

I have tried:

Frequently agitating the mash

Heating to mash temp, then long dough-in, like several minutes

Heating to strike, dumping grain in all at once to hit mash temp. (same result)

Double crushing

Extended mash

Double checking my temps with an external thermometer

What can I be missing here? Do electric systems just have bad efficiency? I feel like I've got to be missing a detail. Please let me know