Looking at geting myself a home brew kit!!!
I have enough bottles from years of paying for overpriced beer. 
Should I Go with below or get something a little more elabraite!!! Any tips Seabrezzers??
I've never brewed my own beer, but if I was going to do it I would do it from scratch. It might be cheaper but I don't see the point in spending time and money mixing pre-made ingredients and most likely ending up with something inferior to the regular product.. At least if you do it from scratch you can experiment with it.
In my Uni days used to home brew a bit. This was purely for cost saving, wasn't too worried about the end product provided it was alcoholic. Used a kit brew like the pic, pretty fool proof but you could experient enough within the parameters to keep the average punter happy.
If you are serious and want to do it long term you soon get sick of washing & filling bottles,the way to go is the keg system.A cold keg in the fridge at all time.
Ahhhh nothing like the sound of beer bottles exploding in the middle of the night.
The idea with beer is to keep EVERYTHING sterile. otherwise KABOMB!
A recent trip to Vietnam had me paying 15c a glass of beer, i assumed it was home brew but who cares at that price. best beer ive ever tasted!
I recently got going on home brewing, there's diferent levels to go in at: 1st is the basic kit in a can like in your picture, the next is partial grain and extracts, which I what I did, the last is all grain-full mash brewing. For partial grain and extract, you need to lay out for a fermenter like in your photos, as well as a 25 litre or thereabouts stockpot to boil your wort in.
Partial grain and extracts, you're probably in for about $300 to get going. A good idea is to get hold of an old fridge and controller to ferment in, our Perth summer temps are too hot for brewing-you need a relatively constant temp ideally between about 18-22, not more than 26º. Partial grain makes good beer, drinking one now!
The John Palmer website tells you all you need to know: www.howtobrew.com/
The Perth shop TWOC is a good source of gear and advice, they're in Bibra lake.
Think I'll have another now!
Cheers
Start with the Coopers kit, it pretty much has everything else you need. Maybe get a small stock of PET bottles to start with, once you have the hang of it then move to glass bottles.
Get onto the forums in the Coopers website, there is a lot of knowledge in there and the guys that have been on there a while are always keen to help.
The basic Coopers kit is a cheap way to get into it, then if you find you like it it progresses from there. If you don't like it you haven't blown much money. The biggest investment in brewing is the time and patience.
You go through some crap beers to start with that you force down because its 'yours' and you made it, then you get better at it and you start ripping out some great stuff.
Hey Mate,
Good to see you're looking at trying out some home brew. If you learn the ropes and get your technique down you will be brewing some incredible beer in a few months time. (one thing you will need in home brew is patience as in most cases the longer a beer gets to condition the better it will taste! )
I have found Brew Mart the best place in Perth to deal with. Friendly staff and a well stocked shop with very reasonable prices.
Get them to set you up with a starter kit (fermenter, air lock, sanitisation products etc. It may be easier to start with bottles but as mentioned above if you want to do it long term then kegging is definetly the way to go it is less hastle cleaning one keg then 60 bottles and also produces a better tasting beer IMO, as well as letting you control the carbonation rather then having to deal with potential bottle bombs.
Check out youtube videos on how to make a kegerator as thats a fun weekend project. There is nothing better then pulling the tap on your own fridge and pouring a beer that you have made!http://www.brewmart.com.au/brewmart-shop/catalogue/
I have no affiliation with them other then a long term happy customer.
My first batch was the best one.
Second, third and forth I've ruined somehow and decided to stop for good.
I guess, the tiny scratches inside of plastic container are very, very difficult to sterilise. Even with the pink powder as a steriliser.
Was thinking to use the half of brew pack with my big pressure cooker ~12L, with mounted air lock. Might give this a go again. Two pressure cookers are better than one and you can use it for cooking as well :)
But than, the partial grain and extracts sounds much better taste.
I guess, whatever you do the yeast is very important part. Buy the best one.
Plastic bottles won't explode. No way.
^^^ Sounds like something else is going wrong with your brews, if there are surface marks/scratches from the stirring spoon they shouldn't be a problem. I've got plenty inside mine and they aren't a problem.
I've been doing home brew for around 10 years, never once have i used the sterilizing powder just wash the vat and bottles out with water as soon as they're empty.
I got rid of the bottles years ago, now i just use the plastic 2 litre softdrink ones, alot easier to clean , bottle etc.
Go with the coopers very easy and makes great beer but I do agree with post above rather brew in the winter it is very difficult to control the temperature in summer which is what it is all about.
Easiest way to get a consistently great brew without turning to grains etc is go buy a cheap 2nd hand bar fridge and a Tempmate/Fridgemate controller. Allows you to brew year round and control temps to 0.1 degrees. Temp fluctuations are one main reason for crappy brews.
btw, start with that Coopers stuff but there is much (much) better stuff around. Use the best ingredients you can afford, garbage in ... Life is to short to be drinking crap beer.
And keep a beer journal, temps, fermenting times, yeast type, etc etc. So you'll know where you went wrong or how to replicate a great brew.
You should probably strip, clean and sanitise the tap every brew, I also put a very thin smear of olive oil on the o-rings/seals before I reassemble it.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. Biggest issue with it is brewing and drinking only one batch at a time. Normally home brew needs some time to bottle condition before it's at it's best. I'm no home brew fanatic But I do run about 150 bottles so I can condition the beer for a minimum three months before I drink them.
I've been brewing for about 5 years now. Started with a coopers kit. Before I knew it it was an obsession. Then I moved onto extract. Then All-grain. Then I got sick of bottling so I started kegging....
Some good tips here already, I would say to improve your beers go in the following order:
1) Temperature control. As pointed out by FreddoFrog, this will make the biggest difference to your beer. Ale's should be brewed between 18 & 20C. A fridge + temperature controller is the ducks nuts, but you can also get away with putting your fermenter in the laundry sink filled with water, and using frozen PET bottles of water to cool the body of water down around it, then exchange the bottles with frozen ones twice daily as needed.
2) Use a better yeast. Yeast should be fresh, stored cool and of good quality. That yeast that has been sitting under the lid of the tin has been there for god knows how long in what sort of conditions. Try Safale US-05 from any decent homebrew shop.
3) Dont use sugar with your tin of goop. Try a kilo of light dry malt extract and a few hundred grams of dextrose.
4) If you like hoppy beers, buy a packet of hops and add them in. Throw in 15 - 20 grams initially and another 15 - 20 grams in on day 6 will make a world of difference to freshen up your kit. Bottle after at least 10 days.
5) to santize your equipment, the best and cheapest way is to use napisan (find one that has 25% sodium percarbonate). Make up a fairly strong solution in warm water and soak everything in the fermenter overnight. It will come up clean as a whistle, then just simply rinse out and you're good to go.
once you've mastered the above, you will go from brewing OK beer to what your mates will say "Wow, you brewed this?". Then you can start to think about steeping speciality grains, doing a mini boil, etc.
Finally; Have a look at / register on www.aussiehomebrewer.com.au - it's the seabreeze of the brewing world, and there's a huge wealth of info there.
Good luck!
All good tips on sterilisation, but I would avoid using the chemicals. We always found boiling water was good; didn't have any problems with 'bad' brews or exploding bottles.
The other maxim is 'good in equals good out'. Even down to the water you put in. We used to use bottled spring water, (the 20l bottles were just about the amount needed). It made a noticeable difference to the flavour.
We had 144 bottles, flogged from the scout hall down the road. These were the good ones the were not screw tops. Allowed us to let each fermentation to fully ferment before consumption and age enough to mellow the 'green' taste out of it. Every second brew was draught, and in-between would either stout, bitter or whatever else took our fancy.
Also recommend doing a few double sugar, double yeast brews. You don't get double alcohol, but it does get a kick up to about 6.5/7%, which is nice. It is a very sweet brew as there is some undigested sugar left over, but always went down quite nicely on a hot summers day.
Label the bottles or mark the lids. Keep records of different recipes tried so you can eliminate disasters and repeat successes.
