A place for the love and appreciation of all things craft beer and microbrew.
Making Beer at Home?
Anyone ever tried? I want to hear about your success and disasters.
Best recipes or kits? Recommended reading or resources?

Anyone ever tried? I want to hear about your success and disasters.
Best recipes or kits? Recommended reading or resources?
I tried out a basic kit from my local brew supply store (I think based on the Brooklyn Brew Shop beer making kit), to limited results. I made a basic Irish Stout, the end result being staggeringly mediocre. The home brew bug just didn't catch and I haven't tried to brew a full on beer at home since.
Ginger beer on the other hand is waaaay easier to make and I do a few batches of that every summer (so all that brew equipment doesn't go to waste).
I used to brew about every six weeks at home, and look forward to starting back up when I have space and time again. I had a basic hardware kit (about $100 from somewhere like Northern Brewer) and generally did NB kits. Overall, the results were quite good. Cleaning is the downside, especially if you bottle. Starting with kegs could well be worth the extra cost.
I brew all grain, in my opinion the easiest and cheapest path is brewing with malt extract or brewing all grain with BIAB (Brew in a bag). I recommend learning with BIAB, you start brewing with grains just right away and the equipment investment is also minimal as brewing extract. You can start brewing small batches like 1 to 2 gallons instead brewing the typical 5 gallon, if you fuck up, is not that painful like throwing a lot of beer, and maybe you could have already the equipment in you kitchen that can hold up small batches. You could get started with this equipment for small batches:
Some books i highly recommend:
-Brewing Classic Styles (Extract and all grain recipes, all gold medal) -How to Brew (This is a classic and a must have) -Mastering Homebrew (I really like this book and is more complete than How to Brew).
I recommend start brewing easy recipes, look for SMASH recipes (Single malt single hop).
Good luck!
The two times I have tried have both resulted in disaster (foam explosion that hit the ceiling with a ginger beer, and a post bottling foam'splosion with a kit for an IPA I believe). I think the major issue we had was sterilization of the equipment and bottles. Any work arounds or tips for this when brewing in a home kitchen?