Austin Homebrew Blog

Compared to homebrewing beer, making hard cider at home is a much easier process. Since there’s no mash and no boil, it can be less labor intensive as well. Plus, you’ll be able to use the equipment you have on hand already, so why not give making hard cider a try?

It is advisable to avoid using barrels that have developed mold inside. When opting for barrels, investing in a new French or American oak barrel is a wise choice. Alternatively, if a used barrel is to be used, it should be thoroughly cleaned beforehand.

For centuries, the practice of aging red wines in oak casks has been recognized as far superior in enhancing their flavor and character compared to aging them solely in glass or plastic. French winemakers, who have employed this technique for generations, have produced wines of extraordinary complexity and taste as a result.

The inclusion of oak in the winemaking process is an incredibly captivating element. When a wine is properly oaked, it undergoes a multitude of remarkable transformations, resulting in a diverse range of sensational alterations to its character.

Crafting your own hard seltzer at home is a breeze, similar to the process of brewing beer or whipping up a batch of homemade mead, cider or wine. ...

Learn the basics of how to brew beer, home brewing equipment you need to get started, as well as walk you through the basic steps of how to brew a Texas Kolsch.

KEGERATOR: (/ˈkeɡəˌrādər/) (n) 1) The ultimate captivating gadget for home brewers. 2) A refrigerator exclusively designed for dispensing draft bee...

The brew kettle, sometimes called a brew pot, is one of the handfuls of truly essential pieces of homebrewing equipment. Austin Homebrew has high-quality 304 stainless steel brew pots and boil kettles ready to complete your homebrew set-up.

How To Cocktail Keg - Everything you need to know about kegging your favorite cocktails! We have the kegs and the expertise to help you get started.

Do you want to take your Home Brewing to the next level? One of the basic ingredients in beer is also very easy to grow. Hops will thrive in most moderate climates. Learning how to plant and care for Hops is easy and rewarding.

Simply put, kombucha is fermented tea. A culture of bacteria called SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast), sometimes called “the mother,” consumes the sugar in a fermentation process just like yeast does in beer.

Austin Homebrew Supply is proud to present full access to over 3000 recipe instruction sheets on our website.

HBU stands for Home Bittering Unit and is also known as an Alpha Acid Unit. HBU’s were developed as a method of standardizing the total bittering potential of hops in order to mitigate the variation in Alpha Acids (AA%) from season to season and hop to hop so that the bitterness of beer recipes will be 100% consistent from brew to brew.

Begin by heating the milk to 84F (86F if using raw milk with higher fat). You do this by placing the milk in a pot or sink of very warm water. If you do this in a pot on the stove, make sure you heat the milk slowly and stir it well as it heats.

Let Binky walk you through a few of his favorite How To Make Pickle recipes. Making pickles is a great way to add to your homebrew arsenal.

The process of making mead by changing honey into wine is simple, it’s controlling your patience that will be the difficult task. Mead goes by a hose of different names, such as "Mead", "Honey Wine", "Ambrosia" and "Nectar of the gods". And mead is frequently referred to as the oldest fermented beverage, with evidence that can put Mead Making back as far as 15,000 BC. Today, however, mead is still misunderstood, even with its long history. Fortunately homebrewers and Winemakers like yourselves have helped to bring back the interest in Mead.

This week’s knowledge segment from Austin Homebrew Supply covers the different versions of our house and clone recipes, special requests, and some plans for the future of these recipes. As many of you already know AHS offers more than 1200 standard house and clone recipes in three different versions: Extract, Mini-Mash and All Grain. They are designed to be consistent from version to version, but we still get some questions that are important to address.

Making a wine kit from a recipe kit is simple and easy because the kit has all the ingredients in pre-measured amounts that one needs to make 6 gallons of wine (30 bottles). Making wine at home is fun and easy.

Lagers are my favorite brew and I prefer to brew lagers at all times of the year. I can hold a consistent fermentation temperature in my lager chest and turn out some really tasty homebrew, but It seems lagers are still a really big question mark for many homebrewers. Let's spend this week’s knowledge segment with a little education from your favorite homebrew shop, Austin Homebrew Supply.

Jeremy's Dutch Gouda. This recipe will make approximately 2 pounds cheese.

Before you start your next homebrew it’s important to take a moment and examine the water that you are going to use for brewing. The average beer is more than 90% water, yet water is the most overlooked of the four key ingredients to beer...

Yeast starters are for every brewer, not just advanced brewers. A yeast starter is nothing more than a mini extract brew, so any level of brewer can make one. Building a yeast starter will have numerous benefits for your upcoming brew.

Why I homebrew, for me, is at first glance a hard question to answer. When a friend or family member asks me this question I like to make a smart aleck response along the lines of “why do you breathe?” The answer is invariably something like “because I have to.” Making beer is not that much different for me. Homebrewing is something that I love doing, it is a part of my identity, and it’s my job. I am the manager for Austin Homebrew Supply. Believe it or not, it’s more than that...

There is always a lot of talk about liquid yeast dying or not being as viable after shipping in the summer months. I want to start this conversation by pointing out that White Labs and Wyeast are very good at their jobs. I have been brewing since 1991 and have never had a dead pack of liquid yeast. I still prefer liquid yeast over dry yeast for the wide array of strains available. Just some food for thought when deciding if you can still order liquid yeast in the heat of summer.

There are many reasons to brew beer, sharing is just one of mine. It’s all well and good to pay someone else to make your beer for you, but there’s a certain pleasure in sharing anything you’ve made with people you care about. I love creating recipes, I love (of course) drinking beer, I even kind of enjoy cleaning bottles; but sharing my beer, sharing my knowledge and my passion for brewing, that’s the best part of brewing...

Austin Homebrew is the leader in Homebrew Recipes. With hundreds of recipes to choose from, we developed an easy way to search our massive database. Read our "How To Find A Clone Brew" to find the clone that is right for you!